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10 February 2010
From David Brin
Stephen Battersby discussed the current debate over broadcasting messages into space with the intention of their being detected by extraterrestrial life forms (23 January, p 28) . The editorial in the same issue (p 3) endorses the idea. As an astronomer who has been involved in topics relating to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) …
10 February 2010
From Caroline Dumonteil
Laura Fortunato and Marco Archetti have created a mathematical model suggesting that "monogamous marriage a better strategy for men as well as for women" (9 January, p 13) . They argue that "social monogamy is not inevitable" but arises in agricultural societies where men wish to prevent subdividing landholdings among their heirs. This model includes …
10 February 2010
From Nick Deane
In highlighting how unlikely it would be for a government to be voted in if it proposed to enforce changes to our lifestyles great enough to mitigate climate change, Richard Platt puts his finger on a profound dilemma for all democratic systems (9 January, p 27) . Historically, it can be argued that democracy has …
10 February 2010
From Ben Haller
You report that researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered how the structure of a snail's shell absorbs and dissipates impacts (23 January, p 17) . They are then quoted as saying this could allow us to improve body armour – a comment I find particularly sad. I can think of lots of …
10 February 2010
From Colin Morrison
Ray Tallis discusses the "insuperable problem" of explaining how intracranial nerve impulses can be "about" extracranial objects, but thinking in these terms rather confuses the issue (9 January, p 28) . Our experiences are not "about" extracranial things any more than your experience of your hand is about the appendage on the end of your …
10 February 2010
From Derek Hallam
While I agree wholeheartedly with the concerns expressed in Paul Parsons's article on the dangers of increased availability of information (16 January, p 38) , it is disappointing to see the words "information" and "knowledge" so freely interchanged. When we complain that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", we are referring to the danger …
10 February 2010
• Spencer Brown is the director of research in the Department of Plastic Surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, not a surgeon as we stated (23 January, p 42)
Issue no. 2747 published 13 February 2010
