Letters to the Editor
Juliebird
Published Letters: 2039 Editor's Choice: 107
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Atkins is fad diet
[Read the article: Junk food education]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and like all fad diets, destined to go away.
Human beings are designed to eat fruits, vegetables, meats and whole grains (just look at out teeth, our digestive enzymes and our food-to-energy process). Most people of northern European descent are also designed to eat dairy into adulthood. We are conditioned to crave sugar, salt and fat because these things are often in short supply in a natural diet.
We have, in the past 75 years or so, been reprogrammed to eat food products that bear no resemblance to the foods they have replaced. This has coincided with a decline in daily physical exercise, as most of us moved from physical labor to desk jobs.
My kids ask me for fruit snacks: fruit-flavored concoctions of corn syrup, guar gum and "fruit flavor" that are shaped to look like fruits .. or cartoon characters. I get them sometimes for them as a "treat", but not as a regular feature of their diet. Last week we picked strawberries in my mom's yard and ate them. Incomparable.
There is room to have some junk in our diets (I'd probably kill myself if I had to give up chocolate forever), but junk should not supplant actual food.
And there is plenty of health food you can make from "scratch" or nearly so. How hard is it to grate cheese over whole wheat pasta? How hard is it to wash a bunch of grapes? How long does it take to grill a chicken breast and zucchini slices?
We've been told it's too hard, so we think it is too hard. And anything is easier than neding insulin injections, losing your toes, your eyesight and your breath from diabetes.
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we dumped our white hat in the mud
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and said it was to protect us from the black hats.
But really, we became the black hats.
I agree, we as a political-military superpower have made bad decisions in the past. But never have we been so blatantly hypocritical and condescending. Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, secret foreign prisons, calling the Geneva conventions "quaint," saying torture isn't torture (but if it were torture that's ok because it's only the bad guys we torture - er question) ... how can anyone call us the "good guys"?
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In her shoes
[Read the article: My sister! My daughter!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My dd was tested for Turner syndrome (doesn't have it, thank goodness!).
The mutation causes stunted growth (maximum height is 4'8" on average without HGH treatment), ovarian failure hence the infertility, but can also caus other low-estrogen-related probblems, so estrogen therapy is often used), heart defects, and a host of minor physical characteristics (ie low-placed ears, turned-up fingernails, etc). But mental/cognitive/intellectul development is not affected.
When we were testing for Turner Syndrome (and everything else to explain why my kid is so tiny), I remember thinking things like : Well, maybe we should introduce her to gymnastics and horse racing, since these professions favor compatly-built people. I also remember thinking: how sad she won't get to decide ifshe wants kids of her own.
I think this mom did a wonderful thing. And I agree: this should be a just-in-case measure, not a pressure tactic. Not unlike women or girls who remove their eggs while undergoing chemotherapy. The choice is still hers to make, and the eggsare as close to being "hers" as they can be, since her body couldn't create them.
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consider the Duke case (oh God)
[Read the article: Groping toward gender equality]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Accepting the Duke Lacrosse players' innocence, and the misdeeds of their accuser and Nifong, false accusations of rape is a problem. But does that mean we should turn a blind eye to rape?
Hardly.
Same goes for groping in Japan, and false accusations there (or her, or anywhere, by anybody).
As for tgmsalon, have you read this blog? Broadsheet denounces home-grown misogny as well. Pointing out crimes against women that happen in anorher country is not xenophobic or racist, nor is it proof of ignorance about western gener issues.
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What about Dumbledore?
[Read the article: Harry Potter and the prediction pool]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So far, Harry has lost: his parents, a peer (Cedric), a godfather (Sirius), and a mentor (Dumbledore). All he has left to lose are: himself, a good friend, a lover, a child, or an enemy.
Harry won't die: I agree with other posters that he will somehow be changed. Probably muggled (which seems like a page from Lloyd Alexander's "The Horned King" series, no?).
I doubt Ron or Hermione die either. It's just too dark. And I think it repeats Cedric's death in book 4. (I suspect Ron is the one Rowling spared: in the end she couldn't point the wand at the loveable mensch).
Possibly Ginny could die, as Harry and his Dark Arts band will have to face down Voldemort and the Death Eaters.
Clearly if Harry had a kid this would be an entirely different series. So let's leave that one alone.
I suspect Snape makes the ultimate sacrifice: he's always been saving Harry, which has been the grand irony of his life. And Harry will live with the debt of gratitude, which will be his.
What about his muggle relatives? However grudging their relationship has been, they are his family. Perhaps Dudley gets offed by mistake, but Harry saves his aunt and uncle, and in the end, they "accept" him as their adopted son, however disfunctionally? Hasn't Harry's journey been a search for family as much as anything else? (THough if this is the route we go, I hope Rowling finesses it well).
I don't think Dumbledore is dead dead. There's something Obi-Wan-like about his last conversation with Harry. He had a plan with hisself-sacrifice, and then there's that phonix imagery. I get it. He's coming back. Somehow. It seems to me his not being exactly alive will somehow help save Harry in the end.
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I already wrote
[Read the article: Majority of Americans favor Cheney impeachment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]my congressman.
It's how I celebrated July 4th.
Because I can't just sit back and do nothing.
And everything else I contemplated resulted in lengthy jail sentences.