Letters to the Editor
Mike_in_New_Mexico
Published Letters: 96 Editor's Choice: 7
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right and wrong...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are correct about the horrible service that airlines provide. Your observations about how delays and cancellations are handled are right on the money. However, your observations are not insightful or novel, they are obvious. Everyone already knows why passengers hate flying. Its not a mystery.
The unanswered question is: what should we do about the problem?
You seem to imply that market forces will deal with the problem eventually. People will get so fed up that they wont fly and then the airlines will respond. However, the simple fact is that most flyers have to fly. They have to for work and for family obligations, and also many vacations are simply not possible without airline travel. So, the idea that people are just going to not fly is ridiculous. Airlines can all agree to treat us like cattle (which they have basically done) and there is little we can do about it.
The answer is to re-regulate the airlines. The government should set basic standards for how delays and cancellations are handled, for the staffing of ticket counters (often at the heart of the problem), for runway wait times, for seat spacing, and even for ticket pricing. This is the only way the situation is going to change.
I really don't think that most flyers care if pilots get paid well. I think most of us are smart of enough to understand that flying a plane is way more complicated than driving a bus (not that driving a bus through city rush hour traffic (for example) is easy). But, your obsession with this issue probably just indicates how out of touch you are with the people back in the passenger cabin. Since you are a columnist on airline travel, maybe you should spend more time sitting in the waiting areas in airports watching delays and other incidents unfold. Also, talk to flyers and get their stories, you'll get an earful.
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MacK.
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your assessment of faculty salaries is way off. Starting Ph.D. tenure-track faculty in the sciences make 1/3 to 1/2 less than their counterparts in industry or government. The workload to get tenure is absolutely brutal. The hours spent on teaching, research, service, and grant writing add up to 60-80 per week. Most of us don't let up once we get tenure. The American professoriate is one of the hardest working professions in the country. We work as hard than any physician or lawyer. The very best students from all over the world come here to go to school for a reason: the US is the best country in the world at higher education. If anything, professors are underpaid. We do it because we love the job and the students. If we wanted to make lots of money, we'd go work in industry or a national lab.
Also, instructors get paid less because they do less and they have less responsibility. They typically teach a bit more than tenure-track or tenured faculty (if they are full time), but they don't have to do research (about 2/3 of my job) or any of the administrative work that professors do. Many instructors are also filling temporary positions and temp work pays less in every industry.
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This article is based on a false premise...
[Read the article: Can't Darwin and God get along?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The premise of this article, as stated by the author is: "With biologist Richard Dawkins leading the way, many scientists today are locked in an unending match of whack-a-mole with Christian creationists..."
I'm sure that's a great first line for an article. However, the statement is false. The vast majority of scientists don't give a damn about creationists or even religion. They are just trying to do science. Given the horrible federal funding situation these days (all of our research dollars are in Iraq), that's hard enough without trying to also combat the religious right.
Further, the idea that the religious and non-religious ought to be able to coexist is hardly novel. This is an obvious idea that really needs very little explanation or justification. Its just the stubbornness of the two sides that keeps them fighting.
This article and this entire series is a waste of time.
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lead is banned from paint
[Read the article: Some dangeous chemicals with your vampy pout?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Isn't it interesting that lead is banned completely from paint, but is permitted in lipstick?
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The Stupid Car
[Read the article: Test drive: The Smart car is revolutionary]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This car is not so smart. First of all, it uses premium fuel, which erases its slight fuel economy advantage over other small cars like the Fit and Yaris. Second, that fuel ecoonomy advantage is almost unobservable. Consumer reports says that its been getting 38 MPG with the Smart and 34 MPG for the Fit and Yaris. Additionally, its made by Mercedes which has a horrible reliability record and expensive repair costs. Finally, good luck finding a Smart that is less than $15K, so there is no real price advantage to this thing.
If Mercedes had sent the USA the diesel model that gets ~50 MPG, then I think the penalty you pay in practicality might be made up for in fuel cost savings and decreased carbon footprint. But, they didn't do that.
The Smart is the Apple of cars. Its quirky and stylish, but it doesn't get the job done any better than anything else. Its just about image, not substance.