Letters to the Editor
conryw
Published Letters: 346 Editor's Choice: 13
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Off topic: I learned a new word.
[Read the article: Organic farming: Not sustainable?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Panopticonic? Wow!! What a totally cool word! It's kinda' what our current Preznit wants for himself. Sadly, (or not) it's what computers and the datasphere is bringing onto to us all (whoopi!). Could be good; could be bad - whatever. One thing, possibly good, is that it will force us all to live our lives beyond reproach. Ummm, let's call it the Age Of Candor, if you will. Here's the entry in Wikipedia regarding this word:
The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience." In his own words, Bentham described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."
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Send them to The Hague
[Read the article: "We listened as his soul cracked"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]After all we have read and seen what the Bush Administration has done to the world; and has done to tarnish what America is supposed to stand for (remember Wounded Knee), we must not let the Democrats - if indeed they win the White House - let any of this pass. As God as my witness, I want to see those bastards - Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, et al. - sent to The Hague and put on trial for war crimes, just like Slobadon Milosevic.
I seethe with anger at what they have done to pervert what America's founders fought and died for; it makes me blind with rage!
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It's the sprawl.
[Read the article: The battle for California, as seen by bike]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow, this was a very depressing read.
I've lived in California virtually all my life, and have lived in the San Francisco for 31 years; and I remember when I first arrived being able to drive from, let's say, Palo Alto to Berkeley, across the Bay Bridge in less than 45 minutes - this during rush hour! Today? No way.
This needn't have ever been the case. If we had adopted an urban environment which emulated the compactness of New York City - without the manhattanization, of course - instead of the Southern California and/or Los Angeles model, we wouldn't have necessarily had our cake and eaten it too, but life would have been very, very different than it is today.
This not only makes me very sad, but extremely angry too - don't universities like Stanford, et al. teach demography and urban planning? The idea that just because we can put a man on the moon, means jack shit!
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Damned if we do, damned if we don't, maybe.
[Read the article: What Hillary Clinton should have known]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In our corporate and political (or just about anywhere else) culture - even though I personally disagree with this premise very strongly - to apologize or show any outward signs of contrition, is to show weakness. Hillary Clinton has gotten herself into a bit a jam: from a strategic angle, Clinton (especially from the double standard women or held to) would be making a worse decision to apologize for a vote she clearly regrets; she just cannot show anything with the whiff of weakness - the enemy, and everybody else will clobber her for it; neither can Clinton appear wishy-washy.
In an very different but strangely similar situation, Bill Clinton made the same mistake early on in his administration with the "don't ask don't tell" business. Ole' Slick Willie, wanting to have it both ways, halfway kinda' sorta' capitulated to Republicans and the right wing of his own party by doing what he did. In retrospect it's clear now, if Bill Clinton had stuck to his guns and insisted that homosexuals have equal rights in the military, he would have been defeated by the Congress to be sure, but would have walked away with two more important victories: the moral one and the strategic one - Bill Clinton would have appeared to have a spine after all, and Slick (heh,heh) Willie would have been put to bed once and for all.
Anyway, from a voter's perspective it all seems to me like a win win situation: Obama is like a dream come true (too good to be true?), and Clinton, with all her warts, is definitely the devil we know; and holy burning bush Batman, we could have it a whole lot worse, we could have Jeb Bush for our next Preznit; and that's a nit who could become a louse we'd never recover from.
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Hollywood gets humble?
[Read the article: Hollywood gets humble]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]*snort*
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Didn't even bother reading this article.
[Read the article: "Look Both Ways"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a completely non-empirical assessment: but as a middle aged homosexual, and the older I get; I'm convinced to my complete satisfaction, that bisexuality is the biggest canard, baloney, cop-out or whatever other word you want to use for "LIE". It is nothing less than another form of internalized homophobia and self denial. It is just simply more palatable to their mommies and their hetero friends.
They call themselves Bi for the same reason Elton John once did and the same reason David Bowie still does. Furthermore, the time I heard Bowie's significant other, Iman, open her mouth her trousers fell out, exactly the way Truman Capote's dress fell out of his.
Your either left handed or right handed - true ambidexterity is as rare as (heh,heh) a three dollar bill; same for sexual orientation. Pathetic!!
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The wingnut vacuum event horizon only grows larger
[Read the article: Ann Coulter on John Edwards: "Faggot"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The first thing any logical person considers when right wing reactionaries like Coulter spew ad hominem like this, and then freak out when a few sundry blog commenters do the same, is come to the conclusion they're just a bunch of hypocrites.
Hypocrites!? Oh, no no no - These people's problems run much deeper than this. These people are full fledged psychotics; hence the very accurate term wingnut - really, they are.
Real critical thinking is simply beyond their microcephalic brains. Unfortunately, one actually made it all the way to the White House.