 *For the second time in a year, George Monbiot has included in his regular column the sentence: "We are not born with our values." There is much scientific evidence to the contrary. In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker states clearly that liberal and conservative attitudes are "largely heritable". Experimental evidence shows, Pinker says, that many of our core beliefs are in our internal circuitry by the time we are born, waiting for us to grow up and develop from them opinions on climate change, attitudes towards rioters and perhaps even responses to adverts.  Dominic Rayner  Leeds