Age is a number, not a moveable feast
The idea, in your look at ageing, that a person’s biological age can differ from their chronological age may not be so useful (30 April, p 38).
A chronological-aged 37-year-old male marathon runner has the biological age of 25 years for his heart. His skin, due to long training hours of sun exposure, is 42, except in his groin and inner arms, where the sun hasn’t been so unkind, and is therefore 37. His left Achilles tendonitis means the tendon is 53 on that side, but 48 on the right. So, what is his biological age?
I think we should just stick to classifying age based on how many times we have orbited the sun and abandon the flawed but attractive idea that we can reverse, stop or slow ageing. We can, however, improve health and fitness.
How ghosting may come to haunt us less
It shouldn’t be a surprise that “ghosting” 鈥� ending a relationship by cutting all communication without explanation 鈥� is painful (23 April, p 47). It is often a form of humiliation, which is an exercise of power that is arbitrary or unexpected, involves rejection or exclusion, conflicts with what was thought to be a set of shared assumptions about values and expectations, and leaves the recipient feeling diminished and with a sense of injustice with no possible remedy.
The consequences are predictable and consistent, and include bewilderment, rage, a desire for revenge, frustration at one’s powerlessness and, often, depression. It won’t be surprising if ghosting loses its impact eventually, since people increasingly know it is a likely response in a digital dating world and will choose not to be bothered by it. This would involve a change of expectation: you are likely to behave badly, and since I no longer expect that you will behave, it isn’t a surprise, doesn’t hurt and I don’t feel it as rejection or injustice.
In other words, a form of resistance is built in at the start of a relationship, so that ghosting is no longer an effective exercise of power. Whether this is a healthy way to embark on relationships is another matter, but at least it will reduce the pain of being ghosted.
We need a new name for 'meat' grown in the lab
The term “lab-grown meat” is unscientific (30 April, p 12). Meat is animal flesh. Some of us like to eat it, some don’t. Those who don’t can have a healthy and delicious diet of vegetables. What you refer to isn’t meat and would be better described as “synthetic foodstuffs”. At the very least, these products of the laboratory shouldn’t be called “meat”. Such descriptions mislead the public.
Mountainous Switzerland is full of generous people
After reading your report that exposure to mountain landscapes boosts generosity, Bryn Glover asks if the Swiss are inherently so (Letters, 16 April). I believe the answer is yes. For example, on one day in March, an organisation called Swiss Solidarity raised 45 million Swiss francs ($46 million) for Ukraine and this sum has since risen substantially.
Moreover, so far, some 40,000 Ukrainian refugees are being accommodated in Switzerland, and this in a country with one-eighth the population of the UK. The Swiss raised large sums to aid people affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami and on many similar occasions. Whether this generosity is due to Swiss scenery would require more research.
Dogs are far from a plague on the planet
Aisling Irwin reports that dogs, based on their global impact on wildlife and the environment, can be regarded as an invasive species (30 April, p 42).
We may make things marginally worse by owning pets, but let us get it into perspective. There are far fewer dogs than people and, for the most part, they are a lot smaller. They haven’t discovered fire and learned to extract and burn fossil fuels, they don’t fly long haul for holidays and they don’t buy consumer electronics that they discard after a few years.
Nuclear waste is far from a deal-breaker
Paul Whiteley asserts that nuclear power doesn’t add up for five reasons (Letters, 30 April). However, these aren’t intractable engineering problems at all, they are bogeys created and maintained by scaremongering, a very human problem.
Generating a kilowatt of electricity per person for a year results in only 1 gram of fission products, easily buried, whereas the absence of nuclear power dumps tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is a very good reason for the fearmongers to change sides.
We could just recycle waste into solid wall insulation
My house has solid walls and I have found insulating them to be prohibitively expensive 鈥� a point highlighted by Robert East (Letters, 30 April). I was quoted 拢15,000 for my three-bedroom end-of-terrace property. So I started thinking, could I do it myself?
We have a lot of unwanted clothes. Charity shops dispose of 80 per cent of the clothes they are given as unsaleable. Clothes insulate. Could I insulate my house by attaching some to the outside walls in airtight plastic containers?
I made a cup of tea to think it over and realised I was rinsing and recycling an airtight plastic milk container. It is square at the bottom, but not all the way up. Now, I am trying to work out how to fit them to the walls and what to cover them with to make the house look presentable. Suggestions welcome.
How safe will it be to store so much carbon dioxide?
The story on the carbon removal plant in Iceland is one of almost weekly articles referring to carbon dioxide storage as a means of fighting climate change (23 April, p 19). To have a significant effect, tens if not hundreds of millions of tonnes will have to be stored each year.
Could there be hazardous leaks? Recall the release of CO2 in 1986 from Lake Nyos, a volcanic crater lake in Cameroon. An estimated 100,000 to 300,000 tonnes of CO2 were released. The best estimate is that more than 1700 people and many livestock died.