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26 September 2018
From Peter Inkpen, Amersham, Buckinghamshire, UK
Marc Bekoff decries the planned grizzly bear hunt near Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks in the US ( 1 September, p 22 ). He mentions that 21 hunters were licensed by lottery, and that wildlife photographer Thomas Mangelsen won one of the permits to hunt grizzly bears and does not plan to use that …
26 September 2018
People, asked about eternal life, looked at Keith Richards and said 'nope'? Tracy Jones invokes the gnarled Rolling Stones guitarist to wonder why only one in five of us favour immortality ( 22 September, p 8 )
26 September 2018
From Steve Swift, Medstead, Hampshire, UK
Colin Cook observes that smart meters may make for noisier neighbours, with people running washing machines at night when electricity prices drop, for example (Letters, 1 September ). In a similar vein, I use off-peak electricity to recharge my electric car on an "Economy7" tariff, which offers cheaper power for seven hours each night. The …
26 September 2018
From Roger Calvert, Blawith, Cumbria, UK
Gabriel Carlyle says a charged alkaline battery may weigh a tiny bit more than a discharged one (Letters, 1 September ). But hearing aid batteries work by reaction with air or moisture, and gain mass as they discharge. I have measured a discharged battery as weighing 95 milligrams more than a new one. When dropped …
3 October 2018
From Steve Brewer, St Ives, Cornwall, UK
Sofia Deleniv describes self-awareness as an illusion, and on your cover you call it a "delusion" ( 8 September, p 28 ). What wasn't discussed was its power to turn the whole world as we view it into "illusions" by the process of forming abstract concepts and ideas about it. By developing and interconnecting these …
3 October 2018
From Kim Broadie, Staten Island, New York, US
My self-awareness thoroughly enjoyed Deleniv's article . Her conclusion, however, seems to relegate human self-awareness to a by-product of the humming of our neural engine, not essentially different from, for instance, the 3D echolocation modelling that goes on in a bat's brain. And if self-awareness doesn't require a higher order of consciousness, but is the …
3 October 2018
From Daniel Hackett, London, UK
Deleniv suggests self-awareness is an extension of the challenge of dealing with the minds of others: prey, competitors or members of your social group. Territoriality should not be underestimated as an example of such a challenge. If you put two trout in a small tank, they will skirmish. The loser will change to a dark …
3 October 2018
From Roy Harrison, Verwood, Dorset, UK
Alice Klein reports hydrogen-powered cars competing with electric cars on environmental grounds ( 8 September, p 20 ). I question if either are that green. Say an electric car's batteries are charged with electricity from a gas-fired power station with a carbon footprint of 400 grams per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Say losses in transmission are 14 …
3 October 2018
From Stuart McGlashan, Sorbie, Dumfries and Galloway, UK
At present, the UK government gets about £34 billion in fuel duty and vehicle tax from road transportation. The incentives to move to electric vehicles include little or no vehicle tax on them and recharging at home bearing the 5 per cent Value Added Tax rate for domestic electricity, a lot less than the tax …
3 October 2018
From Cheryl Hillier, Cribyn, Ceredigion, UK
I read with interest Michael Le Page's account of science waging a war of attrition with evolution ( 1 September, p 28 ). We seem to forget that our survival depends on Mother Nature's ability to bounce back after all the terrible things we keep doing to her. Once we have killed the soil biome …
