Letters to the Editor
Avery in Minnesota
Published Letters: 17
-
Every post on this blog is great
[Read the article: Misadventures in logical reasoning -- and lessons learned from the Spitzer scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Spitzer schadenfreude disgusts me and now I see why Barney Frank was so hesitant to condemn Larry Craig. There's no reason to be as hysterical as the television media get about this.
I'd just like to say that after reading the FISA post below this one, I bought a Salon subscription specifically to thank Glenn Greenwald for being the most substantive reporter in the country. I hope all my $29 goes to him. Keep up the good work, Glenn.
-
"New atheists" impede religious dialogue
[Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's difficult to talk about how to change one's political or eschatological beliefs if you start out by telling them their entire religion is wrong. I hope Chris Hedges will lead the way between religious extremism and atheist polemics to promote a reasonable dialogue between atheists and believers across the political spectrum.
-
Speaking as a 20-year-old...
[Read the article: What's the matter with kids today?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Right now I am reading this article instead of writing an 8-page paper which is due at midnight tonight. I blame only myself for my utter lack of responsibility, but the Internet has been far more of a bane than a help to me.
-
Conversations with a chimp
[Read the article: The chimp who thought he was a boy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If it's really so evident that chimps can learn language just like humans, why have I never read a coherent transcript of chimp-human communication?
-
I'm not sick of the sixties
[Read the article: Through a bong, darkly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was born in 1987 and my first exposure to the sixties was a folio called "60's" that rightly covered the whole decade and not just the counterculture. It seems to me obvious that there was so much going on in the short span of 11 or 12 years that people must have been reexamining our entire structure of civilization with a critical eye, worries about "lasting impact" or "social justice" be damned. Their alternative sometimes was silly and meaningless, such campus Maoism (or, hell, the Nation of Islam), but sometimes the truth of the new idea and falsity of the old made ripples in society, which today I see in the organic food co-op down the street, the Tibet protesters in France, the emphasis on community health in New Urbanism and in existing towns across America.
Whenever I get a late night shift here at the library I go downstairs and pick up a battered old copy of the Whole Earth Catalog. Last night I was reading this and the reference librarian told me she used to work at a tiny library up in the North Country where the WEC was one of the most used books in the whole catalog. There were homebuilders up there trying to make it on their own, experimenting with how to live independent of society. They couldn't afford their own WEC and would come devour it at the library, sending away for tipi blueprints and canoe making kits and guides to starting your own garden.
It was a decade of experimentation. The fact that 99% of the experiments failed should not be discouraging. You don't learn whether something works in practice by NOT trying it. My own generation is very smart; I estimate there are hundreds of thousands of cultural works I am expected to know at my college, from Homer to Nietzsche to XKCD. We will argue with each other about the usefulness of actions within our current social paradigm, and generally we follow the common sense route. But we would never attempt these kinds of dangerous real-life experiments. It is immensely useful to all of us to understand the experiments of that decade so that we don't simply duplicate them.
The next counterculture movement will not resemble the 60s, because we already tried that. The needs of the suffering masses, rather than the needs of the individual, are becoming more important to us. We will not drop acid or smoke pot in hopes of feeling enlightened. We will not leave if we are just the richest 1%. We will not leave just because we are bored. We will leave if and only if a great number of people decide the machine is dying, and someone is needed to take a torch to it.
-
Wow, it's personalized!
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Berkeley knows we're not reading a newspaper. Thanks, Berkeley!
-
What an absurd article
[Read the article: The rubes and the elites]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One story, told by Obama backers and the mainstream media, holds that there is a white racist problem: The Democratic Party is deeply divided between anti-racists (that is, supporters of Barack Obama) and racists (Democratic primary voters who preferred Hillary Clinton or any candidate other than Barack Obama, particularly the working-class white men who are often described, in zoological terms, as "white males").
What sort of emotion did the author of this article feel as he wrote this? Was he honestly trying to explain what he feels is the media "narrative"? Was he trying to get some sort of vengeance because someone he doesn't like is winning? Was he trying to get a rise out of reasonable people?
Whatever the case, Salon shouldn't be publishing this delusional rubbish... I expect better from you guys. Raise the dialogue, don't demean it.
-
Re: BankerGirl
[Read the article: I think my dad's too old to vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Only irrational people vote anyway.
Isn't that redundant?
-
Why are you so selfish?
[Read the article: Let's dump "Earth Day"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't see any need to make it clear who the threat is to. Maybe it was just my upbringing, but it is clear to me that if the other animals go extinct we will not be long in following. I learned about ecosystems back in middle school. Where exactly do you get this disconnect? Do you think we aren't part of the Earth?
-
Let's say this one was ironic
[Read the article: I want to be a veterinarian but not at the expense of animals ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sometimes I like to read Cary's responses and pretend they're ironic. It can turn a response that was fairly useless and self-indulging into the height of postmodern comedy.
-
Speaking as an American Jew
[Read the article: Israel imposes a 10-year ban on American critic of Israeli policies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I simply cannot understand why Jews in this country are so supportive of Israel. Just mention the name "Mordechai Vanunu" and they will get flared up as if they were citizens of Israel and not the United States. It is disgraceful that we as a culture and an ethnic group support this cruel regime, and give Barack Obama ridiculous litmus tests of the measure of his support, threatening to revoke our support for him if he does not commend and praise all of Israel's actions.