Public intellectuals 1
30th July 2004
I was flattered to be included on your list of public intellectuals, but disturbed to find my existence questioned by Frank Johnson in the Spectator and then my integrity challenged by your assistant editor for orchestrating the vote (August). Let me assure Prospect readers that there was no attempt at vote-rigging by me or, to my knowledge, anyone else on my behalf, and let me reassure the subset of people who read the Spectator and Prospect that I do exist.
Julian Le Grand
LSE
Public intellectuals 2
21st July 2004
It is interesting (to me, at least) to note that the top 15 intellectuals in your list included two graduates of Monitor (Bragg and Jonathan Miller), which was edited by my father, Huw Wheldon, and three former members of the Committee for the Free World (Garton Ash, Stoppard and Scruton), the UK director of which was my mother, Jacqueline Wheldon. Incidentally, when I asked my father who was the cleverest man he had met, he said unhesitatingly: "Marcel Duchamp."
Wynn Wheldon
London N6
Public intellectuals 3
21st July 2004
Like David Herman, I am surprised that Amartya Sen did so well in your poll—though for a different reason. His name was first on my shortlist, but I found it hard to find four others who I thought deserving of respect. My reaction was not to bother, and I assumed other readers would do the same. Evidently enough of them were able to suppress their distaste and pad out their selection from among the assorted lightweights and has-beens on the list. By "has-beens" I don't mean the old—Sen was older than most—but people like Dawkins or Eagleton or Giddens or Scruton who haven't produced anything interesting for years.
Matt Cavanagh
London SW1
Charter88 still lives
5th August 2004
It is a strange feeling to read your own obituary in print (News & Curiosities, August), even more so when you are feeling more healthy than you have for a while.
Phil Starr and Debbie Chay
Charter88
A slur on Prince Charles
19th June 2004
I do not agree with many of Prince Charles's opinions, but it was amiss of Tristram Hunt (June) to describe his views as "a curious medley of Buddhism, mysticism and inner soul-searching." Such a slur is inappropriate from a respected historian.
Walter Lassally
Athens
Filming 9/11
20th July 2004
Mark Cousins (July) hailed Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 as an innovative piece of documentary cinema. In particular he praised the idea of playing the sounds of the twin towers attack over a black screen. But he ignores the use of a similar device by Alejandro González Iñárritu in his short film for the compilation 11'09"01 two years before Moore's film. Anyone engaged by the innovations of Fahrenheit 9/11 should see the 11'09"01 collection, published on DVD by Artificial Eye.
Gavin Ireland
Lancaster
Semprún neglected
14th July 2004
I enjoyed Julian Evans's piece (July) on European fiction, but why no mention of Jorge Semprún? Aged 80, he has just published his latest novel—Veinte Años y un Día—which has already won the Spanish Lara prize.
Martha Burnett
Vancouver
Making life in the lab 1
4th August 2004
What is life? Can we make it? asks Philip Ball (August). Not using the DNA molecule illustrated on page 52. It is a left-handed helix and not the correct right-handed helix. Jan A Witkowski
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Making life in the lab 2
1st August 2004
Philip Ball imagines the nightmare of a hacker culture in the lab similar to that in the computer world, but producing biological viruses. From from my own experience as a university laboratory manager, I know that to produce viruses in this way would require substantial resources in terms of space, time and finance, as well as access to genome libraries. Biological hacking could only occur with the support of a big financial backer, or as part of a government programme. The worry is that some states or state-supported terrorist groups could already be engaging in this sort of activity.
Tamsin Piper
London N17
Third way on the beach
26th July 2004
Charles Leadbeater (August) says that beaches are "a prime example of successful collective self-organisation, without either the heavy hand of the state or the competition of the market." This is the utopian draw of both beaches and the third way—the idea that there could be a (political) space where people are always "civil, playful, active, open."
According to the Barbados tourism authorities, the beach that Tony Blair will be visiting this summer is "just beyond your imagination." And it is beyond the imagination that any space could remain free of conflict for long. Over the past seven years, along that same beach in Barbados I have seen conflicts (physical and otherwise) between fisherpeople, hotels, the public, tourists, jet ski operators, lifeguards, local guesthouses and others. Far from being representative of a civil space, it is the product of the state and market expulsion of almost every activity that is not associated with (usually foreign-owned) all-inclusive hotels.
Jonathan Pugh
University of Westminster
Goodbye, the west? 1
24th July 2004
David Marquand (August) says, "Europeans cannot afford to treat the middle east as an adventure playground for moralising exporters of democracy… For heartland Europe a stable Iraq—even under a dictator—was better than the instability that the Americans inevitably brought with them."
Substitute "US" for "Europe" and "Latin America" for "middle east" and it seems now to be Europe which stands for the cynical realpolitik of the kind which the US pursued in the 1970s and 1980s.
Michael Petek
Brighton
Goodbye, the west? 2
26th July 2004
David Marquand states that "European civilisation is, in many ways, an offshoot of the Islamic civilisation that invented algebra, prepared the foundations for modern science and built some of the most beautiful buildings in the world." This myth of Europe's debt to Islam is widespread in the middle east, but it is largely nonsense. The foundations of modern science were laid in ancient Greece and beautiful buildings have been built by many people in many places. Arab mathematicians did invent algebra and logarithms and certain principles of geometry; we might even argue that, because representation of the human form is forbidden in Islam, the development of secular art and literature in the caliphates was prevented and so much of the creative impulse of early Muslims was directed into abstract mathematics. But to conclude that Islam is "responsible" for these developments would be absurd, and to further conclude that the Renaissance—an attempt by Europeans to rediscover their classical, pre-Christian (and therefore pre-Islamic) cultural past—owed a debt to Islam is a nonsense. European civilisation's main debt to Islam is the fact that the caliphs prevented the destruction of the wisdom of an earlier age. We may also note that the greatest discoveries of the caliphates were made in Spain, and to a lesser extent Baghdad, where people of many faiths were accorded some freedom.
Marquand adds that the "loutish" crusaders had "nothing to teach Muslims." In that the first crusade was successful in its mission, and the third kept the Christian holy places open for pilgrims, we must conclude that the vastly outnumbered crusaders at least taught their foes a lesson in tactics and courage.
Jack Kincaid
London W11
The case for thorium
2nd August 2004
Dick Taverne (August) is right in saying that the existence of background radiation is not a good anti-nuclear argument. There is a better one: the world's nuclear reactors produce about 100 tons of plutonium annually, and nobody knows what to do with it. Plutonium is "good" only for nuclear explosives and it is hard to believe that such huge amounts of plutonium can forever be kept away from terrorists. In view of this, why are we not building nuclear reactors of the type invented by Nobel prize winner Carlo Rubbia? This reactor has three advantages. First, it uses thorium for fuel, which is much more abundant than uranium. Second, it cannot explode because it needs a proton accelerator nearby to run at all. Third, it does not produce plutonium.
Reinhard Budde
Begnins, Switzerland
Why we need the beeb
5th August 2004
Barry Cox's argument about the BBC (August) starts from the premise that the free market is the only way in which goods and services ought to be distributed. The BBC, he says, provides little that could not be produced commercially and so there is no need for it. Cox gives no reason for this point of view, but if, as he points out, 81 per cent of people think it is worth paying the licence fee for a service which they value, why should anyone contemplate taking it away from them? If there is any evidence that we would be better off without the BBC, then Cox fails to offer it. We need a far better reason to abolish this public good than the interests of a group of global companies who would very quickly gobble up our independent broadcasters.
Angela Phillips
Goldsmiths College
Worldly wealth
11th July 2004
Michael Lind's essay (July) envisages a future utopia where, despite a population 50 per cent larger than present, everyone will be living harmoniously with each other, in balance with nature, enjoying as much space, stuff, speed and test-tube-fresh pork as they could ever want. It is particularly odd to see this kind of end of history stance adopted by Lind, whose praise adorns the back cover of John Gray's book Two Faces of Liberalism, where Gray argues directly against one size fits all culture. The great paradox of humanity, understood by evolutionarily informed thinkers such as Gray, is that, although people everywhere are very similar, one of the ways in which we are similar is in assuming intractable difference. People want to protect themselves, even against angels.
Jonathan Minton
University of Nottingham
American Hispanics
6th July 2004
Eric Kaufmann says (July) that Hispanics are "Latin American immigrants and their descendants." This is incorrect. "Hispanic" refers to someone who speaks Spanish. This is not a quibble. The US has two major groups of Hispanics: the immigrants Kaufmann refers to as "Latinos," and Spanish speakers whose ancestors' presence in what is now US territory goes back to a period before such territory was part of the US. These Hispanics are generally called "Chicanos." The Chicano role in creating a modern American identity is every bit as important as that of Africans, Americans and Native Americans.
Jerry White
Faroe Islands
