Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1955 Editor's Choice: 19
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I think I want to see the survey questions
[Read the article: Self-fulfilling stereotypes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's been known for years that how questions were asked, in what order, grouped how, and how worded affects the results of a survey. I would have to see this survey and the steps the authors took to interpret it before getting too worked up about the announced result.
At face value, it re-proves that the order of questions and their subjects alters the response. It is a huge scientific leap to say that their interest in art or math was actually altered. I got double degrees in Chinese lang&lit and Physics. Which do you think I said my major was when I met a girl in an average bar?
People's minds and interests are pretty resilient and will easily survive a questionaire. They may not survive constant browbeating or public humiliation, the two most common causes of math-phobia (fear of math, the one with the sweats and panic attacks -- not to be confused with being worried someone will think you're a nerd).
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A little story about a different military
[Read the article: "These people should be court-martialed"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kudos for Mikey Weinstein, the threat is real. Here, condensed from Steve Cole's "Ghost Wars" is the story of another military.
The U.S., Saudi Arabia, and others, funded the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence during the 1980's as a broker to arm and train the mujaheddin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. As time went on, there were indications that foreign fighters were coming in, and that they were being trained in extremist Islam by members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who had been recruited to do humanitarian work with the refugees on the Pakistani border. The level of religious zealotry in the ISI began to rise, those funding them looked the other way because of the perceived more important struggle against communism.
By the time the war was over, the members of the ISI top ranks were open advocates of a fundamentalist Islam that promoted and accomodated jihads against any and all infidel targets. The ISI funded the factions that were more religiously extreme, Sayyaf and Hekmateyar, principally because it had begun looking at a wider mission: Using the same religious jihadi fervor to start and fight a war in Kashmir. They created and promoted the Taliban as a means to control over Afghanistan and their own Pashtun population. By this time, the religious zealotry in the ISI was out in the open: The head of the ISI dressed in religious garb 24/7 and preached in mosques around Pakistan. I don't know if he made videos.
The situation continued to be ignored by the U.S., played down by the Saudi's, and the Pakistani government placated these religious nuts to try to get the Taliban to open trade routes for Pakistani trade with Central Asia. By this time, one of the people running training camps was Osama bin Laden. Also by this time, the civilian control over the ISI in Pakistan was gone. Madrassas were the source of fighters, the "jihad" had metastasized and began looking at attacking the "distant enemy" (the U.S.), and we all mostly know about where all this headed on September 11th.
Funny what a religious group in the military can become over time.
Fight hard, Mikey, we need you to win.
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I second CParis1
[Read the article: Johnson update: an "intracerebral bleed"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I want to add my voice to CParis1's comment that we shouldn't discuss balance of power unless Tim Johnson were to die. It is a bit ghoulish to be speculating about and discussing someone's death when they are still alive.
A bit of history: Joe Biden was operated on for a intracerebral aneurysm many years ago, and served in the Senate after his recovery (he took essentially a medical leave). He is still a prolific Senator.
In addition, the reason for the bleed is a congenital defect, so there is no reason to suppose this would be a recurring event unless and until the doctors say so.
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What's wrong with this contest?
[Read the article: Miss USA keeps her crown]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I looked up pictures of the following women on the Internet:
Marie Curie
Emmy Noether
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Politovskaya
None of the pictures were, shall we say, totally complementary. But who knows, with all the high-tech photography techniques, lighting, make-up techniques, clothes, and a photographer like Annie Lebowitz, they probably could have spent an afternoon and become just as pretty at 17-22 as any of the contestants of these contests. Not only that, I'm pretty sure that none were married or had been pregnant by that age. But the talent contest these people could have won would shock most people into stunned silence.
The problem with the contest is the idea that they know how to pick role models before they have done anything to be role models for. Anybody can pick pretty girls, and all girls can be pretty when they want to. It takes a lifetime of hard work and talent to become a real role model.
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Wait a minute, when will they have this treadmill?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because if the treadmill can, in fact, match the speed of wheels traveling fast enough for the plane to take off, then why not turn the plane around, and take off on treadmill power? That would be something!