Letters to the Editor
gerhardj
Published Letters: 5 Editor's Choice: 1
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Art without frames
[Read the article: Classical music falls on deaf ears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with the other commentators. I live in DC and read a lot of Gene Weingarten, and I am not usually a big fan, but I thought the article was possibly the best thing he's written. The experiment itself was silly, sure, but the article wasn't particularly about classical music or knowledge thereof. It was about how we are so busy with our lives that we usually miss the beauty around us.
Here in DC, this is especially the case. We are surrounded by art and culture and beauty: free museums, legendary performers, gorgeous architecture, parks, underground art galleries, punk clubs, guerrilla theater, etc. But who has time to stop and gather it in? None of us. We have too much else going on.
The other part that I thought was interesting was the discussion of "art without frames" -- that if you put legendary art in a different context, nobody would even notice it. So what makes it special, exactly? It is almost a veiled critique of the world of classical performances and abstract art -- the only thing that really makes it special is its framing.
Interesting topics all around.
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What Glenn is missing
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mostly agree, but I think Glenn is ignoring two important points:
- The end of the Cold War. A large portion of the world that loved to have the U.S. as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union is now less than thrilled about a unipolar world. Bill Clinton's personal charisma helped slow the shift away from the U.S. as a global force for more-good-than-bad, but I think an eventual decline in world opinion of America was inevitable. There were ways to mitigate this, of course, but the current administration has not exactly prioritized it. The U.S. is just too powerful compared to the rest of the world today and there is a lot of natural resentment. If China emerges as a true superpower, or Russia becomes a threat to American allies, there may be a major shift back towards American popularity.
- The style and attitude of the Bush administration. The U.S. has often gone its own way in past decades, ignoring world opinion, but rarely with such scorn. The Bush crew have really made it clear that they simply are not interested in what the rest of the world thinks. This starts with policy statements that flatly reject any acknowledgment of world opinion, and trickles down to the simple level of diplomatic protocol blunders. Instead of politely differing with allies the U.S. has often said "we just don't care what you think; we'll lead and you have to follow."
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Academics vs think tanks...
[Read the article: Enforcing the community's foreign policy orthodoxy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've read a couple of your columns on the foreign policy establishment, and as a grad student studying international affairs, I think it's important to contrast the "Washington community" with the world of academics, professors, and scholars, many of whom are much more skeptical of unfettered U.S. power than the think tank "scholars." The problem seems to be that an outspoken critic of U.S. ideology can't jump from the world of academics over to specific policy debates.
A few weeks ago in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. (online at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i47/47b00601.htm) Joseph Nye reviewed a book I want to read called The Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is Failing by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. According to Nye, Halper and Clarke claim that academics have not done their part to make an impact on policy debates:
Halper and Clarke argue that think tanks have filled the vacuum left by the academy, and that their hired intellectual guns tend to reinforce a narrow point of view. However, the authors are not worried as much about the gap between academe and policy as about the way that some academics who join the policy fray distort their analyses in the competition for attention in the new media world.
But I think that this gap is a crucial part of the phenomenon you've been analyzing. It's all very well for us to sit in class and issue withering critiques of foreign policy, but nobody from academia is making that case on talk shows or in the New York Times.
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the same thing for almost any users
[Read the article: Yahoo beefs up e-mail. Should you ditch Gmail?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I use both and find no real reason to prefer one over the other. It's in everybody's interest for both of them to continue to compete and develop.
I slightly prefer Yahoo for the tabbed interface, but the lack of outgoing ads is a huge advantage for Gmail. Otherwise I find them essentially the same. I am indifferent to the conversation grouping and the IM capacities, and I don't use folders OR labels since I just rely on the ability to search through all my email on either service.
The main problem with Gmail is the snobby tech types who fetishize every product of the biggest internet company around, and actually look down on others just because of their email address. They are worse than Apple people... Ordinary folks will do just fine with either one.
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astonishingly bad article
[Read the article: The dude vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not sure which is more disturbing, the sexism of this article's subjects, or the author's bizarre assertions. There is much to be written about the sexism displayed in the current electoral cycle, but this is possibly the worst piece I've seen on the topic. Sorry, but many of us intensely dislike Hillary Clinton (the flag-burning vote stuck in my craw, too) but still revile John McCain and everything he stands for.
I'm sure this has probably been discussed but I am not going to read all the comments; I want to forget this article as quickly as possible.