51¶¯Âþ

You recently raised the issue of ageism. Approaching octogenarian status, I don't think of myself as old and nor do my fellow surfing mates. However, try applying for a new credit card or travel insurance (in Australia at least) and it is a totally different story. The hurdles to jump over for a credit card …

A few years ago, I took issue with a survey that allowed people discretion when it came to questions of nationality, ethnicity, gender and so on, but not age. I find the apparent belief, commonly espoused in the media, that people over a certain age need to be treated differently to others highly condescending and …

Like Graham Lawton, my views on offsets to balance carbon emissions from flying evolved from interest to scepticism. How do we know these programmes have substantive, long-lasting impacts? We don't ( 11 May, p 22 ). However, there may be a more effective solution than either not flying or waiting for offset programmes to prove …

May I add an additional consideration to the debate about LED street lighting? In the days of sodium lamps, it wasn't unusual to fail to notice an amber traffic light among the street lamps. This was exacerbated if the shape of the road and height of the lamps meant that the traffic light appeared to …

In my view, the ultimate source of civilisation-ending events, of the sort detailed in your look at the downfall of eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age societies, is invariably drastic climate change. As your article says, "so much chaos, simultaneously, is surely no coincidence", and while clear-cut evidence for climate catastrophe is currently lacking, so are any …

Dyson spheres and Dyson swarms are a means of collecting massive amounts of energy from a star to power an alien civilisation. Surely any advanced society would have arranged to minimise the use of energy, as we are trying to do on Earth, so why would it need the whole or a large fraction of …

I agree that the term "addiction" isn't sufficiently precise to be used in a scientific context. It would be better to have something that gets to the heart of why addiction may be a problem in some cases to some people and not in others ( Leader, 25 May ). Something along the lines of …

Addicted? Who? Me? Yes! I am addicted to 51¶¯Âþ ! I crave its stimulating food for thought! I can't live without it! I can hardly wait for the next edition.

Grace Wade highlights an important point in her article on neurodiversity. The human race is diverse; every brain develops differently. So how do we make sure terms like "neurodiverse" are only applied to those who would benefit from such labels? How do we ensure that the neurotypical population gets the meaning and implications of such …

I have an extra point to raise on how to think about thought. It is that thought can't exist without language. Pre-language actions depended on internal and visual associations in the brain. Imagine a hominid waking with hunger pangs in her tree long ago. She looks around and sees fruit in another tree. Eating fruit …