And where is your proof of your arguments against the internet? (Sorry, but merely repeating your own facile "Just keep telling yourself that" sarcasm doesn't count as proof. You must not be a science teacher -- at least, I devoutly hope you're not.)

Your letters on this have been nothing more than reiterations of the logical fallacy known as "The Parade of Horribles": Appeals to emotion that warn, without hard proof, of dire consequences. (For more on this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade_of_horribles -- that is, if you can stand to look up something on the internet.) As scientists are wont to say, "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."

I remember reading articles thirty years ago that complained that the advent of the telephone killed off the centuries-old tradition of letter writing. Those articles were premature: With the internet, I now write at least five to six non-work-related letters a day whereas before it I would perhaps write a letter every month; the number of phone calls I make hasn't changed.

First off, I don't "hate it so much." That is a straw-man fallacy.

Then what about the content of all of the letters you've written attacking this article? Especially comments like this:

No one can tell me that "the new technology," and the media in general, are fostering the development of longer attention spans, much less the other skills needed to think independently and creatively. You know it's not true.

And this:

A person gets good at what they practice. As long as that person's nose is in Facebook, what he is getting good at is gossip, and investing his own little circle of accidental acquaintances with too much power over his life.

Speaking of this narrowing of focus -- which, by the way, is very much due to the Internet being geared toward American culture and the English-speaking world -- when it comes to the youth of Europe, Asia, and Latin America, they are still cracking the books. This "successful technology" has only mesmerized our country.

I should remember to tell that to my Welsh septuagenarian pensioner friend, my Scottish correspondent, and the Australians I know who are avidly online.

The missile strategy Obama is scrapping didn't help anyone outside of a few star wars profiteers seeking to suck at the public teat. Even a plurality of Poles -- who righties have been claiming very loudly Were! Hideously! Betrayed! -- agree that if anything, Obama has made them safer: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8315

Many of the same people defending Polanski defended him, too.

First of all, the victim must deal with the fact that false accusations in cases like this are treated more harshly than false accusations for virtually any other crime -- even if (or perhaps especially if) the accusations are true.

Remember Freud's famous Oedipus/Electra complex theory about what he called childhood parent-child incest "fantasies"? Turns out that, in the case of the women who described sexual assaults committed by their relatives, most if not all of them were probably telling the truth, but they had the misfortune of belonging to prominent families who would rather lock up the victimized daughters in the loony bin than admit to such a scandal. (http://www.homestudycredit.com/courses/contentCST/secCST18.html)

Second of all, this stigma -- which has more than a little bit of the old idea that women should kill themselves rather than lose their hymens to anyone but the person to whom their fathers sold them -- makes it very, very easy for the perps to get away with it, over and over and over again, with more than one victim. (Rape was a prominent weapon used by the Christian Serbians under Milosevic against Muslim Bosnian women, because they knew full well that the women didn't dare tell their husbands and fathers what happened or they'd be blamed for it.)

So, does one let things slide? Or does one work to break the cycle of self-censoring shame, for future women if not for oneself?

Or just go back a few letters in this thread.

The US gave Iraq and Iran nuclear technology over half a century ago so they would have more oil to sell to us (or rather, to virtually give to American oil companies who would in turn sell it to us).

In addition, there's this concept called "Peak Oil" that you might want to look into. Unlike us, who are the captives of our oil companie -- so much so that Carter's efforts to get us started on weaning ourselves from oil were immediately undone by Ronald Reagan -- the Iranians are trying to prepare for a future without petroleum.

I especially love it when people cite the hard-right Heritage Foundation as an authority on the Middle East when it was one of the groups that kept using lies about WMD to push for us to invade Iraq (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0619-03.htm).

The Heritage Foundation doesn't just lie about the Middle East. It has been caught in lies about other subjects, one of these subjects recently being the Employee Free Choice Act (http://www.laprogressive.com/2009/04/10/the-heritage-foundation-spreads-lies-on-youtube-about-the-employee-free-choice-act/).

Namely, his lack of a military background -- which has been all but essential in American politics from the beginning.

Which is why they're pushing the anti-Hispanic anti-immigrant thing so hard -- even though it means that they're throwing away their chances with Latino voters. (Remember when, not so long ago, the GOP was counting on socially conservative Latinos to give them the electoral edge?)