It is not too late to make up for all those years of

It is not too late to make up for all those years of neglect.JANET WHITERingmer, East Sussex. Iran is the fountain of all terrorism, at least this was the word from Washington in the wake of the TWA disaster, violence in Bahrain and the explosion at Al-Khobar in Saudi Arabia. Press leaks from the US administration, some of them inspired by Secretary of Defense, William Perry, on his return from the Persian Gulf, give the impression that the Ayatollahs have upped the terrorist stakes and are now embarked on a new policy of mass murder throughout the western world. What have the Riley family been doing? Have they never taken the daughter outside the family home? Never engaged in discussion around the lunch table or played quiz games on winter evenings? Have they never watched informative television programmes together? The education of children does not take place exclusively between the hours of 9 and 4.30 Leap from your sofa, Mr Riley. Letter: Fact-packed family life Sir: R Riley's letter (17 August) bewailing his daughter's lack of general knowledge, despite having gained a university place, is indeed appalling. The only consequence of note will be the saturation of the UK's external bandwidth. With every server on the planet just a mouse-click away, their chances of removing all pornography from the Internet are the same as those of removing all the salt from the sea.PHIL PAYNEE- Mail: Phil sievers .

Mike Nesmith left the Monkees and became in his own right a much-admired artist, with over 20 album releases, and a much sought-after record producer. LOUIS BERKE-mail: lberk maple.win-uk . After Monkees Sir: Although it is true that Mike Nesmith's mother invented Liquid Paper (not Tipp-Ex) and that the company was bought by Gillette in 1980, I suspect his non-appearance at the recent Monkees reunion is for reasons other than his inheritance (John Walsh, 15 August). Porn free Sir: Do the police understand how the Internet works? They may, indeed, succeed in removing some newsgroups from UK service providers' servers ("Police get tough on Internet's hard-core porn", 16 August). If the GCE art examinations, which demanded a swift, feeling response to a set of titles for paintings or designs (which existed up to the 1970s) were to be set today it is difficult to imagine many candidates being able to cope adequately. In many art departments today that aspect of "remembered distilled experience" cannot be employed as a starting point.CHRISTOPHER C MOXLEYArt teacherRadcliffe, Greater Manchester. Art education has suffered not only from the reduction of visual memories of "outdoors" - landscape, street scenes, backyards etc - which previously children could refer to, but also as a result of the young and impressionable receiving an increasing amount of imagery produced by computers and television. Both primary and secondary school pupils demonstrate today a visual repertoire far inferior to that which existed even ten years ago.

Children lose visual memories Sir: One faculty previously held in abundance by children and now in decline ("The loss of our innocence", 15 August) lies within their visual awareness and experience. The blueprint argues for an immediate start to negotiations leading to a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would bring about worldwide nuclear disarmament within 25 years.The blueprint puts the case for a series of steps, starting with a CTBT and followed by a ban on the production of fissile materials, an agreement on a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons, an international fund to support the costs of disarmament and other actions designed to improve international security.The irony of the Indian position is that they appear more committed to complete nuclear disarmament than any of the nuclear powers currently eager to secure a test ban.MARTIN JONESCampaign for Nuclear DisarmamentLondon N7. Therefore, the more BAA earns from retailing the more its regulators cap or reduce airport charges.Airport charges at Heathrow are, as a result of this perverse regulatory regime, amongst the lowest in the world, leading to an insatiable demand for landing slots, endless expansion of the airport and the cause of such environmental damage to London.The undercharging (and hence the subsidy) to profitable UK airlines and unprofitable foreign airlines is estimated to amount to between pounds 250m and pounds 500m a year - an amount which should accrue to the public purse. However, as part of a series of graduated actions leading finally to a global Nuclear Weapons Convention, the test ban would be an extremely important document.On the same day as your article appeared, CND published its Blueprint for a Nuclear Weapon-Free World, co-authored by myself. First step to a ban on the bomb Sir: Tony Barber, in his informed look at the debates clogging progress on a nuclear test ban treaty ("Is this our post-atomic dawn?", 13 August), insists that a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty "is not an act of nuclear disarmament and may not even serve as an incentive to disarmament". In isolation, he is right about the CTBT. But the instant popularity of the tale, which was first published as a serial in the Sydney Mail in 1882-83 then as a book in 1888 and has never been out of print since, was at least partly due to the notoriety of the Kelly gang.ALAN BRISSENDENBurnside, South Australia. Others were made in 1907, 1911 and 1920. Porteous may have only got as far as Pinewood, but Finch and others in the cast spent several sweaty summer months in South Australia's Flinders Ranges (which for one thing could accommodate a mob of Herefords better than a studio back lot); despite the heat, Finch enjoyed himself, writing to his half-sister he had "lots of riding on the most wonderful horse in the world, Velox", who galloped into the part of Starlight's horse, Rainbow.Boldrewood, who was in fact Thomas Browne, a magistrate, based his story not on the exploits of Ned Kelly but on those of such other bushrangers as Ben Hall and Frank Gardiner.

In either case the firm requirement is for microbial life to be transferred across astronomical distances. Panspermia is vindicated and the Earth-centred primordial soup would seem to be ruled out.N C WICKRAMASINGHECardiff. Bushrangers of the silver screen Sir: Peter Porteous's memory (letters 10 August) serves him only half rightly. Peter Finch was certainly a dashing star of the 1957 film of Robbery Under Arms but the fictional Captain Starlight, not the historical Ned Kelly, was the hero of this fourth of five cinematic versions of Rolf Boldrewood's novel: the most recent (1985) had Sam Neill as the Byronic bushranger.