- Email: [email protected]
Soft landing
See newscientist.com for letters on: ● Spooks from space ● What goes around… ● Bike, not breakfast ● Suspicious absence of siblings
Flexi-laws framed From Dorothea Sophia Correspondents looking askance at Paul Davies’s proposal of flexilaws of physics (30 June, p 30) perhaps find it unsettling to consider that the objective reality of physical laws is not in their “are”, but in their “would be”. Thinking about the reality of physical laws as processes rather than products is another way of grasping Davies’s point. The great American philosopher, mathematician and scientist Charles Saunders Peirce (18391914) “got it” but remains largely unrecognised. Cheryl Misak of the University of Toronto has noted: “Peirce’s view does not lend itself to snappy summaries”, but time taken attending to his “architectonic system” should provide blueprints for finding objective meaning that is intelligible. Against this background, Davies’s hypothesis is anything but outlandish. Coogee, New South Wales, Australia
Population pressure From Catherine Budgett-Meakin, Population and Sustainability Network It is certainly time to bring discussion of population growth out of the shadows, as William Laurance does (1 September, p 23). He says that educating women is the single most important action needed. We would argue that, while education is absolutely
www.newscientist.com
critical, it needs to go hand in hand with the provision of adequate and non-coercive family planning and reproductive health services. While the UN population conference in Cairo in 1994 was ground-breaking in many ways, budgetary support for family planning services has since fallen away. As a result, many women cannot exercise their human right to choose to plan their families or, indeed, to space their children out. This point is powerfully made in The Return of the Population Growth Factor – an evidencebased report by the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, published in January 2007. London, UK
sufficiently obscure to require explanation on first acquaintance, making it useful both as a sign for clandestine meetings and as a graphic that gives its wearer an opportunity to expound their views to the curious – much like the Christian fish. Llandrindod Wells, Powys, UK
Voices off using a suitably soft, forceabsorbing material between my hands and the bar. Of course, I would be careful to place the force-absorbing material the right way round! Ipswich, Suffolk, UK The editor writes: ● Oops. That should have been “Softer materials show different rates of change of forces.”
Bug, not beetle From Gerald Legg, Booth Museum of Natural History It was certainly unfair of Linnaeus to insult his erstwhile colleague Daniel Rolander by naming an insect Aphanus rolandri – Aphanus being Greek for ignoble and obscure (4 August, p 41). Unfortunately, you refer to it as a beetle. The insect in question is a heteropterous bug belonging to the Pyrrhocoridae. Brighton, UK
Soft landing From Nick Thomas In your report on artificial fingers you say “the software gauges how much downwards force the material absorbs by comparing the force applied by the finger with the force felt by the platform. Softer materials absorb more force” (4 August, p 23). Perhaps you would like to explain how this is consistent with Newton’s third law of motion? I look forward to breaking all world weightlifting records by
Examine this symbol From Peter Magellan Lawrence Krauss raises the issue of the scarlet A for atheists (25 August, p 21). I agree that there are several reasons why it doesn’t make a good symbol: not only is it ambiguous, but the specificity of its colour and typography make it difficult to execute in vernacular media. On my blog, Effing the Ineffable (http://ma.gnolia.com/ julefufiq ), I propose an unambiguous alternative to symbolise all kinds of rationalist world views, not just atheism – which defines us by what we are not, rather than by what we are. The proposed symbol is quick and simple to execute in any medium from graffiti to monumental masonry to, yes, T-shirts. It comprises a circle atop a vertical line, and depicts a simple magnifying glass – the most basic tool of rational, scientific enquiry. It requires no graphic skill to draw and can be executed in any medium, colour or graphic style. It also has the advantage of being
From James Hamilton-Paterson You quote Bern psychiatrist Daniela Hubl saying that a case of hers “proves that the voices were generated in the language areas of the patient’s own brain” (18 August, p 16). And here we dumb members of the lay public were thinking the voices really did come from one of Satan’s imps, the bedstead, hyenas in the kitchen, or outer space. We should all celebrate this great breakthrough. Timelkam, Austria
For the record ● An editing error had us introducing beavers to Banff, which is in Aberdeenshire, when they are in fact being reintroduced to Bamff, Perthshire (25 August, p 42). ● We said that of surviving gorillas, “roughly half are in the Virunga mountains and the rest of Uganda” (25 August, p 5). That should have read “Virunga National Park”. ● The fisheries minister of Iceland is Einar Guðfinnsson, not Guofinnsson (1 September, p 7). ● Apologies to readers whose emails to [email protected] bounced from 1 to 3 September. The megabyte-aminute of junk jamming the inbox at the time has now abated. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
15 September 2007 | NewScientist | 27
Flexi-laws framed From Dorothea Sophia Correspondents looking askance at Paul Davies’s proposal of flexilaws of physics (30 June, p 30) perhaps find it unsettling to consider that the objective reality of physical laws is not in their “are”, but in their “would be”. Thinking about the reality of physical laws as processes rather than products is another way of grasping Davies’s point. The great American philosopher, mathematician and scientist Charles Saunders Peirce (18391914) “got it” but remains largely unrecognised. Cheryl Misak of the University of Toronto has noted: “Peirce’s view does not lend itself to snappy summaries”, but time taken attending to his “architectonic system” should provide blueprints for finding objective meaning that is intelligible. Against this background, Davies’s hypothesis is anything but outlandish. Coogee, New South Wales, Australia
Population pressure From Catherine Budgett-Meakin, Population and Sustainability Network It is certainly time to bring discussion of population growth out of the shadows, as William Laurance does (1 September, p 23). He says that educating women is the single most important action needed. We would argue that, while education is absolutely
www.newscientist.com
critical, it needs to go hand in hand with the provision of adequate and non-coercive family planning and reproductive health services. While the UN population conference in Cairo in 1994 was ground-breaking in many ways, budgetary support for family planning services has since fallen away. As a result, many women cannot exercise their human right to choose to plan their families or, indeed, to space their children out. This point is powerfully made in The Return of the Population Growth Factor – an evidencebased report by the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, published in January 2007. London, UK
sufficiently obscure to require explanation on first acquaintance, making it useful both as a sign for clandestine meetings and as a graphic that gives its wearer an opportunity to expound their views to the curious – much like the Christian fish. Llandrindod Wells, Powys, UK
Voices off using a suitably soft, forceabsorbing material between my hands and the bar. Of course, I would be careful to place the force-absorbing material the right way round! Ipswich, Suffolk, UK The editor writes: ● Oops. That should have been “Softer materials show different rates of change of forces.”
Bug, not beetle From Gerald Legg, Booth Museum of Natural History It was certainly unfair of Linnaeus to insult his erstwhile colleague Daniel Rolander by naming an insect Aphanus rolandri – Aphanus being Greek for ignoble and obscure (4 August, p 41). Unfortunately, you refer to it as a beetle. The insect in question is a heteropterous bug belonging to the Pyrrhocoridae. Brighton, UK
Soft landing From Nick Thomas In your report on artificial fingers you say “the software gauges how much downwards force the material absorbs by comparing the force applied by the finger with the force felt by the platform. Softer materials absorb more force” (4 August, p 23). Perhaps you would like to explain how this is consistent with Newton’s third law of motion? I look forward to breaking all world weightlifting records by
Examine this symbol From Peter Magellan Lawrence Krauss raises the issue of the scarlet A for atheists (25 August, p 21). I agree that there are several reasons why it doesn’t make a good symbol: not only is it ambiguous, but the specificity of its colour and typography make it difficult to execute in vernacular media. On my blog, Effing the Ineffable (http://ma.gnolia.com/ julefufiq ), I propose an unambiguous alternative to symbolise all kinds of rationalist world views, not just atheism – which defines us by what we are not, rather than by what we are. The proposed symbol is quick and simple to execute in any medium from graffiti to monumental masonry to, yes, T-shirts. It comprises a circle atop a vertical line, and depicts a simple magnifying glass – the most basic tool of rational, scientific enquiry. It requires no graphic skill to draw and can be executed in any medium, colour or graphic style. It also has the advantage of being
From James Hamilton-Paterson You quote Bern psychiatrist Daniela Hubl saying that a case of hers “proves that the voices were generated in the language areas of the patient’s own brain” (18 August, p 16). And here we dumb members of the lay public were thinking the voices really did come from one of Satan’s imps, the bedstead, hyenas in the kitchen, or outer space. We should all celebrate this great breakthrough. Timelkam, Austria
For the record ● An editing error had us introducing beavers to Banff, which is in Aberdeenshire, when they are in fact being reintroduced to Bamff, Perthshire (25 August, p 42). ● We said that of surviving gorillas, “roughly half are in the Virunga mountains and the rest of Uganda” (25 August, p 5). That should have read “Virunga National Park”. ● The fisheries minister of Iceland is Einar Guðfinnsson, not Guofinnsson (1 September, p 7). ● Apologies to readers whose emails to [email protected] bounced from 1 to 3 September. The megabyte-aminute of junk jamming the inbox at the time has now abated. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
15 September 2007 | NewScientist | 27