Pandas’ difficulty in breeding is nature’s oversight. Are there other design faults in nature?
Referring to a design fault or an oversight in nature is a presumptions of our species. What is certain is that humans do care about glitches in their breeding practices, but pandas apparently do not.
Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• Humanity’s lack of difficulty in breeding – hence overpopulation, depletion of natural resources, pollution and climate change.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
• An elephant’s tusks and a rhino’s horn apparently also turn out to be oversights of nature.
Stuart Williams, Kampala, Uganda
• Surely human teeth (not regrowing, only deteriorating) need some evolutionary improvement, especially when considering the cost of dental care.
Roland Wittig, Freiberg, Germany
• Possibly the most cogent argument against intelligent design is provided by the configuration of the human eye. The retina’s light sensitive receptors are at the back, so light must pass through the layer of nerves that take information to the brain before the light reaches the retina. As Steve Jones wrote in Almost Like a Whale: “No camera that put the sensitive part of the film on the wrong side, and then had to compromise, would sell”.
Ted Webber, Buderim, Queensland, Australia
• I think it was Woody Allen who put it best: God can’t be a woman – he must be a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?
Noel Bird, Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
• The human body comes to mind, where, for example, we both eat and breathe through the same place.
Margaret Wyeth, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• I question whether panda infertility is truly a design fault. Pandas seem to breed well in the wild. Would you breed well in captivity?
David Isaacs, Sydney, Australia
You will all have to wait
The most famous last words?
In literature, Sydney Carton’s last words in A Tale of Two Cities: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.” Last words on a deathbed, those to his wife from poet Seamus Heaney: “Noli timere. Do not be afraid.”
Ursula Nixon, Bodalla, NSW, Australia
• Vae, puto deus fio (“Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god”) by the Roman emperor Vespasian.
R De Braganza, Kilifi, Kenya
• Spike Milligan: “I told you I was ill”.
Adrian Cooper, Queens Park, NSW, Australia
• Hamlet’s “The rest is silence.”
Gillian Shenfield, Sydney, Australia
• “What’s this button for?”
Phillip Sandercock, Adelaide, South Australia
• Thank you! I am flattered but you’ll have to wait.
Tijne Schols, The Hague, The Netherlands
• Zymurgy and zythum.
Jim Dewar, Gosford, NSW, Australia
Fun for many generations
Is there such a thing as fun for the whole family?
My grandmother Emilie lived the final 10 years of her life within her small family of us three grandchildren plus mum and dad. She loved nothing better than to be in the middle of bouts of banter and ridicule within and between the generations.
So she would often contrive, by some carefully worked idiocy, to provoke another round of uninhibited free-for-all mockery: fun for the whole family, most of all gladly suffered and enjoyed by herself. God bless her.
Hartmann Doerry, Tübingen, Germany
Any answers?
What is the difference between left and right in politics?
Clive Wilkinson, Rothbury, UK
Where or when is the nick of time?
Mescal Stephens, Como, Western Australia
Send answers to weekly.nandq@theguardian.com or Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK
