成人论坛

Your Letters

18:27 UK time, Thursday, 26 June 2008

How come has been re-edited to remove reference to the gender of the driver involved (yes, they did conform to a popular but doubtless misguided stereotype)? That detail was reported in earlier versions of the article, but now seems to have been removed. Is the 成人论坛 pandering to some PC pressure?
Alex D, Southampton, UK

Another one for the "All-noun headlines"
Colin Edwards, Exeter, UK

I have a question, if you watch the 成人论坛 iPlayer on a computer, but don't have a TV, do you have to pay the licence fee?
K Walker, Runcorn, UK

is yet another nomenclatively determined man, evidently.
Fred, Rotherham

Is the 成人论坛 breakfast reporter who interviewed an allotment holder called George Onions about vegetable theft in the pay of this column?
Paul, Rochdale

Clearly in the nominative determinism stakes, never-married Valerie Singleton is taking things to a new level - not simply pursuing a career determined by her name, but an entire lifestyle.
Maurice Day, Middlesbrough

Might I be permitted to introduce Paper Monitor's readers to a very special letter: 脺, pronounced /y/. As in 脺bermensch, 脺berhosen and 眉ber-coach.
AL, Berlin, Germany
Monitor note: Extract from the 成人论坛 News website style guide - "ACCENTS (REVISED 01/04) We do NOT include any accents - whether in accented words that have passed into the English language (so: write eg cafe), or in foreign names. (so: write eg German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder)."

With reference to Simon Rooke's letter (Wednesday letters), without wanting to be pendantic, but 眉ber is written with an Umlaut, if you do not have this character on your keyboard you can substiture it with "ue", ueber.
Philly, Wolfsburg, Germany

To Chick, Wednesday letters, as someone who works with stats, allow me to propose two answers to your question. Option 1: The chances of answering all questions in a set correctly decreases exponentially as the number of questions increases. So the odds of answering the DMQ correctly is about one in 3, but for seven days it is a mere one in 5,000. You say you frequently get the DMQ correct, so we can factor your skill into the equation. Even if we do this, there is still only about a one in 15 chance of getting the lot correct, so it's not surprising that you, like me, never get full marks.
Option 2:DMQ is easier.
George, London

Edward (Green, Wednesday's letters), if you had bothered to look at the details at all you'd have noticed that the tower is symmetrical about its core. All of the floors could rotate at the rpm of a Formula One car engine and nothing would happen... other than maybe the "slight" sensation of nauseousness. Sorry to be pedantic, but one does as one is.
Kevin, Derby

Edward in London, surely the people already on the west side would then be on a different side. I expect the floors would continuously rotate as people wanted to see the show. Buy shares in travel sickness pills now.
Mike Thomas, wirral

Re . Someone had clearly forgotten their secondary school physics lessons. The cat would only have been in trouble if he was grounded. I.e. Touching the live wire and something on the ground at the same time. Being 25ft up in the air, I find this unlikely.
Matt Copp, London, UK

Re . According to Chris Dow, a recycled coke bottle has the potential to be turned back into another coke bottle. Wouldn't be easier and cheaper just to sterilise the bottle and by-pass the deconstruction and reconstruction phases? Such a system has worked perfectly well for milk bottles for decades.
PS, Newcastle, England

Today's mini-quiz, considers 44 years old "young"? Maybe the statistics are so because while most women aged 40 like to be called young, men aged 30 rather be full-grown adults.
Nuno Aragao, Aveiro, Portugal

For all those with a nervous disposition, Your computer isn't actually turned on, I'm inside your head.
Calum, Glasgow

Re: , in my old age I thought it was only meals that I would get delivered.
Mike Thomas, Wirral

....
Basil Long, Leicester