Quotes of the Day

Don't Blame London
Re "London, City of Scandal" [July 23]: Although this article was generally correct in its portrayal of London's financial industry as being underpoliced, it neglected to mention that the vast majority of the big scandals are being committed by foreigners, mostly Americans, who use London's lax policing to ply their greedy trade. I for one would be happy if they took their trade to New York City. James Chambers,
Yorkshire, England

Military Suicides
Thank you for shining a spotlight on this terrible problem ["Why Can't the Army Win the War on Suicide?" July 23]. My son, who had back-to-back deployments to Iraq, attempted suicide twice, the first time in Iraq and the second at Fort Bragg, where the mental-health care he received was substandard, to say the least. The climate on base was, essentially, to suck it up. I told his superior officer I would sue him if he let my son die on his watch. His response: "Be sure to spell my name right." Those who vowed to defend our country with their very lives deserve better than this. Ann Anderson,
Bloomington, Minn., U.S.

Mark Thompson and Nancy Gibbs' article was one of the most poignant, sincere and well-written pieces I have ever read on such a dreadful subject. They found the heart of the matter in a no-nonsense and intimate manner. My sincere sympathies go to those who, in truth, have been let down by their military. Myles Johnston,
Cork, Ireland

Your story says the military's high suicide rate "defies easy explanation." I disagree. The military maintains a wall of secrecy around everything it does, isolates human beings from everything they know, teaches them to kill and sends them off to use that training. It's no surprise that troops return irreparably damaged from that kind of horror. Jessica Kane,
Grand Rapids, Mich., U.S.

Consider the cost to the U.S. of its involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in terms of human tragedy, not to mention the financial costs: the deaths, maiming and mental damage to its service members. I would say the U.S. lost the war the day the first soldier set foot in Iraq, no matter the final outcome. Bill McCarthy,
Yeronga, Australia

Extreme Weather
According to Bryan Walsh's article, after some warm and dry months in the U.S., the verdict seems clear: caused by global warming ["Endless Summer," July 23]. In Europe, north of the Alps, we are having the coldest and wettest summer anyone can remember. Do we call it global cooling? Of course not. We call it weather — local weather. Hakan Stenberg,
Lerhamn, Sweden

Triumph in Physics
As Jeffrey Kluger writes, if we pretend to understand all about the Higgs boson, we'd be lying ["The Cathedral of Science," July 23]. But why did he have to bring in the issue of faith? Faith and science do not shake hands, not here, nor anywhere else, unless we change the definition of faith. Not understanding the cosmos or any other scientific mystery does not mean we have to believe in a higher power of any sort. Christina della Valle,
Proserpine, Australia

The story ends by saying that with the work at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), "there will never be much return on investment — at least in the traditional sense." Indeed, one should remember that CERN is partly credited with giving us the Internet — an extremely high return of investment, but perhaps not in the traditional sense! Erik Monness,
Rena, Norway

As usual, the entire article revolves around Peter Higgs, who indeed was one of the architects of the standard model of particle physics, but forgot to credit Satyendra Nath Bose, the Indian scientist and contemporary of Albert Einstein from whose name the word boson came to be. Priyanka Rungta,
Kolkata

Congratulations to the scientists; the Higgs boson has been found. Sadly, I assume much of the world's population will still be without clean drinking water, and many will remain underfed if not starving. I often wonder about humankind's priorities. David Rahill,
Kidlington, England

Enemies in Harmony
Douglas Wolk describes Anne Hathaway's Catwoman character in The Dark Knight Rises as "the yang to Batman's yin" ["To Catch a Thief," July 23]. But Wolk follows up that sentence by saying that Batman is associated with madness and violence. These characteristics are associated with yang, not with yin. In fact, yang is conventionally known to be the masculine, and yin the feminine, in the yin-yang pairing. Perhaps more care should be taken when making such cross-cultural references. Owen Tan,
Singapore