Letters to the Editor
Malusinka
Published Letters: 439 Editor's Choice: 60
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Themself is plural
[Read the article: Facebook's gender trouble]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's what's causing the translation problems, particularly machine translation. You stick a single noun (John) and refer to it with a plural pronoun (themself) and it looks like a mistake.
He posted a picture of themself. Who is the rest of them?
In very few countries are the sensitivities of an apparently supersensitive minority so delicately tip-toed over. I can't see the point of removing gender as a category just because some people affect to find it restricting.
While we're at it, my age is restricting. Let's get rid of that. My address is very restricting. Let's leave that off documents. And hey, why can't I use whatever name is my whim of the minute?
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Bohica
[Read the article: Obama and late-term abortion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Every one of your words assumes that the fetus is not a human equal to born humans. But birth is an artificial line. A baby the day before birth is barely different from a baby the day after birth, when killing it would be a clear-cut case of murder, despite the choices of the mother.
And I believe it is society's place to judge (and sentence and imprison) people who commit crimes.
Equally, a just conceived bunch of cells is barely distinguishable from nothing. And treating such an imperceptible potential equal rights as the mother is would produce some very strange results.
I doubt the debate on abortion will never get anywhere if people like you try to convince the rest of us that the day of birth as a huge milestone in the development from a few cells to a human being.
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Shameless wealth?
[Read the article: John McCain's radical tax plan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, I'm utterly shameless. My husband, the son of immigrants who came to this country with nothing except memories of not enough to eat, studied in school. He went into debt to go to university and business school, spending time in menial, late-night jobs to make ends meet. He got a professional job and has worked very, very hard.
He got where he is (and earned his income) by hard work and, of course, ambition. And I'm proud of that. Very proud.
It might make you feel nice to think that the rich are all greedy, cheating, children of privilege who should be taxed into oblivion, but that doesn't represent the facts.
America is the land of opportunity. A place where a man like my husband -- or Barack Obama -- can, with hard work, intelligence and ambition reach the top.
But maybe you think Obama should be ashamed of his achievements, too?
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Time for cell users to stop paying for incoming calls
[Read the article: Can you hear me now? Obama's missing 2 percent]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No where in Europe does that happen. As a result, cell phones are exactly like regular phones. You can be harrassed by telemarketers, but it is their nickel.
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Stability comes from situations, not places
[Read the article: Why wouldn't a 16-year-old boy want to live on a houseboat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Uproot a kid from his friends, his family, his surroundings and yes, there's a problem. But I didn't hear that you were sending him to a new school. You're not taking on heavy work responsibilities that leaves you less time for the kid. No, you're just moving house.
It's certainly worth figuring out what his biggest concern is and how to address it. If it's that other kids will think he's wierd, well, are you going to pass up your dream for that?
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Brand names are a short cut
[Read the article: Prada: The new puberty]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that writers use to show they're in the in-crowd. And let's face it, it's a lot easier to say Prada handbag than to describe the thing and make sure your readership knows that what you've described is the epitome of cool, since in the end, most handbags look alike. Ditto jeans.
PS, Babar spent a lot of time buying and trying on clothes and admiring the result in the mirror. I guess the audience of 3-6 years olds was assumed not to recognize Parisian haute couture, so there were no brand names attached.
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Uniforms are expensive
[Read the article: This just in: Adolescence sucks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even if the school has cheap, sweatshirt ones. Why? Because when the kid is wearing the uniform 5 days out of seven, in general, you need two sets of weekend clothes. Then a vacation comes up, your kid needs a week's worth of non-uniform clothes. In the end, you're buying twice as many clothes,no matter how cheap one set is. Further, don't forget the summer and winter versions of the uniform and the gym uniform.
Parents should teach their kids that status symbols don't matter. Instead, we have a society that aches in sympathy for the teen who wears the wrong type of sneaker and is rushing to "solve" this problem. Further, parents should keep their kids from wearing inappropriate clothes. Just say no!
As for the cellphone bathroom picture, aren't there laws to protect that. Sue the hell out of the perpatrator.
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The Soviet Submariners had a simpler solution
[Read the article: Awesome or awful? Self-cleaning underwear]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]After a given number of wearings the underwear was flushed out to the sea floor. Always makes me laugh, thinking of the sea floor littered with communist underwear.
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I, too agonized and reasearched
[Read the article: Amanda Peet gets her shot on ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My brother has autism, suggesting that if there is a genetic link, my kids might have a higher risk than the average kid. My worst nightmare was having a child with autism (and believe me it kept me awake some nights)
So, I looked very hard at the research before vaccinating my kids. The fact is, while there is tons of anecdotal evidence, and some suggestive studies with small samples, no study with a large sample size has found a correlation between autism and vaccines. Further, whatever distrust you might have for the FDA, large sample-sized studies have been done in Denmark, Japan, and Britain (to name a few) as well as the US.
Some of the vaccination schedule is set in the interests of public health instead of the health of the child (eg a rubella vaccine is protecting his possible unborn sib, not him.) A careful parent might choose a different schedule, but only a stupid one would delay or skip vaccinations.