Letters to the Editor
Mike Sulzer
Published Letters: 480 Editor's Choice: 1
-
@PW
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The American military in Iraq have not been squeaky clean; failures of disipline and morality have been well-documented. But they are not the fascistic monsters or hollowed out drones of the left's imagination
I have not been reading about "fascistic monsters" here. Where is that coming from? How is it relevant to this discussion?
-
WTC
[Read the article: 9/11 Commission: Our investigation was "obstructed"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think CS is right. 19 hijackers and a lot of CYA probably explains it all.
-
@PW
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In case you haven't noticed we gave the vote to 'the people' in Iraq....
You did not have to know much to realize before the Iraq invasion that it was a bad idea. But to misunderstand so long after the fact requires intentional ignorance.
-
@PW
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is so simple. Just get rid of the dictator, and hold an election. Never mind the history of the country or the region. Trash the country and the people, no problem. Now they have the same problems we do! And we did it all for them.
-
@PW
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"When we became a superpower. I'll quote Spiderman since no doubt you'll have seen it and are able to relate ; 'with great power comes great responsiblity.""
You underestimate the range of the regulars here across the political spectrum. But I think that there is near unanimity that your definition of responsibility is despicable. You do not even consider the actual self-interest of the super power, and you treat everyone else as if they were made out of cardboard.
-
OK, OT for a moment, it is too serious here.
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Walter, good to have you back. But I think you still owe me an explanation of why you chose to misunderstand my statement on measuring the errors in determining the value of Planck's constant. And is it not amusing that Droogoy made a little blooper on the significance of errors very similar to your misunderstanding? What could that mean?
OK, back on topic.
-
@WT, ondelette
[Read the article: 9/11 Commission: Our investigation was "obstructed"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But please, let's not blame this all on Einstein. He had some really bright friends who helped out a lot.
-
@bucky
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Could you comment on the evolution of Pedinska's nasty little bugs? It occurs on a human time scale but apparently gradually, at least in some sense of the word.
-
More Bucky
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Paul Dirks:
Bucky beleives in evolution.
His candidate doesn't.
Exactly, but I think there is a little more to it than that.
Bucky, as pointed out somewhere up-thread, Darwin could know nothing about mechanisms. As a scientific discipline matures, it is important to relate macroscopic observations to microscopic mechanisms. For evolution, we can analyze DNA differences between species, and determine approximate times of divergence. Is this not the gradual mechanism that Darwin hypothesized? In point of fact, variation in observable characteristics of species can occur quite rapidly compared to the average rate, driven by environmental, or perhaps other, causes. This is certainly important in understanding the history of speciation. But surely the evidence points to an underlying mechanism so much to Darwin's liking that if he could have known about it, he would have jumped out of his bath tub and yelled "Aha!" for the rest of the day.
-
@ ondelette (10:06 AM), JulieAnna
[Read the article: 9/11 Commission: Our investigation was "obstructed"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ondelette,
Thank you for writing that, it was exactly what was needed, and you said it a lot better than I would have.
JulieAnna,
You should make a well-reasoned reply to Ondelette. I appreciate that you have been polite, but to ignore his response would not be so.
-
Nutrition is a science, often badly practiced.
[Read the article: Michael Pollan's manifesto on eating well ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But claiming that the subtleties in the flavor of a peach show that a peach has unknown subtleties in its nutritional properties is wrong. You would need nutritional science to show that. But having rejected science, where does that leave you?
-
Propaganda Value
[Read the article: The Weekly Standard's latest Dewey moment ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It still has it, true or not, right? This is what is so disturbing about the NYT column. It never used to be a place for regular doses of that.
-
You get what you pay for.
[Read the article: Chris Matthews is right ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So I think Brokaw will not be around long. I have no idea how explicit the instructions from the owners are, but it is clear that he is not part of the plan.
-
Ondelette
[Read the article: Chris Matthews is right ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]said 4% margins of error indicate that about 1000 respondents were questioned, typical for a "quickie" poll. 2000 is more standard (3% margin of error). That said, if you sample every few hours very quickly, instead of slowly over 3 days (typical for opinion polls), you get rapid fluctuations as opposed to the more adiabatic results.
I follow the first sentence, of course, but not the second part. Why is asking 2000 randomly selected people, even simultaneously, if it were possible, any different from asking them over three days (assuming, as we must be, that opinions have changed very little over that time).
-
@Ondelette
[Read the article: Chris Matthews is right ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because it isn't assumed that opinions change very little over that time, it is assumed that a steady opinion plus jitter models the status at any particular moment.
Now that is interesting. I am surprised that the fluctuating components with periods shorter than three days contribute significantly to the error and so are worth taking out by averaging over that period. Perhaps I need to get out more!
-
@ondelette
[Read the article: Chris Matthews is right ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Prime example of significant fluctuating components would be what just happened. Clinton had been beating Obama consistently in the NH polls, suddenly he was beating her by 18% according to some, then she beat him in the actual vote, and in polls very close in (and quick). That fluctuation had a time scale of order a few days.
But that is an example of a fluctuation that does not average out, one with a strong deterministic effect. That is very different from random fluctuations that do tend to average out.
AFAIK real demographers never design surveys without hypotheses and models. So far as I've heard.
Which means that the results only have real significance with reference to these hypotheses and models. And that is not the way the results are usually used in the media.