Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 94 Editor's Choice: 19
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but ... but ...
[Read the article: Tom Brady's Giants cap]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tom Brady lives in Boston now. If this is really the message he wanted to send, shouldn't he be wearing a Red Sox hat? Or if he's trying to say "root for the team from the town where you grew up," then does that mean he should route for the Warriors against the Celtics, if it ever came to that? Or for the 49ers against his own team?
Really, as Jerry Seinfeld once so memorably said, you're rooting for laundry. With TV (and the Internet) bringing teams from all over the country into your living room, Americans moving from city to city more and more, and ticket prices skyrocketing to the extent that actually going to a game becomes a once- or twice-a-year event for most kids, I think you will see more and more younger folks arbitrarily choosing teams to root for based on a singificant moment in their youth.
I've grew up in Buffalo, then lived in the Bay Area for some years before settling in Baltimore, so I have a convoluted legacy of fandom behind me, but I can tell you why my top baseball love will always be the Mets: because the 1986 World Series was the first moment I reallly paid attention to baseball. Sometimes you just pick one and stick with it.
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Just a nit to pick...
[Read the article: John McCain's Arab-American problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Arab-Americans are a highly diverse group of up to 3.5 million persons, according to Arab American Institute figures ... Eighty percent are U.S. citizens."
Wouldn't an Arab-American by definition be a US citizen?
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Starbucks will give you tap water...
[Read the article: Waterlogged]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...just FYI, since they mentioned in the article. I was in a Starbucks the other day -- not much a coffee drinker, but I love their coffee cake -- and wanted something to wash it down with, but balked at paying $2.50 or whatever ludicrous amount they charged for the enormous water bottles they sold (no smaller sizes). The barista just gave me a glass of ice water from the tap for free.
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my guesses about the reasons
[Read the article: Are all women a little bit bi?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...are more social than biopsychological. For one thing, women are just eroticized in mass culture more than men are, since for the most part mass culture is run by straight men. It's probably hard to go through years of watching TV and movies where the presence of an attractive woman = sexiness without your brain starting to make the connection automatically, even if in practice you don't want to actually sleep with said woman.
On the "everyone is a little bit bi" tip, perhaps the question is why men don't react this way. Dan Savage was recently asked about what the most surprising thing he's learned in his years as a sex advice columnist, and he said it was how socially constricted straight men's sexuality is. As he puts it, women are pretty much allowed mess around with other women in college and everyone will chalk it up to "experimentation", but if a guy gets one blow job from another guy, he's suspected to be gay for life. His theory, in essence, is that being at the top of the heap comes at a price: you're not allowed to go outside the socially accepted behaviors or risk losing your posiiton of power. In other words, straight women have less to lose by indulging occasional feelings of attraction towards other women than straight men do contemplating attraction to other men.
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waitaminute
[Read the article: Bachelor party]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Was I allowed to not pay my bills or take out the trash when I was single? Why wasn't I informed of this at the time?
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can we have a moratorium...
[Read the article: Why isn't Obama crushing McCain?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...on the word "brand"? Please? "John McCain's maverick brand" says the same thing that "John McCain is widely seen as a maverick" says, but more obnoxiously.
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also!
[Read the article: Keep touching yourself, America]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a sure-fire cure for the hiccups -- really!
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Quick correction...
[Read the article: 33 and fabulous]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Uzbek" is an ethnic group. "Uzbekistan" is a country.
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Um, Austintatious...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The Pilot" is a longstanding Salon columnist. His column is called "Ask the Pilot." Thus the "the".
Josh
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nonprofits
[Read the article: I can't get to work on time no matter what]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You seem to imply in your letter that you expect nonprofits to be less uptight. This is almost never the case. People who work at nonprofits generally care enough about the mission to compensate for lower payrates, and can be more intense about jobs not being just a job. You may do better in a enormous corporation, where individual cogs are far from the people who really profit, and nobody you would talk to on a day-to-day basis gets worked up about screwing the big boss out of 15 minutes of your time.
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temp-to-hire
[Read the article: I can't get to work on time no matter what]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry, I just re-read your article and noticed another important detail: you are a temp. High level temp-to-hire to be sure, but that means that the client site is paying your temp agency an hourly rate for your services. Of course your hours are going to be more important to them than the tasks you complete. If you come in ten minutes late, that's ten minutes less they have to pay the agency for.
You mention that the full-time staff comes in at 10 am as they please. It may be that once (if) you get hired on salary, things will get much better.
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semantic question
[Read the article: Rays-Red Sox: The day after]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Isn't "pennant" reserved for the actual league championship? Technically winning the AL East doesn't get you the pennant -- winning the ALCS does. I guess this makes the whole concept of the "pennant race" obsolete, though.
Or are they giving out actual, physical pennants for division champions now? Did they ever give out actual physical pennants?
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What about Buffalo
[Read the article: Delayed GratiPhication]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't want to take away from anyone's pain, but surely Buffalo deserves mention as a home for sports agony?
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how about trains?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know the Pilot never mentions it, but I always feel the need. I think that one way to help relieve the pressure on airports in the NE corridor and on the west coast would be to improve rail service. If you could get from downtown LA to downtown SF in 2 1/2, or Penn Station to Boston in 2, there would be less demand for hour-long flights on RJs on those routes and more slots open for long-range flights that can't be replaced by rail.