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Universal guilt
See newscientist.com for letters on: ● Proper treatment ● Universal guilt ● Atheism is a belief…
From Martin Gregorie I am surprised you omitted the “two noses” illusion, which is about the easiest of the lot to demonstrate. Simply cross your index and middle finger and then run them up and down the bridge of your nose. The illusion that you have two noses is very hard to dispel. Harlow, Essex, UK From Nicki Parsons Looking at the chimeric faces you printed (p 38) I discover that, unlike most people, I find the top picture much happier and warmer looking. The bottom picture looked like a false smile to me. Friends and family all thought the bottom picture happier, as expected. Is there something a bit odd about those of us who see it the other way round? I tried the “half smile” experiment half expecting to get opposite results to usual on that too, but didn’t. Oxford, UK
Unfair to atheists From Don Engel Amanda Gefter’s review of John Cornwell’s reply to Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion simplifies the position of today’s prominent atheists to the point where it is turned into a caricature of what they actually profess (22 September, p 53). The position of Dawkins and others is not that science is “ultimately capable of explaining everything about the universe”. It is that science is the only method so far devised with the ability to explain the explainable. When religious thinkers try to accurately describe our world they end up with either the neutered and redundant definition of religion – as art or ethos or pantheism – that Gefter’s review mentions; or an incorrect description of our world – for example, any based on an interventionist god. Dawkins has gone to great lengths to explain www.newscientist.com
just what sort of religion he rails against. Unfortunately, religious leaders are unwilling or unable to be so precise. They have no realworld basis on which to formulate such a definition, and the result is an ever-shifting definition of “religious experience”. Gefter has fallen into the trap set by theists who claim that a belief in science is a form of faith. It is not. Science, properly applied, is a self-correcting mechanism for seeing the world as accurately as possible. Religion, regardless of its outer form, is an attempt to inject an unmeasurable force to explain what some people are uncomfortable not being able to know. The ability to accept that some things are unexplained is a demarcation line between scientific and religious thought. Its lack is what causes religiously minded people of all types to invent a heavenly host of ad hoc explanations for the natural workings of our world, rather than perform the heavy lifting required to tease out supportable answers from an often uncooperative cosmos. Houston, Texas, US
Data at your fingertip From Malcolm Hollick “Imagine being free to forget all of your passwords and use your fingerprint to log in to your online bank, eBay and email accounts” (22 September, p 30). Imagine injuring your finger. Even if the system can cope with scar tissue, you will find yourself locked out of your computer and online life until the bandages come off. And what about severe burns that destroy the fingerprint permanently? I’d rather stick with passwords. Forres, Moray, UK From Preda Mihailescu You write that “encrypting the fingerprint using conventional cryptography and then transmitting it is not an option…”
This could be misunderstood. In fact, the only convincingly secure solution at present is based on extended use of conventional cryptography. This includes public key cryptography, authentication and protocols such as secure timestamping and non-repudiation – a process which protects against a communicating entity denying that it participated in the exchange of information. In such a solution the fingerprint template is protected in the same way as secure transactions between financial institutions. These are expensive, state-of-theart solutions affordable only for large-scale implementations by large organisations, but they are secure. For now, there seems to be no easy way to design a sufficiently secure scheme that treats biometrics like passwords. The attack mentioned in your article revealed a simple way to bypass one proposed solution – the fuzzy vault. Considerable research is going on and the future may show us some useful alternatives. Göttingen, Germany
Under pressure From Robin Stokes In the article “Noisy neighbours” (11 August, p 28) Hazel Muir says that the average distance between molecules in the atmosphere on Mars is about 120 times greater than on Earth. I accept that the mean free path in the Martian atmosphere is about 120 times longer than in Earth’s. However, there is no way that the mean free path can be translated or explained as being the “distance between molecules”; it is the average distance a molecule travels between collisions. The ratio of average distance between molecules is roughly the cube root of the density ratio of 120 to 1. Armidale, New South Wales, Australia
Who boldly goes? From Jo Darlington If people were serious about colonising space or the planets (Letters, 29 September, p 22) they would not send couples, but a party of healthy young women and a sperm bank. Every child born would have a different father, thus minimising the dangerous genetic bottleneck otherwise caused by a small founder population. Cambridge, UK
Back to the source From Ron McKeown You replied to Marc Tanenbaum that “Religion is a feature of the natural world, and as fit a subject of inquiry for science – and for New Scientist – as any other” (22 September, p 24). So you could presumably squash the doubters once and for all by interviewing God. It should be no problem for an omnipresent deity and a magazine of your reputation to arrange such a meeting. Derby, UK
For the record ● Feedback misnamed Sara Batts (6 October). Sorry. 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.
20 October 2007 | NewScientist | 27
From Martin Gregorie I am surprised you omitted the “two noses” illusion, which is about the easiest of the lot to demonstrate. Simply cross your index and middle finger and then run them up and down the bridge of your nose. The illusion that you have two noses is very hard to dispel. Harlow, Essex, UK From Nicki Parsons Looking at the chimeric faces you printed (p 38) I discover that, unlike most people, I find the top picture much happier and warmer looking. The bottom picture looked like a false smile to me. Friends and family all thought the bottom picture happier, as expected. Is there something a bit odd about those of us who see it the other way round? I tried the “half smile” experiment half expecting to get opposite results to usual on that too, but didn’t. Oxford, UK
Unfair to atheists From Don Engel Amanda Gefter’s review of John Cornwell’s reply to Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion simplifies the position of today’s prominent atheists to the point where it is turned into a caricature of what they actually profess (22 September, p 53). The position of Dawkins and others is not that science is “ultimately capable of explaining everything about the universe”. It is that science is the only method so far devised with the ability to explain the explainable. When religious thinkers try to accurately describe our world they end up with either the neutered and redundant definition of religion – as art or ethos or pantheism – that Gefter’s review mentions; or an incorrect description of our world – for example, any based on an interventionist god. Dawkins has gone to great lengths to explain www.newscientist.com
just what sort of religion he rails against. Unfortunately, religious leaders are unwilling or unable to be so precise. They have no realworld basis on which to formulate such a definition, and the result is an ever-shifting definition of “religious experience”. Gefter has fallen into the trap set by theists who claim that a belief in science is a form of faith. It is not. Science, properly applied, is a self-correcting mechanism for seeing the world as accurately as possible. Religion, regardless of its outer form, is an attempt to inject an unmeasurable force to explain what some people are uncomfortable not being able to know. The ability to accept that some things are unexplained is a demarcation line between scientific and religious thought. Its lack is what causes religiously minded people of all types to invent a heavenly host of ad hoc explanations for the natural workings of our world, rather than perform the heavy lifting required to tease out supportable answers from an often uncooperative cosmos. Houston, Texas, US
Data at your fingertip From Malcolm Hollick “Imagine being free to forget all of your passwords and use your fingerprint to log in to your online bank, eBay and email accounts” (22 September, p 30). Imagine injuring your finger. Even if the system can cope with scar tissue, you will find yourself locked out of your computer and online life until the bandages come off. And what about severe burns that destroy the fingerprint permanently? I’d rather stick with passwords. Forres, Moray, UK From Preda Mihailescu You write that “encrypting the fingerprint using conventional cryptography and then transmitting it is not an option…”
This could be misunderstood. In fact, the only convincingly secure solution at present is based on extended use of conventional cryptography. This includes public key cryptography, authentication and protocols such as secure timestamping and non-repudiation – a process which protects against a communicating entity denying that it participated in the exchange of information. In such a solution the fingerprint template is protected in the same way as secure transactions between financial institutions. These are expensive, state-of-theart solutions affordable only for large-scale implementations by large organisations, but they are secure. For now, there seems to be no easy way to design a sufficiently secure scheme that treats biometrics like passwords. The attack mentioned in your article revealed a simple way to bypass one proposed solution – the fuzzy vault. Considerable research is going on and the future may show us some useful alternatives. Göttingen, Germany
Under pressure From Robin Stokes In the article “Noisy neighbours” (11 August, p 28) Hazel Muir says that the average distance between molecules in the atmosphere on Mars is about 120 times greater than on Earth. I accept that the mean free path in the Martian atmosphere is about 120 times longer than in Earth’s. However, there is no way that the mean free path can be translated or explained as being the “distance between molecules”; it is the average distance a molecule travels between collisions. The ratio of average distance between molecules is roughly the cube root of the density ratio of 120 to 1. Armidale, New South Wales, Australia
Who boldly goes? From Jo Darlington If people were serious about colonising space or the planets (Letters, 29 September, p 22) they would not send couples, but a party of healthy young women and a sperm bank. Every child born would have a different father, thus minimising the dangerous genetic bottleneck otherwise caused by a small founder population. Cambridge, UK
Back to the source From Ron McKeown You replied to Marc Tanenbaum that “Religion is a feature of the natural world, and as fit a subject of inquiry for science – and for New Scientist – as any other” (22 September, p 24). So you could presumably squash the doubters once and for all by interviewing God. It should be no problem for an omnipresent deity and a magazine of your reputation to arrange such a meeting. Derby, UK
For the record ● Feedback misnamed Sara Batts (6 October). Sorry. 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.
20 October 2007 | NewScientist | 27