Letters to the Editor
haxxie
Published Letters: 153 Editor's Choice: 24
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thank you
[Read the article: Kiss Me, Caitlin!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]thank you for that clip and the excellent preamble.
just, thank you.
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but wait, there's more
[Read the article: Bill O'Reilly: Not a good obstetric-health authority]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Heart failure and kidney failure during pregnancy can also be fatal unless an abortion is done. See also: Wright AA, Katz IT. Roe vs reality--abortion and women's health. N Engl J Med.2006;355(1):1-9. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/1/1
(Or did I first read about that in Broadsheet? ;-)
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yesterday's nurses are today's doctors
[Read the article: The "marriage penalty" kicks the bucket]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Women who became nurses a generation ago are becoming doctors now. So, when doctors married nurses back in the day, they were not necessarily marrying across a socioeconomic line--this, too, refutes the canard that fairness to women gyps society and hurts other women.
Mysogynist, antifeminist myths debunked again! Thank you, Page Rockwell! Thank you, Broadsheet!
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that other gift question
[Read the article: Do I have the right to control how Christmas money is used?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wasn't there a good "Since You Asked" a year or two ago from someone whose mom kept sending him the same shirt as a gift? That would be another great one for Cary's book.
(Anyone know the WPA-era children's book "Millions of Cats" by Wanda Gag? It's about the impossibility of picking favorites, which must be Cary's predicament at the moment, altho' hopefully a happy one. Gorgeous book.)
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studying ourselves
[Read the article: Tall men, skinny women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The research questions reflect our society's preoccupations. Maybe some day we'll be more preoccupied with how people treat each other and get along and study that ~ or better still, not study it.
OK, we won't learn about discrimination without studies like this, I suppose, but reducing attractiveness to single factors seems really misleading. Ditto equating speed-dating success with happiness and fulfillment.
(What is about speed-dating anyway? A new winter Olympics sport?)
(I do remember reading that men like larger women than women think men do.)
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implants
[Read the article: What else we're reading]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I believe the FDA approval included a strong recommendation that women with silicone implants get followup MRI scans every two to three years.
How sexy is that?
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Salon, please do a big series on sex
[Read the article: I have herpes. Do I have to tell all my partners?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Salon Editors ~
Please assign one or more of your excellent writers to a multifaceted, in-depth series on sex. Social, emotional, medical, behavioral, economic, psychological, philosophical, developmental ~ all angles need urgent attention.
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thanks for the good news
[Read the article: To hell with all that magazine writing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]good riddance to Flanagan, who confuses originality with contrarianism, an all-too-easy way to get attention ~
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AG Kline breaks the law
[Read the article: Bill O'Reilly's misinformation campaign]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]AG Phill Kline of Kansas is an election cheat:
http://www.citizensforethics.org/activities/campaign.php?view=157
He lost anyway.
Dr Tiller was shot in both arms by a presumably antiabortion activist in 1993.
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another adoption-book recommendation
[Read the article: A mother's love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Family Bonds, by Elizabeth Bartholet. She is a Harvard family law prof whose book (written about 10 years after the fact) describes her adoptions of two Peruvian boys. She discusses the discriminatory regulations and obstacles faced by would-be adoptive parents. She also describes her commitment to her sons' Peruvian cultural heritage. (The book also deals with assisted reproductive technologies in a social context.)
The book was originally published in 1993, reissued in 1999, and evidently is still in print.
(I know a slew of people who have adopted children from other countries, who are thriving ~ very sad to hear that the powers that be are trying to restrict such adoptions.)
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modern? Modern?
[Read the article: The Gen Xers are driving me crazy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is there still such a thing as "modern"? If so, then does "post-modern" follow "Modern," but not necessarily "modern"?
And, if post-modernism were named for itself, rather than by contradistinction, what might it be called?
Anyone? (And sorry if someone else has already addressed this, have not read all the letters.)
Oh and, I think a really interesting article on generational divides, without the acrimony, in a neuroscience context, and concerning music, is "Open Season: When Do We Lose Our Taste for the New," by Robert M. Sapolsky, New Yorker, 3/30/98.
And then there's that 16th C teenage French rebel, Martin Guerre (he of the book and film).
Point being, as someone said earlier quoting a rock song, generational divides are nothing new.
FWIW I'm a boomer (same age this year as my birth year), and my kids and their friends (early 20s) are the best.
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Be not the first by whom the new are tried...
[Read the article: Men and the pill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2031.html
I'm a huge Broadsheet and Rebecca Traister fan but I think it's unfair to disrespect guys who don't want to take a pill that stops ejaculation.
Women should understand, for women have suffered from shotgun medical therapies. Estrogen was first given for menopausal symptoms. Medical journal ads trumpeted how women would keep their youth and feminity. But estrogen as given in those days ~ high doses, without progesterone ~ was soon found to cause uterine cancer big-time. Only now, after 40-50 years have the excellent National Women's Health Initiative studies shown the limited benefits and real harms of this so-called hormone replacement therapy.
Now they're pushing bisphosphonates on women for osteoporosis when the evidence is not in. And then there's the recent FDA ruling in favor of silicone boob implants ~ but how many will notice that the FDA recommends women with those get an MRI every 2-3 years? (The National Women's Health Network has much more info on these issues.)
Everyone remember when Vioxx and its cousins were going to cure arthritis? First they push it on everyone, then they find out it increases heart attack rates.
Our Bodies, Ourselves was not just a book, but a movement, about (in part) questioning the premature imposition of just such untested therapies. I'm not anti-drug or anti-medicine at all, but we need to be skeptical.
Then there's the whole public health issue of people not using contraceptive methods that they are not comfortable with. That's totally valid. The customer is always right.
And what happens to all the semen that's produced if it's not ejaculated? Something that, like vasectomy, just blocks sperm, but temporarily, seems a better choice.
I guess the guys who've written in are divided about the prospect of shooting dry or not. I'm not one, so I can't say, but I completely sympathize with men who don't want to take this drug now.