Reading Test 10

|Part 1|

A bad image not justified

‘Flies are a nuisance, wasps are a pest...’ as the children’s rhyme goes. Indeed, local council environmental health departments everywhere recognise them as such. A wasps’ nest in the vicinity of your home is certainly cause for concern. But all creatures have a function in life: flies do serve a useful purpose – they help dispose of waste matter and feed other animals higher up the food chain.

And wasps? To most of us they appear to possess no redeeming features whatsoever. Having been stung, the majority of people hate them and question their right to exist. As John Crompton points out in ‘The Hunting Wasp’, we generally tend to overreact to the presence of insects that are far more afraid of us, and whose only desire is to escape our company. Nevertheless, their sting is at least a nuisance factor, and, in the case of allergy sufferers, a serious health hazard, but wasps do not attack without good (in their opinion) reason. Very often, we accidentally disturb them, only to pay the painful price.

The problem is that two or three species give the rest a bad name. Vespula vulgaris and vespula germanica, the Common and German wasps respectively, are attracted to our food, and can ruin a picnic by challenging our every lick of ice cream, bite of sandwich and sip of drink. Barbecues are another regular battlefield, as wasps love sucking the juices out of meat. They also frequent dustbins and other unhygienic places, and so can pose a health risk, albeit not as much as flies. Another of their vices, often overlooked, is that they are fond of feeding mashed honeybee flesh to their young, while gorging themselves on the honey. Apiarists loathe them, for their raids seriously disrupt the normal routine of the hives.

This is not a complete picture, however, and it is necessary to redress the balance in favour of our black and yellow chums, notwithstanding the downside of course! Together with bees and ants, wasps form the insect order hymenoptera, and can be divided into two main categories: solitary and social. The former need not concern us here, as they cause us no problems. They live alone or in small groups, and use their delicate sting exclusively to paralyse prey for their larvae to devour alive and fresh. They can also be employed in natural pest control operations. Social wasps are so called because they form large colonies of infertile female ‘workers’ ruled by a single queen. In Britain, apart from the species mentioned above, there are also the Tree, Norwegian, Saxon, Red and Cuckoo wasps, plus the hornets, which rarely come into contact with us.

There is also, of course, the dolichovespula media, or Median Wasp. Since it first established itself in Kent in 1985, it has spread rapidly throughout the country, provoking the tabloid press to dub it every year the ‘French Killer Wasp’ or the ‘Eurowasp’, blaming global warming for the superbug invasion! Indeed, it is larger than our native wasps, and its sting more powerful, but it is no more aggressive, despite what one reads in the paper. It will not bother you if you leave it alone, the point being that the sting of all social wasps is defensive, and will be used against anyone or thing perceived as a threat to themselves or their nest. Whatever is contained in that unlovely cocktail they inject is their secret recipe which scientists have still to analyse.

The life cycle of social wasps begins on a warm day in April, when queens emerge from hibernation and select a place for their nest, usually a hole in the ground, in a tree or in our attics, lofts and under our eaves. The structure is made from chewed up wood mixed with saliva, which forms a grey papery substance. The queen builds a dozen or so hexagonal cells and lays the first of up to thirty thousand eggs. The grubs hatch and she feeds them until they pupate. When the new adults, or imagines, appear about eight weeks later, the queen continues to lay eggs while her infertile daughters continue to build the expanding nest and feed the new larvae. In August males and females hatch, bigger and more brightly coloured than the worker ‘caste’. Males, who have slightly longer antennae, are stingless, and can be seen in autumn mating with the young queens and sipping nectar from ivy, the last plant in Britain to blossom. As the weather gets colder and the flowers disappear, the males and the surviving workers die. The old queen perishes too, together with the last remaining intended grubs. Heavy November rains finally destroy the nest, although in milder climatic conditions colonies are known to last much longer. Having fed well to build up their fat reserves for the long hard winter to come, the impregnated queens seek out a suitable sheltered spot for hibernation, such as under a fold of bark.

We must ask those who would be rid of wasps what the world would be like without them. Quite simply, there would be far fewer flowers and much less fruit, and also many more flies, mosquitoes and other bugs, for they pollinate the former and favour the latter as baby food. So perhaps we should be thankful for these services, even though they come at a slight cost. If we leave wasps alone, they will not hurt us. Just as we treat bees with caution and respect, so we should deal with wasps. They are fascinating creatures, which really do have the right to exist as part of our ecosystem, and besides being attractive, are actually beneficial in more ways than one.

|Part 2|

Digital screams

A What holds new advances in technology back is not the pace of development. Is it then the fact that people are generally conservative by nature? Or is it instead the inability of the marketplace to absorb new products fast enough?

B There is always a time lag between new inventions and discoveries being made and the release of any related technology into the public domain. Like aircraft hovering to land at a busy airport, new products are frequently held in abeyance, while the marketplace is emptied of the last ‘latest’ gadget. Meanwhile, the general population are drip-fed information about what is to come. In this way, the public appetite for new products is constantly being whetted.

C People’s blind faith in any new technological device prevents them from thinking through the implications of what is happening. Fewer and fewer people seem to have any serious misgivings about mankind’s Promethean march to some great dystopia. Any lurking dangers are brushed aside, as are the diminishing band of dissenters.

D People are oblivious of the creeping advance of robots into their lives. Operations are being performed with voice-operated robots, not only giving surgeons an extra pair of safe hands, but also allowing a range of procedures to be carried out anywhere in the world by computer. Apart from surgery, voice-operated devices are also being introduced into cars. Drivers will soon be able to bark at mobile-phone-like gadgets capable of supplying them with all the information they need from weather forecasts to stock market quotations. Who needs friends?

E Experiments have already been carried out on inserting micro-chips under the human skin so that people can be monitored at any time. Tagging is currently in use in some areas for criminals in the community. And data-tagging is being used for technical equipment like expensive motorbike parts and also for tracing lost dogs. Details about using micro-chips in humans have already been flagged in the press. And given the right circumstances, the procedure will be introduced with barely a whimper. Micro-chip implants might perhaps become the passport of the future.

F Without knowing it, you are already being monitored without the slightest hint of protest. The technology in your mobile phones allows you to be located. It is ironic that when mobile phones were first introduced they were perceived as status symbols. But now they are viewed as symbols of slavery, as bosses can monitor their work-force when they are out on the job. Video cameras in public places are now so wide-spread that it is possible to trace you for quite a distance. Supermarket loyalty cards and bank cards leave traces of your life everywhere.

G As we naively come to accept the role of machines, they are appearing in roles that were exclusively the preserve of humans. Robots in bars already exist; soon they will replace hosts on chat-shows, and people as shop assistants or drivers and humans in many other professions. No? Do you take money from a teller at your bank or do you receive it from a robot built into a wall?

H And much to the chagrin of traditionalists, toys have now come on the market which teach children to speak and which children can then communicate with. The novelty apart, this is a rather sinister turn of events. It is bad enough for adults to talk to cars and computers. But this development is much more disturbing. Children may develop certain linguistic skills from the robotic toy, but will lose out on the necessary social and emotional interaction. Social de-skilling of this kind will lead to untold social problems.

I Yet, not all the developments are bad. The advances taking place in medicine, herald a new dawn for the human race. Disease will become an irritation rather than the bane it is now. Humans will replace body-parts as they wear out, with specially grown prostheses or electronic parts, whatever is in vogue at the time. Certain diseases which required huge resources and expenditure will be treated by gene therapy. Paralysis will become a thing of the past. By 2020, the life expectancy for new babies will be well over 100 years and more. Recently, the ‘immortality’ gene was located; so soon the world may be full of Methuselahs.

J A nightmare scenario perhaps. Not half as nightmarish as the future possibility of downloading the human mind before the body dies. But I for one do not wish to live out eternity as some sort of digital collectable item. Against the hum of machines who will hear my screams? Or yours?

|Part 3|

Russian icons

The ambivalence of the Soviet authorities towards the art and artefacts of the Orthodox Church throughout the 50s and 60s is even more apparent in relation to icons. These religious paintings have always held a personal spiritual significance for believers in Russia, and some have been the objects of public veneration at a level. Conscious of the need to instil a sense of pride in the richness of pre-revolutionary Russian heritage, but wary of allowing religious sentiment to flourish, Soviet art historians strove to emphasise the uniqueness of the Russian icon tradition and its central role in the cultural development of 12th to 16th century Russia, while minimising its Orthodox Christian essence. It was a narrow path to tread.

One obvious ploy was to detach the icons from their normal setting in churches and cathedrals and display them in secular art galleries. This is particularly clear in the case of the Tretyakov Art Gallery in Moscow which houses many of the oldest, most beautiful and most venerated icons. Hung on impassive cream walls, these wonderful paintings are stripped of their religious significance encouraging the spectator to concentrate on their artistic merits. Elsewhere in the gallery hang the mordant social commentaries of nineteenth century Russian realist painters such as Repin, Makovsky and Yaroshenko, some of them specifically attacking the veniality and corruption of the Russian Orthodox Church, or mocking the superstitious ignorance of the Russian peasants. Further on are the paintings of the Soviet era, explicitly socialist, concentrating on human, particularly collective human, achievement. The peasants, now liberated from their attachment to religion and superstition become heroic figures, contributing to the socialist future. The inference is not hard to draw: the icons belong to a continuous tradition of Russian artistic creativity which emphasises the dignity and universal emotional, intellectual and spiritual integrity of man, without reference to an external God. The Soviet authorities, of course, were not content to let visitors to the gallery draw this inference for themselves. It was explicitly stated in all the official guidebooks.

A further development in this separation of icons from their religious context can be seen in the creation of the Museum of Iconography in north-west Moscow. Housed in the former Andronikov Monastery, and named after the 15th century icon painter Andrei Rublev, the museum contains a representative selection of icons mainly from the 15th to the 17th century from various parts of Russia. The paintings are displayed in 15th century monastic buildings retaining the outward semblance of a church with monks’ living quarters, but which have been stripped of all religious purpose. The guidebook stresses the harmonious lines of the museum buildings as if the original architects had designed them with that future purpose in mind.

Icons depicting the Virgin and Child lent themselves easily to appropriation by the secularising art historians. The Virgin is no longer the Mother of God, but a symbol of human motherhood, her sorrowing face no longer a foreboding of the death of her son on the cross, but an expression of universal maternal tenderness and pity. Icons of saints of the early eastern and Russian churches, such as St. Nicholas, Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and St. Sergius of Radonezh are similarly described in terms of their civilising influence, the humanitarian acts they performed or the role they played in the early development of a Russian national identity. Some of these saints were martyrs, dying for their faith, and so become symbols of Russian stoicism and steadfastness in the face of the invader.

But icons of a more abstract or mystical nature, particularly those depicting the Holy Trinity, presented a more intractable interpretative problem. In the Bible, the Holy Trinity is described as appearing to Abraham and his wife Sarah in the form of three angels. Icons of the Three Angels of the Trinity are to be found dating from the late 14th century onward, though few survive from this early period. The angels are normally depicted seated in repose, gesturing towards mystical symbols of divinity. They do not lend themselves to humanistic interpretation, but the three relaxed yet at the same time grave and tautly composed linear figures, combine to create some of the most compelling images in Russian iconography. The names of few icon painters from the 15th century are known to us, but, fortunately for Soviet art historians, the name of the painter of what is usually considered the most astonishingly beautiful “Trinity” icon of all is known. It is Andrei Rublev. So instead of being forced to focus on the not-very-apparent humanity of the painting the historians are able to turn their attention to the artist. They emphasise his skill, they explain his technique, they place his work firmly in the emerging Russian national consciousness of the early 15th century. The artist is hero.