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 …

You report that H5N1 bird flu may be adapting to become more infectious to humans. Considering the high death rate in people infected so far and the projections that even minor mutations could cause a virulent pandemic, mass production of an H5N1 vaccine and the inoculation of most of the population should be considered ( …

The COP 29 climate summit was held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, whose economy is massively dependent on exploiting its huge fossil fuel resources. The nearby Caspian Sea is rapidly drying out as a result of hydrocarbon-propelled global warming. Yet this connection seems to have eluded stingy higher-income nations as they failed to cough …

The climate-related food crisis is a consequence of overpopulation, causing the destruction of huge areas of natural environment by animal farming in particular and intensive chemical agriculture, both highly polluting ( 16 November 2024, p 44 ). The constant quest to defeat nature with chemicals, intensive farming, genetic engineering etc. only offers stop-gap measures. Eventually, …

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 …

Pertaining to the problem of urban heat, many suburban roads in the UK have effectively more than doubled in width, as front gardens have been largely or completely paved over. As well as a loss of wildlife habitat, this has significantly increased the heat island effect. In my street, less than 5 per cent of …

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 ).