Dr. Coop­er, I hope this let­ter finds you in good health. I could­n't avoid over­hear­ing you talk with Dr. Hof­s­tadter on our build­ing's stair­case the oth­er day.

Specif­i­cal­ly when you mused about how life would be if peo­ple evolved from rep­tiles. I am so dis­ap­point­ed in you.

First, you men­tion that lizards are cold-blood­ed. Which is true. And that when it's cold they get slow­er. Which is al­so true. But then you sayd some­thing like "the weath­er­lizard would say 'it's slow out­side' in­stead of 'it's cold'".

POP­PY­COCK Dr. Coop­er! If the lizard is slow be­cause it's cold, it would per­ceive ev­ery­thing out there as fast, not slow, just like slow cars see faster cars as, you know... fast?

Al­so, the men­tion about sug­gest­ing the lizard should wear a sweater is a slap on the face of physic­s. Sweaters are an in­su­la­tor, not an en­er­gy source. What makes the in­side of the sweater warm is the hu­man, Dr. Cold-blood­ed lizards would have no such ef­fect be­yond the tiny ther­mal in­er­tia such an im­per­fect wool in­su­la­tor would al­low.

If you are in­ter­est­ed on fur­ther ar­gu­ment in hu­man-­like rep­tile civ­i­liza­tion and folk­lore I will be hap­py to in­dul­ge, but I must say I ex­pect­ed bet­ter of you.

Mrs. Vartabe­di­an.

PS: things like this are the rea­son why I nev­er ask you to come home for ce­re­al.