Letters archive

The best thing to do with them is to tie them to pieces of string and hang them in the garden to scare away birds. The string should be long enough to allow the CD to twist and turn in the slightest breeze. Even if the Sun isn't shining, the flashes of light are sufficient …

My home backs on to a site that was once occupied by a small farm and a number of allotments. These have long since gone, and the land has been left fallow for many years now. A remarkable range of trees, wild grasses and other plants, birds, small mammals and insects live in and around …

It is always satisfying to see a resurgence of the idea that universal constants are not constant (This Week, 28 March, p 12) . Practically everything in nature goes in cycles, so why not the so-called constants of nature too? Ideally, such values should fall naturally out of a complete theory describing the Universe, rather …

This millennium bug thing has got out of hand. I was recently told by our computer support company that to make my business network ready for 2000, I would have to pay £7500 for a new network and software. When I tested the system by changing the date to 29 February 2000, our hardware passed. …

Dyslexia has become accepted as a condition that afflicts some people and a lot has been written about it. However, I have neither read nor heard anything about a similar condition, which I call dysnumeracy, that afflicts me mildly. If told how many people live in a town, within seconds I will not only have …

No, you can't turn unwanted CDs into plant pots but they do have other uses (Feedback, 18 April) . You can sandwich them together back to back (shiny side out) with some glue and a small piece of acetate (from the cover they come in, say) to block the holes and use them as coasters …

Marcus Chown proposes watching solar eclipses through exposed black-and-white film (Forum, 4 April, p 51) . These days, when such film is not what most people have readily available, looking through an ordinary CD (not the central hole, of course) should provide the same level of protection. I have watched several eclipses this way.

They make very effective solar filters, but are not to be entirely recommended for this, since the metal coating may be of uneven thickness. They can also be used to make a cheap spectroscope. Tosh Lubek, writing in SAGMag, the Scottish Astronomers' Group newsletter, points out that the closely spaced parallel lines form a crude …

Use to them to make mobiles. My cat loves them, as sunlight gives her a lovely set of reflections on the wall to chase.

I once chopped some up to make very flashy earrings, but I never managed to persuade anyone to wear a complete CD on each ear.

I send them to my computerless brother-in-law, who uses them as reflectors on his bicycle and tandem.

Hung off Xmas trees with a bit of thread attached by Sellotape, the disc reflects fairy lights in all manner of wonderful colours, rotating gently as the air moves. However, I can't find a way of cutting the discs into star shapes without cracking the plastic—any ideas?

I use one as a handy office mirror for putting on lippie—very appropriate for an intellectual property lawyer.

Contrary to Drage's assertion, you can do things with CDs in the oven. I put them inside a cereal bowl, nicely centred of course, and stand six more bowls on the centre of the CD. Twenty minutes at gas mark 6 softens the plastic and the weight of the bowls on top deforms the CD …

Used as a Frisbee, a single CD has a tendency to flip over and spin after about three metres of flight. However, by placing a very thin sausage" of Blu-tack around the edge of one and sticking another one to it, quite satisfactory flight performance can be achieved. This has the added advantage that it …

You can move heavy furniture over floors without scratching them by placing CDs between the legs and the floor, and using them as sliders; you can make lampshades with them; you can use them as unbreakable camping mirrors; you can make trendy sunglasses out of them; you can stick loads of them together to make …

If you have a pet canary that keeps pecking at its foot, slip its head through the hole in a CD, and watch it try to peck at anything. Surround a small goldfish bowl with CDs, shiny side in, to stop the fish from feeling lonely, while giving them a feeling of spaciousness. Dissolved in …

Note: In the article "In the beginning" (This Week, 25 April, p 7) Subir Sarkar's collaborators were Jenni Adams at Uppsala University in Sweden and Graham Ross at the University of Oxford.

Impulsive violence is not necessarily maladaptive ("Wrath", 28 March, p 32). Violent animals may do poorly in normal conditions, but better in times of stress. When a colony of rhesus monkeys was established on Cayo Santiago island, the animals suffered a great deal of stress in transit. A particularly bad tempered individual, nicknamed Diablo, came …

Radio may not be the ideal medium for science programmes, but nevertheless the axing of the Science Now programme from BBC Radio 4 sends the wrong signals to youngsters in schools and elsewhere. As the arts have a whole channel devoted to them—Radio 3—as well as regular daily slots on Radio 4, it is quite …

I would like to address several points raised by David Wood (Letters, 14 March, p 59) about the genetic resources which the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres have placed under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. First, the architects of the Convention on Biological Diversity …

Fred Pearce (This Week, 11 April, p 20) may be right to argue that "brownfield" sites in inner city areas often harbour more biodiversity than the staunchly defended greenfield sites in the countryside. However, what has become the national test case of incursion into the green belt—the proposed development of up to 10 000 houses …

While technology that reduces or eliminates the sulphur content of oil is commendable (This Week, 11 April, p 17) , I wish to highlight a study released by Yuzuru Matsuoka of the Kyoto University School of Engineering on 3 April. Yuzuru identifies the burning of coal and oil—and specifically the particulates this produces—as a major …

Many will applaud your editorial (28 March) in which you suggest that "physicists' track record on `revolutionary' findings has been pretty abysmal of late", but not all will agree that "we shouldn't judge them too harshly". Indeed, some think the present tendency for researchers to fly into print with every wild conjecture, long before the …