Some years ago, I remember reading that Amy Dacyczyn (of the Tightwad Gazette) tested whether hand washing or a dishwasher used less water and energy. She determined that they were just about even. She was looking at it from a money saving perspective, rather than a green perspective, but using the dishwasher may not be a big issue. (The study was done some time ago, but dishwashers have become even more efficient in the meantime).

The big energy usage of the dishwasher is the drying cycle, even in "economy" mode. If you stop your dishwasher before the drying cycle starts, and just leave it sitting open, your dishes will dry and you'll save energy - probably enough to offset using the "bad" commercial dish detergent!

I try to use natural cleaning solutions (usually cleaners like vinegar, rather than expensive "green" products) but I won't give up my dishwashing detergent - that's one product where the name brands seem to do a better job.

I'm a scientist. And I could tell you stories of betrayal that would make your head spin. Graduate students blackballed out of their careers because they disagreed with their graduate advisors. Research results stolen or falsified, papers that represented years of work being published under someone else's name. Academia is the worst, but you'll find it in industry as well - scientists being cut out of papers or patents because of personal or romantic disagreements. Layoffs carried out in incredibly callous ways.

It happens to everyone, in every field. Creative types don't have a monopoly on betrayal or pain - they're just slightly more articulate in whining about it.

I'd be much more sympathetic if you crusaded against any type of betrayal, instead of claiming that creative types somehow "feel" these betrayals more deeply and are more hurt by them.

One other significant issue is, how will the journals be indexed and accessed in the future? Scientific journals aren't like magazines, where you read them once and then throw them out. They are used for decades. And there has to be a way find the information, among the hundreds of thousands of articles in the scientific literature.

I'm a chemist, and I can't just google to find the research I need for my work. I need a specialized search engine that allows me to search for chemical structures. A few weeks ago, I used a journal article from 1917 - the only reason I was able to find that article was because the structures of all the compounds referenced in the article were indexed and available for searching. If an article is published on someone's web site, it's unlikely that it will be indexed and made available in that way, either today or 10, 20 or 50 years from now, for future scientists.

There are some major disadvantages to the current system, but what works for the latest "press-friendly" research might not work so well for other types of scientific journals. And while it's important to have the information today, it's also crucially important that the information is available in the future - and in a format that can be searched and accessed.

If doctors were forcing women to take high dose pills and disallowing the sale of low dose pills, then I'd be upset. But why shouldn't there be an option for either type of pill? Different people need different options.

I needed to take the pill for a short time because of period problems, and I found it hard to find a high-dose pill, even though that's what my doctor wanted me to take. Someone heavier might also need a higher dose (since dosage usually correlates with weight). More choice seems like a good thing to me.

So "this economy" only makes men earn less, but not women? How wondorous.

It's not that someone is saying "you're a man so you must earn less". But many jobs that were traditionally held by men, such as factory jobs, have been outsourced in recent years. Other jobs that were traditionally held by women, such as nursing, have boomed. So the overall result is that, overall, women are doing better than men. A female factory worker is probably earning less, while a male nurse is probably earning more.

Karen

I haven't watched the pageants in many years, and the judging criteria have changed over the past few years. (Especially as the shows have tried to regain their audience by becoming "reality shows".) But traditionally, only Miss America had a talent portion. Miss USA did not.

I'm not sure a comparison between Padilla and Crocker is particularly useful. At least based on this article, the main reason Crocker was caught was because he confided in the wrong person, a confidential informant working for the police. That was the basis of all the "old-fashioned police work" that led to his arrest. But how many confidential informants do we have within the radical Muslim community, even here in the U.S.? How many do we have in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq, where just being suspected of working with Americans often leads to being murdered? Clearly we should be cultivating these kinds of long-term contacts, but it's not going to be easy. (Especially when we have Bush running the show, but that's another letter.)

That problem doesn't justify torture. Call me a wispy liberal, but I think our values are worth more than any information gathered by torture. But it's too easy to look at these two cases as parallel, and say that Padilla could have been caught and prosecuted using the same techniques used to catch and prosecute Crocker.