Letters to the Editor
pwoxby
Published Letters: 81 Editor's Choice: 3
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Dyson's perspective should be welcome
[Read the article: Our rosy future, according to Freeman Dyson]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dyson brings a refreshingly detached perspective to a perfect media storm of hype and hysteria. The greatest catastrophe that could happen to the biosphere is not global warming but global cooling. The last ice age ended only 12,000 years ago, a blink of an eye in the planet's history. Industrial CO2 emissions may actually be helpful in nudging the planet away from another ice age.
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Vehemently Vitriolic Vituperation
[Read the article: Our rosy future, according to Freeman Dyson]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The vehemently vitriolic vituperation directed at Dyson in this forum suggests that his real transgression is not that he is wrong about the science of global warming. If he's wrong then we can point out his errors and move on. But no. He has to be thoroughly smeared as an anti-semitic, asshole, shit, charlatan, fraud, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-intellectual, friend of Edward Teller and enemy of life on Earth.
In 1999 Salon published a profile of Dyson entitled "Frog Prince of Physics". That essay contains this: "[Dyson] became a champion of anti-nuclear activists..." Why? Because Dyson wrote passionately about the madness of the nuclear arms race and he was a tireless participant in the effort by physicists to influence the policies of the politicians. He and many others like him did their best to contain the nuclear madness until the Cold War ended. Dyson helped to save the world.
So Dyson is being smeared in this forum because his views on the science of global climate offend left-wing ideologues. Well, all I can say is that may God save us from ideologues of both the right and left.
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The Downing Street Memo
[Read the article: The man who sold the war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Downing Street Memo is a record of British intelligence given to Prime Minister Tony Blair before the Iraq War. The memo made the case that the "facts" about WMDs in Iraq were being manipulated by the Americans to support a pre-existing policy of overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
The only intelligible interpretation of Blair's subsequent actions is that Blair agreed with the pre-9/11 Bush/Cheney plan to use good-old-fashioned brute-force imperialism to strategically realign the Middle-East for the purpose of securing its oil resources.
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Evolution in overdrive
[Read the article: All natural pond scum to the rescue]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tyler Mason is quite correct. But the reason the algae adapt at all is natural selection. When you have a new generation in an hour or so, you get evolution in overdrive. That's why we have such a problem with new strains of antibiotic resistant germs.
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Hypomanic-depression awareness
[Read the article: The demons you know]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Iris Chang may well have had a variant of bipolar disorder called hypomanic-depression. People with this variant, like myself, may display no outward symptoms until we are overwhelmed by a stressor that leads to suicide, a psychiatric ward, or a jail cell. Unlike full-blown mania, hypomania (literally, below mania) can be very hard to recognize because it can be channeled into very creative activities. These activities can also sustain us through the troughs of depression or anxiety.
Unfortunately, hypomanic-depression is not easy to diagnose. At the age of 24 I was treated with "talk therapy" for anxiety that was often debilitating. That was a waste of time. At the age of 40 I ended up in a psychiatric ward with acute psychosis. I was misdiagnosed as having manic-depression, a diagnosis I rejected because I never had the classic symptoms of full-blown mania. Finally, at age 50 I learned about hypomanic-depression through my own research on the internet.
Sadly, I understand very well why Ms. Chang fell through the cracks. We educate our children about STDs but the subject of mental illness is kept locked in the closet. Until many more of us make the commitment to raise awareness about mental illnesses, we can expect to hear about many more tragedies like that of Ms. Chang.
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Technology is more explanatory than violence
[Read the article: War and peace and trade]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Explaining expanding trade in terms of war and conquest is not comprehensive enough. A better two-word explanation is "technological innovation". For example, it was the invention of the stirrup that allowed nomadic Asian horsemen to fight effectively from horses. And that Maxim gun is another innovation.
Harrison's invention of the marine chronometer vastly improved open-sea navigation and reduced the risks of trans-oceanic trade. Watt's invention of the steam engine dramatically reduced the cost of shipping on both land and sea. The Suez and Panama canals certainly can be called technological innovations.
Of course, military strength follows from technological innovation. But let's not put the cart before the horse.
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Cheaper than what?
[Read the article: The fuel on the hill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Easier and cheaper?
What is the cost of letting all of Earth's coastal cities slip beneath the waves? Sure it's easier and cheaper for us. Not so easy and cheap for future generations.
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Is the man with the bushy beard laughing?
[Read the article: Why Wall Street should be more like a cockroach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perhaps we are glimpsing where an economic system based on fear and greed is taking us. Not that I endorse his prescription, but somewhere Marx must be laughing.
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The limits of materialism
[Read the article: Why Wall Street should be more like a cockroach]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ThresherK:
Yes, Santa first said, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"? But Bismarck repeated it when he invented the welfare state and FDR said it again when his New Deal saved American capitalists from themselves.
The fact is that Marxists and capitalists have more in common than they'd like to admit. Specifically, their world-view is purely materialistic. They really don't disagree over ends, only the means to those ends.
The single-minded pursuit of those ends has taken our planet to the brink of environmental catastrophe. We are witnessing that a materialist world-view that recognizes no constraints in the pursuit of self-interest is fundamentally incompatible with life on a planet with finite resources.
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The real indicator of Rudy's desperation
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You'll know Giuliani is really desperate when he changes his name to Nine Eleven.
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Clinton fatigue is real
[Read the article: No makeover for Hillary -- yet]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Clintons had their day in the sun. A new day has dawned and today belongs to Barack Obama. Clinton and her supporters may regard this as terribly unfair but it is never too late to learn that life is unfair.