- The Guardian
Wednesday 24 July 2019 55
Notes & queries
... Or should we just do
away with the 70mph law?
Peter Baker, Prestwood
In arguing for higher speed limits
on motorways, your correspondent
(N&Q , 17 July) might like to consider
that despite many improvements
to the car, reaction times are still
the same, so a greater distance is
travelled before he/she can react
to any incident. Also, the energyWhy do we build
cars that can
travel faster than
the speed limit?
of a body increases by the square
of the velocity, so is 30% greater at
80mph and 65% greater at 90mph;
so stopping places much greater
strain on the braking system and any
crashes are more serious. And the
fuel consumption (ie environmental
pollution) is about 15-20% greater
between 70mph and 80mph. Over
a 100 miles trip, even if he/she were
able to travel at a constant 80mph
(rather than 70mph), the time
diff erence is only 10 minutes.
Stewart Reddaway, Ashwell, Herts
One good reason not to increase the
speed limit on motorways is that at
higher speeds air resistance means
the CO 2 per km rises as almost the
square of the speed; for example,
at 100mph it is nearly double that
at 70mph.Any
answers?
It’s often
said that the
Apollo 11 moon
mission was
accomplished
with computers
far less powerful
than today’s
smartphones.
But what did
computer
technology
contribute
to the moon
landing? Wasn’t
it basically
down to the
clever maths
and ingenuity
of the humans
involved?
John James,
ManchesterWhat is the
environmental
cost of ironing?
Am I saving the
planet by being
a scruff?
Nick Riches,
London W13How to reply
Email notes and
queries at nq@
theguardian.
com or discuss
online at
gu.com/notes-
and-queries.
Submission
and publication
of all
contributions
are subject to
our terms and
conditions:
see gu.com/
letters-termsIs rewilding
lynxes in the
UK a good idea?
they can spread and help control
excessive deer, which are such
a threat to new tree growth and
life diversity in insect, small birds
and fi sh. Lynxes rarely take farm
livestock, though some farmers can
get a bit hysterical about any wildlife
with similar predatory qualities to
themselves.
Aimee Hocking
Several wildcats have the ability to
purr. Cougars, bobcats, ocelots and
lynxes all have the right features
(linkage of bones) at the back of the
tongue and base of the skull to do
so. The cheetah (pictured left) is also
able to purr – the only one of the
large wild cats to do so.
Prussian
Lynxes can purr. The rule of thumb
is, if a cat can roar it can’t purr, eg
lions; if it meows or something
similar, it can purr.together , when he bummed
a cigarette from her in a nightclub
when they were 19. Being cast
together later felt like an affi rmation
of the intuition she had had the
fi rst time she met him, with their
romance developing from there.
And, of course, they never had
a chance to grow older together.
The 90s were a fraught period for
Mathis, but also the source of many
of her biggest breaks, with roles in
Little Women (1994), The American
President (1995), Broken Arrow
(1996) and, a little later, American
Psycho (2000). She says she was
incredibly lucky to make the jump
from television work to fi lm acting
as early and easily as she did. “It was
the right role at the right time,” she
says of landing that fi rst big movie
job opposite Slater. “The casting
director really believed in me, and
knew my work.”
She had been backpacking in
Europe, and, when she walked in
for the audition, the casting director
gave her one look and told her to
have a sleep before coming back. She
did so, and got the job – and is aware,
to her credit, that doesn’t happen for
most people in Hollywood. “There
were enough people who knew me
because they knew my mother,” she
says. “I think doors were opened
for me much more easily than if
someone from Iowa had just moved
PHOTOGRAPH: CHRISTOPHER LANE/THE GUARDIANto Los Angeles.”
... It seemed to create
problems for players in the
Cricket World Cup fi nalAngloCeltSoundSystem
It’s not so much a slope, more a hill- the Grandstand side of the ground
is 8ft higher than the Tavern side.
And, of course, all the stands have
been built to allow for it. So to level
it off , you would need to rebuild
at least three of the four sides of
the stadium. Also, that involves a
major bit of relaying of turf, so you
are potentially going to get wickets
that are unusable – certainly ones
that will fail pitch reports – for a few
years while it resettles. So, yes, quite
diffi cult, defi nitely very expensive
and could put the ground out of
How hard would
it be to correct
the slope of Lord’s
cricket ground?
action for a few years. The nearest
recent comparison would be the
redesign of Old Traff ord, which was
complex enough, and that was just to
turn the existing square through 90
degrees. Plus, why would you want to?
leadballoon
Cricket has largely embraced
whatever conditions were there
when the ground was laid out,
just as the St Lawrence ground in
Canterbury had a tree inside the
boundary in 1847 when it was fi rst
laid out. It had special rules applied- a ball hitting it was four runs and
a rebound off the tree was not a fair
catch. The tree stayed until high
winds felled it in 2005. Lord’s has
had work done on the outfi eld over
the years, to improve drainage, for
instance. The slope could have been
removed then, although some seats
might fi nd their view restricted if
there was a retaining wall in front.
But the slope is part of what makes
the ground Lord’s, so it stays.
rolleyes
You’ll be wanting to redecorate the
corridor of uncertainty next!
And while on the subject,
do wildcats purr?
originalabsence
The point of reintroducing lynxes to
the UK in Northumberland is to put
back one signifi cant and beautiful
element of our indigenous habitat
that we exterminated for their
fur. One reason for excessive fox
populations might be the absence
of competition. The biggest benefi t
of reintroducing lynxes is to help
rebalance the deer population,
especially in Kielder forest, where
wood is harvested. From thereMathis kept working after
Phoenix’s death, but, a few years
later, when her mother died of breast
cancer at 54, she couldn’t keep it
up. “It was just too much loss. I had
to stop,” she says. “I stepped away
from the business for two years.
I fell apart.”
At 26, she had already been
working for a decade. But taking
a break from the fi lm industry in
your 20s is a fraught move for any
actor, and particularly a woman.
When she re-emerged, her acting
coach suggested they try to fi nd
out what made her fall in love
with acting, and “we started
on a Shakespeare sonnet”, says
Mathis. “Then we worked on other
Shakespeare, and then I realised
what I really wanted to do was
a play.”
She also decided to use her profi le
politically, working with Amnesty
International to help highlight
femicide in Guatemala. Her father,
a former aide to Robert F Kennedy
and Lyndon B Johnson, had lived in
Guatemala for a while – and in many
ways her political work on femicide
was the closest Mathis feels she
came to winning his approval before
his death in 2016.
“I said to him that I had never
felt more like his daughter, and he
said: ‘You’ve also never been more
your mother’s daughter.’ And that
was a huge moment for him to say
that because in some ways I think
he blamed my mother’s career for
the demise of their marriage and
had never fully resolved his feelings.
It was an incredibly generous
statement. He was acknowledging
my work – and her.”
Mathis performed in her fi rst
play at 30, moving back to New York
to pursue stage work. She had not
lost her beginner’s luck, landing
on Broadway opposite Jane Fonda
in 33 Variations a few weeks after
arriving in the city, and she has
been appearing on stage ever since,
although not exclusively.
Recently she has also played
opposite Jim Gaffi gan in the fi lm
Being Frank (2018), and appeared
as a hard-charging businesswoman
on the series Billions. On that
show, she says, “I knew I was
walking into a universe that was
celebrating strong women and was
excited about women who take no
prisoners. It has never been a better
time to be a woman in her 40s in
show business.”
Make Believe, the play she is
rehearsing, begins in a childhood
playroom, before jumping ahead,
and showing the grownup characters
returning to the scene of their
childhood after a death in the family.
Mathis can’t wait to start performing
later this month.
“That’s when the magic really
happens?” I ask.
“Hopefully,” she laughs.
She gave up having strong
expectations about work a long
time ago. “It’s human nature to
want more, but there’s so little that
I can control. I have been making
a living at it for 33 years , and
that’s extraordinary.”
Make Believe is at the Tony Kiser
theater, New York, from 30 July to
15 SeptemberThe weekly series where readers answer other readers’
questions on subjects ranging from trivial fl ights
of fancy to profound scientifi c concepts
Samantha
Mathis ...
‘I stepped away
from the business
for two years.
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