Letters to the Editor
Xrandadu Hutman
Published Letters: 2630 Editor's Choice: 52
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The very idea of "hell" is an asinine fairy tale made up by people who want to control you
[Read the article: My Christian daughter says I'm going to hell]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you are religious and you actually believe in hell, how about sitting down and thinking about it for a while?
What the hell is "hell"?
Basically for all eternity you're going to be on fire and suffering.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Grow the hell up.
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Dear Anonymous
[Read the article: "The Heartbreak Kid"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anonymous wrote: "In the original version, the new wife was simply annoying, but basically she was an ideal match for Charles Grodin if only he admitted it."
You're kidding, right? That woman was "ideal" for no one. She was boring, fat, unimaginative, annoying and essentially useless. She kept saying, "Just think, we're going to be here together in 50 years," indicating a life of repetition and not an iota of adventure. As big of a jerk as Charles Grodin's character was, you can't blame him for wanting to cut and run as soon as possible.
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I like "Lost"
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I feel lost without it.
(Only five months...)
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Psycprof and others in this letters section
[Read the article: Life will kill you]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Psycprof: "In discussing extrapolation of rodent studies, I would think that the first consideration is how similar the test dose is to the usual human dose. Sometimes the harmful dose is huge compared with the human dose (accounting for size, of course)."
Duh, Devra Davis makes that perfectly clear. Did you just skim the article, Psycprof? Davis states, "They had 1,800 animals, and some of them were just consuming the equivalent of two cans of soda a day, two yogurts, 10 pieces of chewing gum. And at that level of consumption, there was a significant increase in cancer, and it only showed up in older rats." There you go.
Most of Psycprof's other criticism stem from the confusion between causation and correlation. But Davis does not mistake the two. Sometimes there will always be a possibility that a causal link is only just a correlation, but that doesn't mean we should automatically discount the possibility of causation.
Others jumped on seriously trivial mistakes, such as Davis saying "pesticide" when obviously what was meant was "herbicide." Sounds like sloppy speaking rather than any serious ignorance. And it was beside the point.
Somebody else jumped on Davis's statement about statistics, something like: "The percentage rates were small, but that doesn't mean they weren't imporant." No, this does not betray a misunderstanding about statistics. If you read for meaning instead of reading looking for a golden nugget of "aha! I caught you being wrong!" then it's obvious Davis is suggesting a suspicion of possible harm rather than a definitive conclusion.
What's up with the people in this letters section anyway? it reads like an assortment of industry lackeys. Whether or not you consider Davis a credible speaker on the carcinogens and other harms in the modern environment, there's no denying that it is an important subject that should be examined carefully.
Personally based on what I've read I never purchase anything sweetened with aspartame. What's the point? If you want sweetness eat a small amount of something with sugar. If you're concerned about your weight you shouldn't be drinking soda to begin with -- so don't half-ass it by drinking a "diet" soda. That's wimpy-ass bullshit. Drink water or tea or something else besides soda, loser.
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On the issue of "denial"
[Read the article: Stop your sobbing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The reason environmentalists accuse people of being in denial about global warming and other ills is not because they're trying to make people feel bad about themselves.
It's because people really are in denial.
To argue otherwise is to argue that denial is not a real psychological phenomenon that exists in humans. Or that 99.9% of scientists are not in consensus about global warming.