Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 58 Editor's Choice: 5
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Call me old fashioned
[Read the article: High-tech antirape devices shown as art]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The devices are pretty, hi-tech and ingenious. But real security comes from a well-founded belief that you can take effective measures. This sort of thing is just dependency-based self protection. Pretty, artistic, but ultimately disempowering because it places your safety in the hands of an inanimate device with no agency on your part.
If you want safety find a good self defense class. Learn to use your natural weapons - awareness, assertiveness, attitude, hands, feet, knees, elbows. Learn to use effective artificial tools if you're of a mind to.
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You can always rely on Wilson
[Read the article: "Religious belief itself is an adaptation"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He's a strict adaptationist's strict adaptationist and always has been. Everything is an adaptation to him. And so much of what he says is out in the realm of the completely unprovable that it leaves science and enters into faith. Dawkins is somewhat better. Even though his reasoning is often circular much of what he claims could be falsified, at least in theory.
It's a shame that Wilson's experience with religion was largely Protestant Fundamentalism. If he'd been educated in differently he might have learned that Sufis (for instance) consider both heaven and hell to be traps. One of them is certainly pleasanter than the other. But both are dead ends if your goal is the presence of the Divine. Buddhism contains the oath of the Boddhisatva; the advanced practitioner must cleanse himself even of attachment to his own salvation in order to get past a very dangerous sticking point in his development.
I'm a little disappointed in the current crop of philosophers and scientists who talk about religion in general terms but deep down believe that "real" religion is whatever brand of Pauline Christianity they had forced on them as children.
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It makes sense
[Read the article: And your little dog, too]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the cases of DV I've seen the abuser often took it out on the pets or children, especially when the target of the abuse got away.
We are pretty sure that's how we got our younger dog. A couple of our self defense students saw a car drive up the 7-11. A man opened the door, threw the dog out, closed the door and sped away. He's a great dog, well trained, good natured and was obviously used to sleeping in bed with his humans. Our best guess, along with that of the police and the animal control people, is that it was a breakup or domestic abuse situation. The guy took it out on his partner by getting rid of her pet.
We're glad to have Sev. He's a wonderful animal. I'd really, really like to kick that guy half to death. People who abandon pets are lower than whale dung.
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Many Muslims don't like the idea either
[Read the article: Why shouldn't Muslim women wear veils?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The progressive Muslim site MuslimWakeup! has a very interesting article on the ongoing war within Islam over the niqab.
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2006/11/an_appeal_to_mu.php
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Hardly "child obsessed"
[Read the article: Childless and proud]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]By the standards of almost any culture anytime, anywhere we are about the least obsessed with having children. For most of human history that has been the one defining thing for pretty much all women everywhere, the sum total of their worth to themselves and society. It is only recently that women have had the opportunity for much else in their lives. And that has been mostly in what you consider the motherhood-crazed America. Compare and contrast with Latin America, Africa, India or the Muslim world.
I've known a few women in the "child free" movement. I know quite a few more who simply don't have children. The self-identified child free all protested too much. Someone who is genuinely happy with her choices doesn't need a support group or a community to validate it. The ones who don't want kids don't have kids and don't need to say too much more about it.
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This isn't exactly news
[Read the article: Love, or biology?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We've known for quite a while that people, women in particular, tend to be attracted to men with different HLA profiles than theirs. This is particularly true when they are close to ovulation. When they are pregnant their preference changes to those with very similar profiles. The mechanism for this selection is smell.
This effect is particularly pronounced in groups like the Amish and Chassidim who practice severe inbreeding. Any shred of heterozygocity is a matter of group survival. It is also a reason why from a purely biological point of view the best thing that could happen to these groups would be successive invasions by the Mongol hordes, Vikings and Dayak pirates.
I hesitate to ascribe "reasons" to evolutionary phenomena, but a significant effect is that children sired by such men will have more diverse defenses against disease. It may also be a proxy for increased heterozygocity in general which confers many advantages. The second part, prefering the smell of close kin during pregnancy, may well be an artifact of our evolutionary past when we practiced female philopatrie - women sticking close to the family groups they were born into as many mammals do. Staying with close kin helped insure survival during pregnancy.
It must also be noted that female gorillas and chimps will travel to other troops at great personal risk in order to mate with males who are not their close relatives.
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Sounds like the perfect news story
[Read the article: Media feeds on killing spree]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It has sex, death, police, fear, nudity and immoral women getting what's coming to them. Toss in a couple celebrities and the tabloids could be making money off it well into the next century.
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I'm trying to get my head around this
[Read the article: Killing and selling women as "ghost brides"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]China has a surplus of men. Where a commodity (women) is scarce someone will do crimes to supply those who have money and demand.
But why in the name of all that's holy would a murdered corpse be worth more than a live, breathing woman?
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It's where we get medieval on our asses
[Read the article: Welcome to celebrehab]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This isn't about therapy. It's a latter day, somewhat secularized version of an old institution. Penance. When you sin, you live an austere, shamed, private environment. At some point in the future you emerge with your sins absolved.