Letters to the Editor
Malusinka
Published Letters: 350 Editor's Choice: 49
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Of course the movie industry numbers are bogus
[Read the article: Chinese pirates can't touch the Brits and the French]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Look at any demand curve. Demand is higher at a lower price. Pirate DVDs are cheaper. Hence, people who would not have bought at the retail price buy them. Those people aren't causing losses for the movie industry.
I suspect relatively few of the people who are willing to pay the retail price for a movie buy pirated movies.
And about Chinese pirates, they have to dub or subtitle the DVD to sell lots of copies. Or copy DVDs that have already been dubbed. Which is probably fewer movies than come out on DVD in North America, where my guess is that the DVDs are available in English and French. So the English and French pirates have more source material.
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The US has plenty of "privatized" service delivery
[Read the article: Corporate profiteering against Iraq vets?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Look at health care. Not long ago, the Gov't-run Walter Reed hospital was in the news for its appalling service delivery.
Medicare, which is a form of national health care, has private service delivery. I don't hear many people clamoring to change that. In general, it seems to work well.
In England, the National Health Service runs almost all hospitals. They are often run down and a bit grungy. And politicians are always micromanaging.
When I look at health care in the US, both the public and the private, I don't see that public is the winner.
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The elephant in the room
[Read the article: The Democrats' foreign (policy) wars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's the Iraq war. That's the number one foreign policy question people want the answer to. Guess what? No one, including the candidates have an answer. I haven't heard a credible suggestion of how futher military action will end the war and bring peace. Nor have I heard a credible diplomatic initiative.
From anyone, think tanks, middle eastern scholars, foreign policy experts, or presidential candidates. The minute a candidate says something concrete, they create a target and will get shot at.
The problem with Bush's foreign policy was not that he was willing to use force. Force has it's place. It's that he didn't pay attention to the facts and he didn't use force as a last resort. I don't have much respect for candidates pushed by the press into ruling out the use of force.
I think we're pretty safe from a US started war in Iran. The reality on the ground is that we don't have the troops for it.
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Stem cells have a lot to do with women.
[Read the article: A solution to the stem cell debate?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Women produce them. Right now, there's an oversupply of unwanted fetuses. But, if stem cells turn out to be the cure all everyone hopes, that will end soon.
Stem cells can be cultured, but the truth is that all reproduction is prone to errors (mutation). The 100th generation will be different from the first. And the mutations that accumulate will tend to help the stem cells adapt to their environment - agar and the petrie dish, not a human body.
A shortage of stem cells will put pressure on women, mostly poor women, to produce embryos. You can produce a lot more with fertility drugs than the natural way. Plus, there might be an advantage to control when you harvest them. That puts the poor women taking the drug cocktails given to surrogate mothers.
I believe that as long as there is a supply of discarded embryos, it's fine to research. But in the long run, there is a serious ethical issue and a feminist issue, too.
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Muzak and fire alarms
[Read the article: The divine sound of silence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I once worked in the 20 floored JFK Federal building in Boston. Teddy Kennedy had offices on the top floor (and occasionally got sent bombs in the mail). Some time in the distant past, the Gov't had bought the line that Muzak makes people work better. And of course, turning it off Muzak in one office in Boston would have required an executive level decision at a different agency in Washington, which wasn't worth the bother of the high level executive. (That's how things worked in the Federal Gov't). So, the beleaguered employees cut the wires to the loudspeakers.
Year later, the office was still peacefully quiet -- when the fire alarm went off. Luckily, the fire turned out to be minor and someone heard the alarm in the hall.
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Race should die
[Read the article: Is race dying? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Skin color has about as much 'racial' information as hair color. Blonds tend to have some Northern European ancestry. Redheads tend have some Irish or Scots ancestry. 'Blacks' generally have some African ancestry.
I don't feel any racial affiliation with groups that share my skin color. I don't see that I am responsible for the attitudes of skinheads or fundamentalists pushing their creation agenda on our schools. I fight those values. Why should people who share a skin color with misogynistic rap stars or ghetto gang bangers act differently? Maybe they're judging by the content of character not the color of skin?
The way to a race-free society is not to classify everyone and decide if your skin is darker than a certain shade or your ancestry is least X% 'black,' you're 'black.' The way forward is treat people as if skin color is as unimportant as hair color. Maybe in the current generation it will be a polite fiction, but in the next generation the attitude might be more real.
Already we have come light years from the segregation of the 50s. Attitudes have changed dramatically.
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Maybe the PR's better than you think
[Read the article: Saudi officials: Rape victim was an adulteress]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In a few years, Saudi Arabia will be able to claim that no women are raped in their country. Unlike in the miserable US of A. Compare official statistics and you'll see!