Who benefits from medicine: the patient or the provider?
With new drugs coming out every other day to satisfy the needs of an increasingly hypochondriac population, it’s definitely the provider.
R De Braganza, Kilifi, Kenya
• At times the patient, always the provider.
Edward Black, Sydney, Australia
• Neither. It’s the company that makes the pills.
Gillian Shenfield, Sydney, Australia
• Both, if each are stockholders in the company that makes the pharmaceuticals prescribed.
Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• As long as the medication doesn’t cost an arm and a leg then it’s a win-win situation.
David Tucker, Halle, Germany
Whatever he is, it’s a first
If Hillary Clinton becomes US president, then what should Bill’s title be?
It all depends on what the precise meaning of the words “should be” should be.
David Stephens, Bruce, ACT, Australia
• First mate.
John Cunningham, Glenelg, South Australia
• First flunky.
Tony Payne, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec, Canada
Cats and dogs? Maybe frogs
We all know it rains cats and dogs. Can it ever rain fish and prawns?
Yes, if the rain falls in Spain.
Jennifer Horat, Lengwil, Switzerland
• Possibly during our salad days.
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
• Apparently it does in Sri Lanka, albeit infrequently. However, I prefer my fish and prawns drizzled with lemon and chilli oil …
Stuart Williams, Kampala, Uganda
• This has, apparently, been known to happen, but frogs are more common.
Joan Dawson, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• And much more besides. What goes up must come down. Tornadoes don’t discriminate, either over land or sea.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
• Noah says no.
Harvey Mitchell, Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
There must be more than one
Is there a God of the multiverse?
MultiGods more likely.
Dennis Roddy, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
• Albert Einstein said he did not believe that God plays dice and did not appreciate that God is the dice. Similarly, God is also the multiverse.
Tom Haslam-Jones, Brossard, Quebec, Canada
• The winner must be the supreme Hindu deity Para Brahman. The many thousands of lines in each of the four layers of the four sacred Vedas easily outversify all comers.
Gerald Garnett, Kaslo, British Columbia, Canada
• Is that a paid position?
Mac Bradden, Port Hope, Ontario, Canada
She’s really got it pegged
How can housework be shared if one spouse wants to clean weekly, and the other monthly?
Try the peg roster. List tasks or work areas in vertical columns; we have four – kitchen, living room, bathroom, food shopping – each with its own string. Each participant has a colour, and as many clothes pegs of that colour as there are tasks. The pegs are distributed evenly across the strings and bingo: if I’m blue, and blue is at the top of the kitchen string, I clean the kitchen. When I’ve finished, the blue peg goes to the bottom of the string. It’s flexible, self-regulating, boundaried, non-hierarchical, cheat-proof, accountable and virtually nag-free.
Annie March, West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
• It can’t. A week’s accumulated dirt is invisible to the spouse who wants to clean monthly.
Stewart Sinclair, Christchurch, New Zealand
Any answers?
Who usually wins in a crap shoot?
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
How compatible are individual fulfilment and social acceptance?
E Slack, L’Isle Jourdain, France
Send answers to weekly.nandq@theguardian.com or Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK
