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I take issue with Ronald Watts's interpretation, in the debate about how to deter car use, of what parking charges are. I pay a tax to the UK government to put a motor vehicle on the public highway( Letters, 28 June ). Why would my payment apply only when my car is moving?

As some corporations continue to exploit and pollute the physical environment, so big tech media corporations are re-engineering the psychological environment. It is evident that they control and manipulate information for gain. Of course, it was ever thus, but current internet media power and reach now means that influence, for good or bad, can be …

From 28 June, p 28

In a review of Matt Wixey's Basilisk , you credit David Langford's 1988 story BLIT with the idea that mere exposure to certain images could cause physical harm. This reminded me of David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome , in which a TV show induces brain tumours. Brings back memories of renting films on VHS tape.

A dead satellite gets struck by a micro-meteorite sending a signal to Earth. To an alien, that satellite could look a lot like a doorbell( 28 June, p 13 ).

Florian Neukart argues that a form of memory is "baked into" cells of space-time in such a way that is more or less permanent. This seems to imply that those cells are of the one-and-done variety. They can't be reused and overwritten, per se. That also implies there is an unlimited supply of new, unused …

I learned a lot from your article on static electricity, but not why my husband has always been more affected by it than me. For example, there used to be a department store called Schofields in Leeds, UK, that he avoided because touching the banisters on any of its staircases gave him a painful shock. …

You seem to have omitted the religious connotation usually associated with the "strong" anthropic principle. Those who believe in these things tend to assert that, as the universe was clearly designed to such an exquisite degree to permit life, it therefore follows that there must have been an omniscient designer( 28 June, p 32 ).

I can't see that self-righting shape being of use in re-orienting moon landers. It would work only on a smooth and level surface. A design reminiscent of Weebles (self-righting toys) would be better. A weighted sphere floating in oil in a hollow sphere would be better still( 5 July, p 11 ).

The idea you report on to possibly reinforce the vital AMOC ocean current in the Atlantic raises a question: could this only be done using sailing ships or kites? The problem is that a standard ship's propellers push it along by creating a stream of water in the opposite direction. Adding northwards momentum to AMOC …