LETTERS

Small aliens

With regard to Nick Guitard’s letter pooh-poohing the possible existence of tiny aliens [FT405:71], I would like to make the following observations. David Bowie, may he rock on, once said that the Internet is like an alien being has landed and that we are in a process of negotiating how to live with it. That the adjustment process would be a social upheaval. This was before Facebook, Twitter and so forth. Now, part of the Internet’s activity is the gleaning of commercially valuable information on individuals. This is done with the use of Artificial Intelligence programs known collectively as Intelligent Agents. I propose that these do constitute “tiny aliens living among us”. I know it sounds like a bit of a stretch. However, it is interesting to consider that, when it comes to the Internet, descriptions of size in physical terms are confusing. How large is a program? How large is a microchip? Infuriatingly small, yet they have moved to the centre of our lives.

Also, there is a protein called kinesin that has the microbiological function of transporting resources along microtubules in living cells, and these kinesin proteins look remarkably similar to tiny walking people in the computer simulations. In much the same way that Edgar Allen Poe seemed to predict particle physics with his prose poem “Eureka”, it may be that a similar mystical allegory has emerged when we anthropomorphise the soulless kinesin molecules. “As above so below,” we intone to ourselves, awestruck. The artists reach the truth before the scientists, and so in turn the mythos of tiny aliens has finally been reified by information technology.

James Wright

Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex

Blue glass

I’ve enjoyed SD Tucker’s trilogy of weird Latin American leaders, and a reference to General Maximiliano Martinez’s belief in the curative powers of blue-tinted glass [FT406:50-53] reminded me of a book that is probably familiar to many readers, but is well worth re-reading or adding to one’s library: Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity and Rotten Luck by Paul Collins (Picador 2001). There is not only a chapter regarding General Augustus Pleasanton’s The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and the Blue Color of the Sky, as mentioned in Tucker’s article, but ones devoted to, among others, the 18th century Shakespeare forger William Ireland (with a companion chapter on Delia Bacon, who went mad trying to prove Francis Bacon really was “Shakespeare”); George Psalmanazar, the “Formosan” imposter; and Robert “Romeo” Coates, regarded in his time as the worst actor ever to tread the boards.

Christopher DiGrazia

Bradford, Massachusetts

Festival dates

Tina Rath agrees with Jarett Kobek that Christian festivals are not, in fact, borrowed from those of the Pagans []. She states, correctly, that Easter was borrowed from the Jewish Passover, which is held at a time determined by the spring equinox and the Full Moon in the month of Nisan. But this has more than a passing resemblance to the Babylonian New Year, which was held at a time determined by the spring equinox and the Full Moon in the month of Nisannu. This was certainly a Pagan festival, and is known to have been held as early as the Third Dynasty of Ur, which came to an end in 2006 BC. According to the Bible (2 Kings 23:23), the Jews first celebrated the Passover in 621 BC, so it is clear who was copying whom. If Easter and Passover really commemorated historical events, then their dates would not alter depending on the Moon.