Do we have a choice in what is true?
Only when truth itself is not suppressed.
Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• In science, no. In political science, yes.
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, BC, Canada
• People can choose to believe whatever they like, but truth is immutable.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills , Victoria Australia
• Truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. So there is no choice.
E. Slack, L’Isle Jourdain, France
• These days even incontrovertible truth is feeling a little giddy.
Rusty Hanna, Batchelor, Northern Territory, Australia
• When I got up from the barber’s chair yesterday I noticed grey hairs on the floor. It’s true that I am not going grey, so they must have been from someone else’s head.
Stuart Powell, St Albans, UK
Food, love, friends. And wine
What’s required to be the world’s most fortunate person? Who is it?
There must be many people who call themselves fortunate and at least as many who consider others as such. Chances are, they’re not the same people.
Keith Bushnell, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
• For starters one must not have, as they are called in the headline of a recent George Monbiot article, “elite aspirational parents” (19 June). They would no doubt nix the notion that a child could spend time watching clouds roll overhead and imagining what those clouds resemble. A life filled with love, friends, a pet, and time to stop and watch the clouds are required to be a person of good fortune. I know. I am one of them.
Doreen Forney, Pownal, Vermont, US
• You don’t have to be a billionaire! When I am sitting in my sunny garden, the flowers blooming, the lawn freshly cut by one of my grandsons, the birds singing, a book in one hand and a cup of tea or a glass of wine in the other, the most fortunate person in the world is me.
Joan Dawson Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Noah. He was blessed with insider information.
David Tucker, Halle, Germany
• Counting your blessings, instead of envying the things others have, is a good place to start. It could turn out that we each think we are the most fortunate person in the world!
Avril Taylor, Dundas, Ontario, Canada
Stiffly whipped results
Is it the cream or the scum that rises to the top?
Depends on what is at the bottom. Usually the scum, but only after the scammers whip the cream.
Kuria Ndungu, Lund, Sweden
• In the civil service and other bureaucracies it’s the scum. Even so, civil service attracts a high calibre of people dedicated to service but they seldom rise to the top.
Jake Sigg, San Francisco, US
• It depends on the stratified density of the society. Too many fat cats, having scooped off the cream, soon rise to become the scum.
Barney Gilmore, Kaslo, BC, Canada
Chocolate’s the answer
What’s the best thing since sliced bread?
Writing from Switzerland, Felicity Oliver should know that the answer is Toblerone, which is evidently modelled on the sliced original.
Anthony Walter, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
• A chip buttie.
Avril Nicholas, Crafers, South Australia
Any answers?
Why is ‘hell to pay’ often a forewarning of impending doom?
Phillip Sandercock, Adelaide, South Australia
Are humans the only species who mate face to face? Why? Why not?
Annie March, Hobart, Tasmania
• Send answers, and more questions, to weekly.nandq@theguardian.com
