Letters to the Editor
idlemind
Published Letters: 31 Editor's Choice: 6
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Hooray!
[Read the article: Sexual healing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Some people rise to the occasion and grow up when life challenges them. Mary did this, and I for one find it inspiring. She's way ahead of the folks with kids who demand to have the rest of their life still wearing heels everywhere, or spending regular nights out with the guys. Parenthood does things to you that no other life experience can (and thus is most assuredly not the best thing for everyone), but it's most reassuring to read from someone who has made the transition in a sane and healthy way.
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Salon isn't Seventeen
[Read the article: Fashion faux pas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Erin,
I don't think the target audience for Salon is 14-year-old girls, unlike Seventeen. That makes more than a little difference, no?
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Drawing the line
[Read the article: You've got good mail]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Simple spam isn't the biggest problem for email providers at the moment; rather, it's (1) phishing and various other forms of fraud and (2) false-positive tagging of non-spam mail as spam. The customer service demands due to these problems are burgeoning as spammers and phishers get more and more sophisticated and numerous, and the pressure for providers to accept at least some financial responsibility for fraud is mounting. If this sort of paid certification were restricted to transactional messages (statements, order confirmations, and other such non-marketing commercial email), it might have a beneficial effect. But using it for marketing will wind up killing any usefulness it might otherwise have had.
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Why don't you talk with your neighbors about their cat?
[Read the article: Can I kill a cat if it poops in my yard?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've only read half of the letters (9 of 18 pages) so I apologize if I'm missing the point, but why didn't Cary suggest that the LW speak with his neighbors about their cat? And if he doesn't know which neighbor it is who owns cat, perhaps he should ask around.
You folks have been taking the LW to task for insensitivity to animals, but how about insensitivity to humans? How would the LW's kids feel if someone killed their pet? And more in his self-interest, what if he someday needs a favor from his neighbor? Even if he manages to kill the cat without the neighbor finding out what happen, he's likely to fall under suspicion unless his neighbors are as xenophobic as he is.
It's so sad when people are afraid to emerge from their own houses and just talk to the folks who live only a few yards away from them. I think the LW has real problems.
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A portent?
[Read the article: Dick Cheney and the baton twirler]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Could it be that the usually reclusive Mr. Cheney is gearing up for a run in '08?
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So tell me
[Read the article: Like organic food? How 'bout organic sex?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What could be more "organic" than cervical mucus?
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"get a clue"
[Read the article: A kindie rock primer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]With that kind of attitude, I hope you stay far, far away from kids.
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Perhaps...
[Read the article: Ken Lay, lynching victim?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...the minister was engaging in heavy irony. I mean, his comments were so over-the-top that I wonder if he might not be attempting to induce a bit of self-questioning in the congregation. Regardless, what I've read of the event tops any cinematic dark comedy I've ever seen.
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Conventional wisdom used to be...
[Read the article: The clock ticks both ways]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A woman is born with all the ova she'll ever have, while sperm are generated throughout a man's life. So it used to be thought that, while eggs got old, sperm didn't. Bad assumption; it seems that genetic damage accumulates in the precursor cells that divide to form the sperm cells, so even though the sperm is "new," its DNA isn't.
This has been known for several years, so the news here is hardly surprising.
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It's "KAKA KAKA KAKA" in katakana
[Read the article: Women to blame for global warming?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and it always makes me think of my son as a toddler, running around with a dirty diaper.
But I really haven't thought it significant enough to comment on until now.
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Mercury
[Read the article: Women to blame for global warming?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It takes about 100 CFL's to equal one old mercury thermometer; plenty of those have been broken and/or thrown in the trash. But it's still an issue; it's good to see that home centers and places like Ikea will often recycle them.
I spent some time trying various CFL's when we moved into our house a couple years ago: globes for the bathroom light bars, dimmables for the bedrooms, floodlights for the back yard and for the living room track lights, and 45-watt monsters for the kitchen fixtures. There is nary a glass curlicue or U visible in a house with 47 CFL's. No flicker (though the dimmables make a soft buzz -- but so do dimmed incandescents), and the bathroom globes actually look better than the over-warm bulbs they replaced (though they take several seconds to reach full brightness). In two years I have replaced exactly one bulb, at a cost of $3. (It was one of the cheap ones.) Savings (here in PG&E land, where electricity is ridiculously expensive) of about $80/mo. In two and a half years, I've made my money back and then some.
Then again, I've been using CFL's since they were flickering, short-lived, and made people look like mottled ghosts. I have the old-style fluorescent tubes in the garage (that were there when we moved in) to remind me of just how far things have progressed.
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And if you'd been reading the Broadsheet comment section
[Read the article: Chatty Cathy, Taciturn Ted?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...you'd know that, even in a blog about woman's issues, men demand equal verbiage.
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Newt sees the coming trainwreck
[Read the article: Newt goes off message]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not that he has suddenly acquired scruples. He just wants to jump off the train before it sails off the edge of the bridge. Never mind that he once was the engineer who helped put it on its current track.
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Save the lecture
[Read the article: Newt goes off message]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree 100% with what Gingrich said. And it definitely took courage for him to say in in that venue. He's a very bright and perceptive guy -- and always has been. But should we just wipe the slate clean for someone who had no small part in constructing the political sewer in which we all now must dwell?
Newt is a fascinating guy. I could even imagine inviting him for dinner, and not feel compelled to count the silverware afterwards. But even if he's come around to seeing that the movement conservatism he helped found is headed for a bad end, that may be "bright and perceptive," but does it in any way show a new moral compass?
No, it does not.