Letters archive

The overall thrust of Michael Bond's feature on how to succeed (8 March, p 30) seems to be that success is related to high positions in socially prestigious occupations, and to world-changing deeds, such as those recognised by the Nobel committee. Linking such positions and achievements with intelligence relegates those roles on which we rely …

When it comes to judging the achievements of those in education, the one-size-fits-all approach of exams and league tables is convenient for administrators and politicians, so we are unlikely to see much change any time soon. However, the internet will constructively destroy the existing education behemoth. Distance learning and freely available online courses are the …

Michael Slezak reports that the tools for cellular fusion may have been co-opted from viruses (1 March, p 16) . Why then did it take around 2.7 billion years for cells to incorporate and adapt these viral genes for their own use? This Precambrian period is an unimaginably vast span of time representing many trillions …

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 (15 March, p 6) brings the disadvantage of secondary radar to the fore, which is that the aircraft has to be "cooperating" to be seen. Primary radar is primitive, but it gives a picture of everything in the air around. The nuisance of the primary radar beam reflecting …

Reading a book on Stonehenge and other prehistoric structures by Gerald S. Hawkins, I came across some doodle-like patterns that resembled the ones shown in Alison George's article on cave art and the origins of intelligence (23 November 2013, p 36) . The examples from caves in Canchal de Mahoma and La Pileta in Spain …

I am surprised to see an important point missed in Reg Platt's discussion of energy-saving policies (15 March, p 28) . The more consumers save energy, the less profit that private energy companies would make, therefore prices would rise to maintain profit levels. That is just one reason these companies sabotage those government-led energy-saving policies …

Your article on New Zealand's shake-up of its drug laws showed how it is leading the way on drug prohibition (8 March, p 40) . If only the country would decriminalise people growing marijuana plants for their own use, as several parts of Australia have done. It used to grow wild on the roadsides in …

The topic of Boltzmann brains is raised once again in Joseph Silk's look at the philosophical challenges facing modern cosmology (8 March, p 26) . But he doesn't mention that in Boltzmann's time the universe was seen as static. In such a universe, with infinite time, any interaction can take place. We now know that …

Silk's article mentions both the fine-tuning problem and Boltzmann's "well-ordered universe" problem. There is a logical conclusion that resolves both these problems: that the universe is a construction. This answer may look to be a theistic cop-out, but it does seem scientifically sound. Hampton, London, UK

I struggled to see anything novel in Lisa Grossman's story on how Brownian motion can describe stock market movements (8 March, p 11) . In 1973, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes published what is now known as the Black-Scholes-Merton model, whose central assumption is that stock prices are driven by a Brownian motion stochastic process. …

From Rohan Chadwick I cannot avoid responding to Peter Monck's letter regarding the cull of the giraffe in Copenhagen Zoo (8 March, p 28) . I personally think the zoo did an excellent job of ensuring that the best was made of an unfortunate situation. The meat wasn't wasted, and the public autopsy was a …

When I die I would donate my body to science where it could be dissected to train the next generation of doctors, benefiting my species. So perhaps the giraffe dissection should have been performed in front of veterinarian students, because interacting with live giraffes would be more likely to inspire young children. Thornlie, Western Australia

Clive Semmens is right that current fusion reactions require the production of tritium fuel (15 March, p 32) . The hope is that most of the tritium can be produced from the neutrons given off during the reaction, but some would need to be produced in fission reactors. However, there are other options, including deuterium-deuterium …

Your review of John Brockman's book What Should We Be Worried About? made me think it would be a very interesting read (1 March, p 53) . But I think most people have quite enough on their plates without more to think about. I suggest a slightly more optimistic topic for his next book, What …

Further to the discussion about whether other countries should mimic free-thinking schools in Venezuela in letters by Jonathan Fanning (1 March, p 32) and Derek Williams (1 February, p 32) . The conundrum is surely that the protesting students of San Cristóbal, some of whom have been shot down in the streets, are presumably the …

You have confirmed my suspicion that there may be no quick and easy solution to the crisis in Ukraine (8 March, p 6) . Certainly no reasonable Ukrainian will want us to get into a shooting match with Russia just for the sake of sovereignty. That would be like setting a car on fire in …

The Sarpo potato varieties that Frank Fahy recommends may be sold as blight-resistant, (8 March, p 28) , but that does not tell the whole story. Following many years of being plagued by blight, I planted Sarpo Una and Sarpo Mira, and was given some Kestrel by a friend. That year I suffered from blight …

As a New Scientist reader who often works at music festivals, I found my imagination blending together two articles in the same issue. One mentioned an app that turns a phone into a Wi-Fi beacon that can broadcast an SOS message in an emergency (1 March, p 22) . The other was about a festival …

• We dropped the ball in our article on gravitational waves (15 March, p 15) . The team leader was Ivette Fuentes at the University of Nottingham.