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After years of attempting to "build a better mousetrap," those darn scientists have moved the goalposts and built a better mouse! GLENN JONES Bolton, England
While discussing the importance of memory, Michael Lemonick made the absurd statement that "there's really no such thing as the present." This contradicts all serious philosophical analysis--both Eastern and Western. In reality there is nothing but the present as far as human experience is concerned. The present is the intersection of our consciousness with the flow of time. Both past and future exist only as mental constructs in present consciousness, the past as memory and the future as imagination. ROBERT M. TAYLOR, ASSOC. PROFESSOR Clinical Neurology Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio
What next? Two scoops of "Smart Genes" in Kellogg's Raisin Bran? There is a thin line between medical achievements for neurological diseases and manipulating nature's way.
The great thinkers of our past and present have managed very well without the smart Doogie. Intelligence is nurtured through curiosity and creativity, not manipulation. Only shallow, insecure people will be interested in standing in line for the brain steroid. Smart genes? Non merci! MIGUEL ZAMARRIPA Montreal
Perhaps the scientists who used the name Doogie for their strain of supermouse might have more appropriately chosen the name Algernon, as a warning to themselves. Algernon is the mouse in Daniel Keyes' famous story Flowers for Algernon, and the improvement in its skills is short lived, as is the improvement in the skills of the human experimented on in the tale. FRED CRAWFORD Ellon, Scotland
UP THE LADDER?
Stephen Jay Gould's article on smart genes [THE I.Q. GENE?, Sept. 13] was informative and clarifying, but when did he make the memory association between "a bee's buzz and the pain of its bite"? Or are American bees just that bit further up the dental evolutionary scale than our local species? AMANDA STILTZ Cardiff, Wales
SAVAGERY IN SIERRA LEONE
I just finished reading "War Wounds," and am appalled by the maiming of these two innocent civilians in the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone [WORLD, Sept. 13]. As a young boy from India, I lived in Nigeria, where my father was a school principal in the early '80s. Nigeria and Sierra Leone were such peaceful countries, and their citizens were so lovely in nature--happy, God-fearing people with a smile and a greeting for everyone. What has happened to this continent? It has lost all its civility and is leaving behind a trail of brutality and sadness everywhere, be it Rwanda, Congo or Sierra Leone. I pray to God to bring back those days to Africa, which still has so much culture to share with this world. Let saner people look in and restore the continent. DEVINDER PUNJWARIA Toronto
What's going on? Is the world being seized by absolute madness? How many more limbs have to be chopped off? Please, do something! RICARDO GONZALEZ Mexico City
PLEBISCITE, THEN DISASTER