Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 135 Editor's Choice: 12
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@Anonymous, Thursday 9:27pm
[Read the article: Romney: "Freedom requires religion" ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those people all may have said those things you quoted. But, did they put any of it into the Constitution? I think that answer is "No". (No, I haven't read it in a while and I don't plan on checking each one. But the fact that you have a name at the end of each seems to tell me that they are separate writings.) It's like when the Supreme Court hands down a 5-4 decision, and then the others write dissenting opinions. It's their opinion. Just because they said it doesn't make it right, or wrong, or fact, or pertinent. It's just one person's opinion.
What they DID agree on was rule, by the people, by consensus through voting, and specifically NOT forcing any one religion on everyone, EVER. We could have 100% Christians in this nation, and it would still be WRONG according to our current Constitution, for our Federal government to make it illegal for any work to be done on the Sabbath. You want that to be different? Try to amend the Constitution.
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Anorexia and twins
[Read the article: Is a need for skinny jeans in the genes?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This recent topic of anorexia and twins has caused me a bit of cognitive dissonance. See, on Monday evening, the new season of the TV program "Intervention" started, and it was about a pair of identical twins, one with anorexia, one without. Then, I think it was on Tuesday that I saw the study results about the male/female twin anorexia "conclusion". It made me think - shouldn't BOTH of these women be anorexic? But they weren't - only one was. How to explain that?
Watching the rest of the program, it was very clear that the anorexic twin was more shy and less "noticeable" (the family even specifically said that sometimes you wouldn't even notice she was there!), and she herself admitted to being a perfectionist. With twins, there usually IS one dominant one and one submissive one. Maybe when the submissive one is the male rather than the female, that's when it happens - not based on hormones at all.
So, while biology may in fact play a part, I doubt it's hormones. My opinion is still that it's a great deal environmental, and tends to occur in "competitive" situations between a shy perfectionist and a "center of attention" type, coupled with maybe a predisposition to addictive behaviors. But I'm not a doctor and this is only my opinion.
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@had_enough, letter number 1
[Read the article: The atheist delusion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I couldn't read past the first page of this, and I see there's already 240 comments on the thread, but I just HAVE to say it.
I agree one hundred million percent with had_enough, the very first letter. Complete hogwash. Lots of us atheists live in this world just fine, without feeling the need to believe in any claptrap. It may bother HIM that we don't believe in any gods. But it certainly doesn't bother US one bit.
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Disagreeing with a conclusion
[Read the article: The modern kitchen]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The kitchen, now often located in the front (rather than back) of new homes, "had taken central place in the American Dream."
I don't think the movement of the placement of the kitchen, from the back to the front of the house, has anything to do with it becoming a "central place in the American Dream". It moved there for one reason: Great Rooms.
These days no one is satisfied with a small living room. They want a huge room, a Great Room, and they want it to overlook the back yard, not the front. They want to get away from the street and the neighbors. So if you move the standard-sized living room in the front of the house to a huge room at the back of the house, by necessity that puts your dining room and kitchen in the front of the house.
By the way, that's one think I detest about today's floor plans. I hate walking into someone's front door right into their kitchen or dining room. I don't know why, since I'm not generally a very formal person. But I miss the days when front doors opened into the living room, where guests could sit on a couch and converse with their hosts, without having to stand around a counter or the hosts being elbow deep in foodstuffs. It seems so intimate to walk into someone's food preparation area, especially when coming straight from the street. It's just weird.
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@trex67
[Read the article: The letter E is purple]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]trex67, last fall there was an author making the rounds with his book "Born on a Blue Day" (to him, Wednesdays are blue). I believe he was both autistic and synaesthetic. So there may well be a link between the two conditions. Especially interesting considering that autism is more prevalent in boys and synaesthesia in girls. Maybe they are two facets to the same condition.
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@Nicepieceofdonkey and @ifiddle
[Read the article: The letter E is purple]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You said:
Asperger's certainly seems to exist without synesthesia.
How do you know that? Many people here have commented that they never knew that they were different, special, etc. until they come across something about synaesthesia. Asperger's people may have been talking all along about "purple E's" and people may have just dismissed their comments and told them to "Focus on the task!" It may well be true that many, if not most, Asperger's people experience it and just never say anything because they don't know it's unique to them.
Also to reference ifiddle, who claims that Alison Buckholtz could never have "turned off" her synaesthesia, well, many people turn off perceptions of pain, ignore the car alarm going off all day in front of their building, use biofeedback to lower their own blood pressure, etc. etc. Why would you think that it would be impossible? It may be still THERE, and she probably just means that she learned to ignore it, not that she willed it to actually go away.