Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 83 Editor's Choice: 3
-
Collecting troll droppings is a great idea but what to do with it?
[Read the article: YOUR STUPID]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think collecting this stuff is a great idea. Maybe the Salon alchemists should think of a way to have this crap generate something besides pageviews. How about this: once you've collected enough, ship it off to Richard Lederer or Funny Times and they'll make books and t-shirts out of it generating lot of income for Salon so they can drop subscription fees attracting even more trolls to generate even more of this crap... Wow, a perpetual crap machine. Enough of this and Salon might actually start to smell like The Onion.
-
The Dvorak effect
[Read the article: Bloggers, Don Imus and free speech]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why do Imus, Stern, and others go over the top? For the same reason John Dvorak baits Mac users with outrageous untruths about the Macintosh: to get people upset and paying attention. Radio may be just like the web in this respect: people commenting on a Dvorak article just gets him thousands of pageviews and he could give a shit about the content of the comments, he just wants the attention. He'll take abuse for the attention.
Imus and Salon comment trolls are in the same camp, they're out to shock to get you paying attention. Imus sells soap, comment trolls use this as their own blog.
Rather than make rules to govern or guide behavior, why not just turn the radio off? The Imus issue is about us, not about him. If no one listened he'd be out of business.
Salon comment trolls are a different story: they're riding on the back of Salon, a subscription magazine with editorial controls. I agree with Joan: those of you who are using Salon letters as your own blog pulpit really ought to get yourselves a personal weblog where you can write, uncensored to your heart's content. Using Salon's letters as a blog and then bitching when someone edits you is ridiculous. As Joan recommends, register www.salon-is-big-brother-and-edits-me.com and post away. Who knows, you may be able to create the Dvorak effect and get a few pageviews.
-
Leading and responsibiilty
[Read the article: My boyfriend's climbing partner let him fall]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This comment is just a clarification of the underlying belay issue, not one on the social aspect of the question for Cary.
I was a serious climber and climbing teacher for over 15 years. I've climbed big walls in Yosemite and taught hundreds of people how to climb.
In a situation where an experienced climber is teaching a beginner how to belay, even with a mechanical braking device, it is ultimately the leader's responsibility to assess if the person belaying understands the gravity and the mechanics of what they're doing.
It is entirely possible, even probable, that a beginner would react by pulling the rope the wrong way so that it runs loose, drops the climber, and burns his hands. People mistake their left from their right all the time and turning up the pressure can sometimes make this even worse.
No matter how flaky the belayer was in this case, the leader should have practiced this situation lower to the ground multiple times so that if the belayer failed, he would have been protected and also, ended the situation before he went higher.
This entire testing process would have taken less than 5 minutes and had it happened, might have either taught the belayer how to belay, or, shown the leader that this was an unsafe situation and forced him to call it a day. Many people in climbing gyms think that showing concern for the gravity of the situation is either too "boy scout" or too wimpy. Either way, that culture may have contributed to this accident.
Part of being a responsible leader is accurately assessing the capabilities of those you are climbing with so that you can feel comfortable putting your life in their hands. The perceived safety of an artificial climbing wall in a gym and the seemingly fail safe mechanical belay system ought not make things any different from a hip belay on El Capitan: if the belayer's capabilities are in question, you don't climb.
-
Playing vs. Performing
[Read the article: Is it too late to start a band at 45?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's a difference between getting together with friends, making music and having fun and performance aimed at fame.
Sorting out the music from the fame is the key and in my mind they're two different things that many folks writing comments here have assumed go together.
Making music isn't all about performance: if you make music and no one is listening it's still great fun. If your aim is to get girls to swoon over you, that's a different story. Sort that out and you're on your way, either back to the cubicle or to buying a drum kit, guitar, or both.
If you just want to make music and have fun and keep your expectations for recognition beyond your immediate group low, there's little stopping you and my guess is in Portland (and almost anywhere else) there are enough folks just like you who want to make music so that you'll have little trouble putting a band together.
Want to dream? Watch The Commitments.
-
Thank you Douglas Moran
[Read the article: From Norman Rockwell to Abu Ghraib]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your comment is spectacularly well written and says it all.
I would just add that in addition to using Clockwork Orange techniques on Bush, Cheney, and Co. they ought to be tried as war ciminials and sent to jail for the rest of their lives.
If our country can't get its act together to impeach Bush (and impeachment is too mild a punishment for what he's done anyway), maybe the world needs to make a statement and put these people on trial.