Letters archive

Your investigation into whether alcohol-laced foods can make you drunk was very interesting, and carries a rather sobering warning that goes beyond driving while tipsy (20/27 December 2014, p 73) . A number of drugs don't interact well with alcohol. My wife's epilepsy medication, her doctor warns, is essentially destroyed by alcohol (presumably the alcohol …

Mark Bishop proposes that computers will never replicate human consciousness because they are mere calculating machines (newscientist.com/article/dn26716) . But if we start from the axiom that humans are themselves calculating machines – albeit phenomenally complex ones – his reasoning permits only two possible conclusions: either that human consciousness arises from calculations, or that our consciousness …

In an otherwise excellent article by Adam Roberts on animal rights (20/27 December 2014, p 78) , he brings up the old chestnut that there cannot be rights without responsibilities, and would therefore deny animals rights. Would he similarly deny babies any rights by this logic? Lewes, East Sussex, UK

It's an interesting question. The thing about babies is that they eventually become grown-ups (except in those few and genuinely tragic circumstances we all hope to avoid); animals, on the other hand, are animals their whole life long. If a world existed in which babies never grew up, I suppose we might wonder whether they …

In your article about Stephen Fry's team of "elves", who dig out facts for the QI quiz show, James Harkin mentions that he "read in New Scientist that the corona of the sun is hotter than the centre" (20/27 December 2014, p 40) . I'm not sure which article he was referring to, but the …

QI elf Andrew Hunter Murray's assertion that elephants can differentiate between different human languages reminds me of the power of prosody, the patterns of stress and intonation in language. I often hear visitors to Edinburgh chatting in supermarkets. Even when they are too far for the words to be clear, the "tunes" of speech are …

Readers of your brief report on the watt balance made from Lego (20/27 December 2014, p 14) might be interested to see the video of the original Lego balance I made last year with my then 11-year-old grandson Lucas and a colleague, Richard Davis ( bit.ly/LegoKilo ). We showed it at the Royal Society Summer …

Rowan Hooper's article on beavers making a comeback in Europe extols their contribution to carbon sequestration (6 December 2014, p 27) . As a Canadian farmer with a beaver-inhabited creek on my land, I have a less appreciative view of the animals. Beavers make a valuable contribution to water conservation where their dams enable extensive …

Your article about probability which featured the Monty Hall problem – in which you have to pick a door from a choice of three in the hope of winning a car, and are then offered the chance to switch after one of the remaining two is opened to reveal to a goat – prompted me …

Your excellent article on probability got me thinking anew about the famously vexing Monty Hall problem. I came up with the following reformulation which I hope makes the solution easier to understand for those who still have doubts. Once you've chosen a door, you can either keep it or you can give it up and …

The Monty Hall problem has a more elegant solution than the one described in your article. If I don't switch doors I have a 1 in 3 chance of winning. However, if I do switch I have a 1 in 3 chance of losing. Nyon, Switzerland

I was surprised to read Helen Thomson's article on the first person to report persistent déjà vu stemming from anxiety rather than a neurological disorder (20/27 December 2014, p 8) . I myself frequently experienced déjà vu during my high-school years. I didn't have a neurological disorder, but was rather anxious and stressed at the …

In your 2015 preview, Hal Hodson writes about humanoid rescue robots ( 20/27 December 2014, p 26 ). I would suggest giving them four arms and four hands. Such a robot could push down a wall with one pair of arms and clear the rubble with the other set, likely progressing more quickly. Or it …

So you endorse the view that the early bird catches the worm (20/27 December 2014, p 71) . Lest readers draw an inappropriate moral from this, let me point out the corollary that the early worm is caught by the bird. Prestwood, Buckinghamshire, UK

Regarding the myth that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, the answer is simple – to a sufficiently old dog, there are no new tricks. Coolamon, New South Wales, Australia

• A small error appeared in our article on animal rights (20/27 December 2014, p 78) : smallpox is a virus, not a bacterium. • Bad seed: we misnamed the Global Crop Diversity Trust in our interview with Cary Fowler (3 January, p 23)