Your (super-size) Letters
*groan*
Adam, Bournemouth
Re , the situation has further reaches than just England. I was most amused the other day to walk past a foreign currency exchange offering different rates for English and Scottish money. Is a UN Resolution needed?
Gareth, Vancouver, BC
SPOILER ALERT
Hurrah! Years of watching and rewatching The West Wing finally paid of today with the . Q6 a piece of cake. Feel free to ask more US-political type questions.
Cheryl, Newmarket
Paper Monitor is wrong. There are two clear leaders in the race for Most Unlikely News In Briefs. The first is Keeley, who "couldn't wait for boffins to turn on the Large Hadron Collider", and said: "The machine's main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the current theoretical picture for particle physics." The second is Ruth, thrilled that the lost city of Atlantis may have been found. She reckoned "Plato would be well chuffed if he knew about this." Quite.
Jane, Manchester, UK
Monitor note: Those are good, Jane, but today's is their equal.
Why on earth would people ? It's such a short book, it would probably take less effort to actually read it that to run the risk of being found out.
Angharad Beurle-Williams, Brisbane, Aus
Rob Falconer (Wednesday's letters) says that Coupling and Friends show us that the ideal number of friends is six but if you think about it, each of the people in both of those groups has five friends.
Charlie Grant, Nottingham, UK
Joanna (Wednesday's letters), mathematicians use a system called LaTeX (which rhymes with blech) to typeset mathematics. An example would be \sum_{i\geq 0} \alpha^i = 1 + \alpha + \alpha^2 + \dots.
David Richerby, Leeds, UK
When did I last hear someone refer to a manse (Thursday's Paper Monitor)? Well, yesterday, and the day before that. It being the name for the home of a Presbyterian minister, we have reasonable cause to refer to them quite regularly on this side of the border.
Macp, Glasgow
People at my church talk about the manse all the time. It was the second most popular topic of conversation for the two years we were between ministers (the most popular one being who our new minister would be). The previous minister had lived elsewhere, and the manse was in a right state, so over 18 months most of the church got involved in refurbishing it. My friend Mark helped destroy a concrete shed in the garden. The actual last time I heard it mentioned was in January, as our new minister is looking for a house when her family move up to join her this summer.
Alexandra Travis (aged 21), Leicestershire, UK (see, young people go to church and get mired in boring discussions too, and then go and do the fun actiony stuff)
Can we assume that the person who will be taken into custardy?
Sorry... sorry...
Sue, London