Letters archive

You report that Mesopotamians felt happiness in their livers. For Iraqis like myself, the liver is indeed a seat for emotions. All in all, it seems that people's feelings in Iraq nowadays are harmonious with how those in Mesopotamia felt, as a recent hit pop song in Iraq shows. The lyrics go something like: "The …

Your article on calorie counts on menus says the UK guidelines require them to sit within a 20 per cent margin of error, yet the gap between your opening example of a chicken burger and fries (1597 kcal) and their plant-based alternative (1746 kcal) is within this margin. Presumably even those who want to make …

Further to the discussion of early-onset myopia, it occurs to me that some of the themes were explored in Aldous Huxley's 1942 book The Art of Seeing and W. H. Bates's 1920 book Perfect Sight Without Glasses , from which the former draws ( Letters, 7 December 2024 ). These were both condemned by eye …

The idea that robot pets would solve our carbon footprint issue seems a bit blinkered. The pet options aren't just cat, dog or robot. Small herbivores have a far smaller carbon footprint, one that may be less than that of a dog-sized robot ( 12 October 2024, p 22 ). What's more, the suggestion that …

It seems novelist Patrick Ness may have been correct when it comes to communing with dogs. His Chaos Walking trilogy starts with: "The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is dogs don't got nothing much to say... 'Need a poo, Todd ( 14/21 December 2024, p 66 ).'"

When we ran our story on bird flu ( 14/21 December 2024, p 20 ), not everyone affected was known to have recovered. A temperature difference of 770°C is equivalent to 1386°F ( 7 December 2024, p 38 ). Cameron Browne led the Digital Ludeme Project ( 14/21 December 2024, p 48 ).

None of the methods of time travel discussed holds any hope for objects like human bodies to be able to do it. And why travel in time anyway( 14/21 December 2024, p 54 )? Even assuming it were possible, the dangers would be enough to make it unthinkable: diseases to which one had no immunity, …

We don't have to go to the past, we just need to send data to the past. Perhaps 2025 will be the year that I get the message I am hoping to send to myself with the names of the Grand National horse race winners for the next 10 years.

Ian Phillips considers distrust of one's senses to be the most likely explanation for subjects denying having seen anything unusual in a video despite an unexpected object popping up, even if they could nevertheless convey some details of it. Alternatively, could it be to do with the phenomenon of blindsight? Visual processing involves many layers …

The first step in reducing urban heat should be to reduce the burning of fuels. All of the energy used in vehicles eventually ends up as heat. Some of the fuel's energy is used for propulsion, which becomes heat through mechanical, air and tyre friction. Most is wasted directly as heat. A study of Beijing …