Letters archive

I read with interest Michael Pinder's "Time for a change" (Forum, 10 February, p 45). I was taken aback when I read there this sentence: "And does it have to be 12 am just because the Sun is overhead"? No, it does not have to be am, it has to be pm.

"Free-for-all" exploitation of biological resources usually upsets ecologists, unless the resources are abundant. It is therefore surprising that Fred Pearce suggests that "free-for-all" grazing is the most sustainable way of utilising the native vegetation in Jordan's Badia region ("Shepherds & wise men" 23/30 December 1995, p 24). Most observers familiar with the Badia believe its …

I note with interest that Tam Dalyell (Thistle Diary, 16 December 1995) was informed by junior home office minister Tim Kirkhope that tail docking was effectively barred by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Your article "Off with their tails" (Focus, 30 September 1995, p 16) makes it plain that this is not the case. …

The earliest dated human occupation of a cave is considerably older than 47 600 years (In Brief, 27 January, p 11). The list is long, beginning with the site of Swartkrans, South Africa at 1.5 to 1 million years ago, extending through the middle and later Pleistocene in Africa, Europe and Asia. In Britain, the …

J. R. Catlin, who suffered a plague of flies, asked for a use for the pickled ones left over from his brandy and orange experiments (Letters, 6 January, p 45). Flies pickled in this way should be served as a main course, flambéed with button mushrooms (avoiding the amanita type). I propose that we call …

The people in Pevensey Levels in East Sussex are right to get annoyed that their answers to the question of how much they would be willing to pay to conserve the Levels are being used in a cost-benefit analysis. The object of this is to see if the money actually being spent is worth it …

Andreas Frew implies that a system of giving out research grants at random is a silly idea (Forum, Washington Diary, 27 January, p 50). I feel that random decision-making deserves a serious analysis and should not be dismissed in so cavalier a fashion. The world is one of imperfect information, so while rational argument may …

I was very interested in "Stone me, those crows make tools", (Science, 20 January, p 16). Crows – Corvus orru – in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens on the eastern slopes of Mount Coot-tha, have made another interesting adaption to their environment. The ubiquitous toad (introduced to Australia from South America to clean up the sugarcane …

With regard to "Injured hedgehogs killed by human kindness" (This Week, 3 February, p 10), if you actually read the paper printed in The Veterinary Record it becomes fairly obvious that the hedgehogs mentioned were not killed by human kindness but by being released in a sub-optimal condition. The only hedgehog with severe dental problems …

As the author of Thread of the Silkworm (a biography of the founder of the Chinese missile programme), I was appalled to read the following statement in the brief review of my book (6 January, p 37): "Unfortunately, the book has a fatal flaw: since his expulsion, Tsien has consistently refused interviews with Western journalists. …

Your report on the recent Geneva Conference on the Health Consequences of the Chernobyl and Other Nuclear Accidents (2 December, p 4) gives a good overview of the state of the discussion. A correction is however necessary concerning the nature of the geographic spread of this epidemic. I did not say that thyroid cancer cases …

I am afraid that James Follett is incorrect then he states that, "The entire English-speaking world refers to the # symbol as a hash" (Letters, 3 February, p 57). Having just returned from two years spent working in Massachusetts I can inform him that in the States # is referred to as "the pound sign" …

Being somewhat pedantic, I object to the use of the letter "O" for the numeral "0", when expressing telephone numbers; this is also, astonishingly, programmed into the BT computerised directory inquiry system. Also, the expression of a number using two-digit combinations has always seemed much less prone to misinterpretation – "four, eight, six, double-three, five" …

Andy Macqueen makes some sound points on natural gas consumption (Letters, 3 February, p 56). But I take exception to his question: "Can you imagine a car or plane powered by coal?" The answer is yes. In my novel A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! there is a coalfired flying ship. When John W. Campbell serialised this …

In his admittedly self-indulgent article, "Going for green in France", (Forum, 6 January, p 41), Ian Fells mentioned the cutting down of 200-year-old oaks to make way for more Eurowheat at Château des Fours. As owners of this venerable relic, we hasten to put right what is obviously an editorial error: it was not we …

Feedback (10 February, p 76) congratulated the US Patent Office on making 20 years of patents available on the Internet-and congratulations are certainly due. But while we at the British Library are grateful for the recognition given in the column to our "helpful staff" we would like to rebut the statement that they "waste most …