One thing the author didn't address which *must* be an issue, and I think is an issue for the letter writers. To be someone writing, you have to have an ego --- to think that you are special, that other people might want your job, but you have it because you are the best.

The fact is the market isn't that efficient. You have your job because you are both good enough (which is, to be fair, *very* good) and because you are lucky. That's true of all of us with good jobs --- in fact, anyone with access to the internet. Lots of people with your level of innate talent (including the willingness to work hard) are in rural India.

I'm sure a lot of the letter writers think they can write better than the journalists, and most of them are wrong, but some are probably right. Even of those that are better, they may not have made the career decision to take the risky, probably jobless, subjects in college & skip the secure pay checks. Some of them may even have written for a while, and decided they didn't like the life.

And I wonder how that affects the traditional writer's ego. This I think will change --- we will get a more accurate assessment of our roles in society, the knowledge that we *are* collaborating --- that the journalists are taking the time to do the research & taking the risk of looking like a fool once they are published, and the rest of us are consumers, and therefore lesser, but we are still part of the process, we do contribute a bit.

If Salon forced us (could they really?) to use our real names, then I would still post --- in fact, in the old days I *did* post sometimes in my own, professional name, though mostly with my more anonymous internet persona (I use the same name on wikipedia & blogger.) When they changed the way they associated posts with logins I didn't buy a second premium login. I decided to lose the potential political impact I could have had by being an established expert in some areas in favour of being able to say what I really thought about aspects of life that, as a professional maintaining an image, I would have to be more circumspect about. For me, at least on Salon, that's more often useful, well, I guess it's what I pay my money for (and to be honest, I'm not well-known enough in my profession for my own name to be that much of a big deal!) Still, I think it's a shame I had to make that choice.

I am a very well educated scientist who reads the news and I had *no idea* that women's probability of heart attack and stroke were the same as men's, nor that the symptoms were so different. This is totally unbelievable.

And I am SO sorry about your mother! You are right to be angry, you are seeing exactly what is happening.

My partner told a new, apparently good, doctor we'd had for a short while as a GP about a congenital stomach condition he had (& shared with his father & brother) and was rushed to the heart ward for diagnosis, because he was male and it was Scotland, never mind that he was 24 at the time. I have arrythhmia and no one has EVER sent me to a specialist to check it out (I'm female and older). I am certain doctors don't know this, and a lot of their diagnosis are based on their expectations. Of course, it's the same for all of us, it's the only way to reason in a reasonable amount of time. But we need to seriously update these expectations.

I just visited India for a month, and was also very interested in what I learned about its history. In particular, it's RECENT history with respect to the withdrawal of the British and the subsequent partition is very salient to Iraq, as the Indians themselves are all discussing. The history of the Muslim theocracies that resulted from that partition is also very important in considering Iraq and Iran.

But while I appreciate your paying attention to India, please don't fall into the Western-centric hubris of the self-blame game. India has had a long history of war and conflict (like all of the world) and the British with their common law did a lot better there than what happened in the middle east. There are often no clean decisions in balancing the needs of conflicting parties or regions. If you blame the problems of India on the British, it just shows whose histories you are reading. V. S. Naipaul blames the Muslims; I'm personally sure some of India's national characteristics (for better and worse) are rooted in the Hindu world view as well. This is not to say any decision cannot be the root of conflict, and certainly the British took many since they were in power for some time. But decisions leading to conflict goes far further back than history itself.

This article helps explain why Hussein's state was so secular --- it was the only way to distinguish it from its regional rivals. We have now destroyed the most secular state in the region, the one that was the source of most of the regions secular arts and journalism. The Shiites are doing an excellent job of what they did in Iran -- killing all the secular authority figures or driving them out of the country in fear.

The nightmare scenario: As Iraq collapses into theocracy, this spurs the Sunni extremists to finally topple the Saudi monarchy, and we have three theocracies instead of one (well, four instead of two counting Israel). I guess it's not surprising this government would rather build theocracies than nations.

I wish there were something to empower an atheist nation, but I guess better science and a slight economic competitive advantage is nothing in human affairs compared to devotees willing to sacrifice their lives.