Letters to the Editor
Silenced
Published Letters: 1358 Editor's Choice: 75
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I have a question about the ethics of enjoying certain music
[Read the article: Roundup: Nurse-ins, scrawny models and more]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anyone wishing they could spice up their afternoon with a video about breast-feeding set to a reggae beat?
Since reggae music is the official music of people who smoke cannabis as part of their religion, shouldn't people avoid reggae music if they're against cannabis and for taking away the children of people who get caught with cannabis in a home where children live?
If you want people locked in a cage and their children sent into foster care, then isn't it kind of unethical to enjoy the music they created while they were doing the thing for which you want to lock them up and send their children into foster care?
Just wondering.
Our culture seems to run on music created by potheads. Why do we love their music but hate them enough to kick them out of school, take away their food stamps, their children, their right to live in public housing and their freedom and their dignity?
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This is the research I would perform if I were an editor
[Read the article: Fearful fathers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's well known that men with Asperger's have anxiety around children. It says so in many places in The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome by Tony Attwood.
Catherine cited a letter from an economist. A field where humans are described by numbers. A field where men with Asperger's are highly likely to cluster and dominate over socially normal men.
If I were a Broadsheet editor, I would take all of those letters from men who had anxiety about children, and have each of the LWs take an online AQ test that measures the presence of Asperger's traits.
Then I would make a graph with the LW's Asperger's trait score on one axis and his reported level of anxiety about children on the other axis.
That graph would give us better information as to whether our culture overall is making men overall more fearful about children, or whether your letter evidence is just evidence that your male readership is extremely high in Asperger's traits.
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AKA Smith so you're saying that you object to science?
[Read the article: Fearful fathers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have Asperger's and I know NOW that many of my anxieties about the gender environment in physics were caused because I took some things way too literally, because that's one thing people with Asperger's have a tendency to do.
Now -- do you object to science?
There is an assertion being made about "our culture."
Is this really about "our culture" or is it about some special subgroup of "our culture" that is attracted to Salon, whose perceptions of the social environment are not always strictly accurate and do not really reflect the predominant view in the full set of human beings that constitutes "our culture"?
Do you really object to any attempt to answer this question scientifically?
Is this another example of how "ignorance is the new knowledge" in the hyperpoliticized postmodern world?
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Let's make this very simple @AKA Smith
[Read the article: Fearful fathers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Do you believe that the male readership of Broadsheet is fully respresentative of the general male population of America?
If we're going to draw conclusions about all of society from letters to Salon, then isn't it valuable to understand how Salon readers might differ from the average population?
I'm objecting to the drawing of general conclusions from what appears to be a rather specialized sample.
I went Caltech seminar day last May and I learned that Caltech economists do all of their research into social and economic behavior on students from UCLA. Caltech students aren't even alowed to enroll as subjects in these experiments.
That's becaue it's utterly useless to draw any conclusions about the behavior of human beings by observing the behavior of Caltech students. They tend to have Asperger's and high IQs and their choices differ widely from the kinds of choices made by UCLA students.
How do we extrapolate the feelings of men who read Broadsheet to the general population?
Do Salon publishers know anything at all about Salon demographics?
You have to understand the peculiarities of your own demographics before you start making prouncements about "our society" based on your letters column.
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By the way thanks for the personal insult AKA Smith
[Read the article: Fearful fathers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To a fish, everything is water.
This fish has proposed an experiment that could detect the presence of water.
So stop trying to portray me as some stupid animal that can't even think. That is really insulting.
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There's nothing more valuable in the publishing industry
[Read the article: Fearful fathers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]than a good solid understanding of your readership.
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I'm depressed about politics but I guess I'll still vote
[Read the article: The Fred and Rudy show]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I suppose either of these men could inspire me to vote against them.
But the absolutely uncritical reception of this Demi Moore story has made me lose faith in Democrats. How can people accept and propagate information that has no attribution other than the last party to propagate it?
If the rumors were about smuggling yellowcake from Nigeria instead of having a full body makeover that cost $200,000, then the Democrats would be sending troops to Hailey, Idaho, right now.
This country is in a war because the President could not tell good information from bad information, because his only standard for vetting information was political.
It would be comforting if one could believe that the Democrats would never do such a thing.
But look -- they're doing EXACTLY the same thing with Demi Moore.
It's really depressing. There's just no hope at all. I don't think we'll be out of the woods at all after the next election. We'll just land in a different woods that we won't be able to get out of because our definition of "knowledge" has become purely political.
But I can't stand Thompson or Giuliani. I suppose if we have to dumb the country down for the sake of politics, I'd rather choose the left wing uncritically accepting poor quality information over the right wing uncritically accepting poor quality information.
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More really depressing news
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[Read more letters about this article: Here]First I discover that feminists at Broadsheet have absolutely no standards when it comes to vetting information that serves their politics.
Now I find they glorify and worship nihilistic violence.
So this is supposed to be better than what we have in the White House now?