Letters to the Editor
Jon
Published Letters: 12 Editor's Choice: 1
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useless statistics
[Read the article: Girls campaign for sex ed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"According to the Post, five of the 10 girls behind the petition know a fellow teenager who has gotten pregnant."
I'm surprised this number isn't higher. If only one kid in a junior high gets pregnant, you'd think that every other kid in her grade, if not the entire school, would know about it.
I know I'm being pedantic -- this wasn't the focus of the article -- but bad statistics are a pet peeve.
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The Ones Who Walk Away
[Read the article: Rick Santorum and the "Eye of Mordor"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I had the same thought as Blu. If Santorum is right, then he seems to be saying that the tens (or hundreds if you believe the recent estimates) of thousands of Iraqi lives lost due to the war are acceptable losses in order to keep the USA safe.
I'm reminded of another fantasy story: "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Quotoing Wikipedia:
Omelas is a utopian city of happiness and delight, whose inhabitants are intelligent, cultured and refined. Everything about Omelas is pleasing, except for the secret of its happiness: the good fortune of Omelas requires that an unfortunate child be kept in filth, darkness and misery, and that all her citizens know of this on coming of age.
I leave it to the reader to decide whether the multitude of Iraqi (and US) lives lost is better or worse than the one unfortunate child of Le Guin's Parable.
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Stairs R.I.P.
[Read the article: A week of Song Search submissions: Day 1]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I love(d) the Stairs, but it's rather odd you'd feature a band that no longer exists (a fact made clear on their linked-to website).
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Link, please?
[Read the article: Who's hot, who's not]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How about a link to the poll? "Top 5" and "Bottom 5" are meaningless terms unless we know 1) How many people were ranked, and 2) What their scores were.
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huh? (part II)
[Read the article: Indicia of guilt]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If Cummins had already been let go, why would these other people have any sway over whether Cummins would testify?
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10%, NOT 20%
[Read the article: Music industry slain by Internet: YouTube clip at 11]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The 20% figure cited in the opening paragraph is interesting but misleading. It would be like saying, in the 80s, that vinyl LP sales plunged 20%, when there were offsetting CD sales. The real sales drop isn't mentioned until much further down in the WSJ article: "Overall, sales of all music -- digital and physical -- are down 10% this year." A 10% drop is significant, yes, but the story makes things seems a lot worse than they are.
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Eyes of laura mars
[Read the article: Corpses in couture gowns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"These are directly cribbed from the art photography of Melanie Pullen"
... which are in turn cribbed directly from the film "Eyes of Laura Mars" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077530/). Why do people think this is anything new?
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Suddenly, it all makes sense!
[Read the article: It makes all of us a little crazy, actually]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now we know why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, avoided active military service all those years ago! They wanted to be sure that, if they were ever in a position to make decisions regarding war and peace, they could do so without any "personal hardships" clouding their thinking. Brilliant!!
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Scratch that first sentence. Reverse it.
[Read the article: Lowering expectations]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...unless my brain is broken, which is very possible.
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Where's the analysis?
[Read the article: Clinton more electable than Obama, Mark Penn claims]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is War Room's sole function now to regurgitate press releases and Op-Eds from other sources? Where's the analysis? Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but Tim used to provide some context for these items instead of simply repeating them.
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@Sajwan: Confused?
[Read the article: Polls: Obama weathers Wright controversy ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Journal/NBC poll shows Hillary Clinton and Obama tied, with each having the support of 45 percent of registered Democratic voters..."
"Obama maintains a 49 percent to 39 percent advantage over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination..."
The explanation you are looking for to explain this seeming disparity is that these numbers come from two different polls. The first is the Journal/NBC one, while the second is from Pew.
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Dodge? Not the way I read it
[Read the article: Is Obama really standing up for gay rights?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Obama could do little but dodge."
I'm no Obama cheerleader, but I don't read the quote Alex provided as a dodge at all. It seems to me that Obama is stating (correctly in my opinion) that there's no way gay marriage is going to happen in many places anytime soon, so let's focus instead on the specific benefits of marriage. It seems pragmatic, not dodgy.