Letters to the Editor
firefly82
Published Letters: 288 Editor's Choice: 30
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Brought it on herself?
[Read the article: Not lady enough]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks Lynn for this post. Yes, it's old news, but I was appalled at how little mainstream press coverage it got when it happened a few months ago--it was mostly relegated to a snippet or sidebar item in the local papers. I'm so happy she's suing.
And Amerigo...barf. This woman looks like a man; there was a photo of her published this morning. She didn't set this up by dressing like a man--if she grew her hair out and wore a dress, she'd still look masculine. Then someone like you would complain he/she was uncomfortable with the transvestite in the ladies' room. What, if she wants to use the ladies' room, she should get plastic surgery to make everyone else comfortable, regardless of which restroom is designed for her plumbing?
Surely even you have things about you that you can't help?
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Seriously
[Read the article: Not lady enough]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know what *most* people would do if a man walked into a women's bathroom, but as long as he kept his hands and feet to himself and doesn't sprinkle the seat, I consider it none of my business what bathroom he's in or why. I'd probably just assume the men's was clogged or something.
Assuming it's even a man I think I'm seeing, which we now know we can't.
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Dog. Definitely.
[Read the article: Lonely single guy tired of being lonely and single seeks person ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, it'll stand guard against the most desperate, base level of your loneliness. And pets are known to help ward off depression.
Recently I was in a subway car with a weird looking guy who had a weird looking dog. The guy wasn't unattractive, per se...cute but probably not anyone's first mental image of hunkiness or traditional masculine beauty. Smile too wide and thin for his face, eyes a little too close together, ineptly cut hair....And the dog just looked like an alien. If you can imagine the ears of a corgi on the body of a white bulldog, the jaw of something else entirely and big, bulging black eyes...alien mutt.
I swear I saw 3 women approach this guy with alien dog in the space of my 20 minute ride. If I had to take a guess why...guy and dog clearly enjoyed each other's company so much that they both had the biggest, most genuine, carefree smiles on their faces.
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Moderation and the limits of our knowledge
[Read the article: To tipple or not to tipple?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Forgive me not looking up citations for the following but it's late and the rain is making my internet service erratic...maybe someone will help me out in the morning.
Since, as previously mentioned, it would be unethical to do controlled studies of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, all of our knowledge of fetal alcohol syndrome comes from observational studies of alcoholic women--who had no intention or ability to quit while pregnant--and their children's outcomes...and the women being studied had something like at least 5 drinks per day, every day, on average. Clearly, an "occasional" glass of wine or beer can't even compare.
Secondly, the placenta does its job stunningly well. Another phenomenon of which we have very little hard knowledge is the use of chemotherapy during pregnancy. Chemotherapy drugs are designed to attack fast-multiplying cells; a developing embryo would fit that bill pretty neatly. Yet there have been at least a few women with aggressive cancers, who, given the usual options of delaying vital treatment or aborting a pregnancy, chose to risk going ahead with chemo treatment during pregnancy and have had healthy babies. Now most of these babies are still kids, so no one really has much idea what the long-term consequences to their health might be. But they were born healthy, apparently not having suffered much or any impact of extremely toxic drugs.
Of course chemotherapy and alcohol are not the same and don't work by the same mechanisms, so it's apples and oranges again. But it bears remembering that the female anatomy is pretty well designed to safeguard a developing baby. Not that this is clearance to consume anything willy-nilly--just to say that it's not unambiguous and to discuss with an OB/GYN whom you trust to be well-informed.
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Firefly's homeschooling soapbox
[Read the article: School for housewives]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"In an era where home schooling has become the pipeline for producing the next generation of conservative warriors..."
True enough...but homeschooling, and its variant unschooling, are also becoming pipelines for raising the next generation of independent critical thinkers, problem solvers, and self-motivated creators, of all faiths and no faith, conservative and ultra-liberal alike.
Parents bent on manufacturing their children into the next generation of conservative warriors are going to do so with or without public-schooling their children. In fact, public schools provide an all-too-convenient motivation for doing so; they're an ever-present godless/socialist/humanist/whathaveyou huge government institution for them to scapegoat. Kids are trained in how to behave as if they're "behind enemy lines" when at school. (Bruce Bawer's "Stealing Jesus" gives a more extensive analysis of this phenomenon.)
SBTS's degree program would be laughable if it weren't so insidious, not for its stated intent to equip homeschooling parents (who, in most states, can homeschool legally whether equipped or not), but for its implicit assumptions of the rather low academic abilities and ambitions of women, and the proper place of women in public intellectual life.
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@ tina schrier
[Read the article: School for housewives]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"So in the next few years we are going to have a few million homeschooled children in our society. They think women are for cooking and that homosexuality is an abomination, and everyone who doesn't think the way they do are damned in the next life, so it makes no sense to respect their right to live as the equals of Christians in this one.
What are we going to do with them? A few will get out and run, but not all of them are going to self-re-educate. Seriously, what is our responsibility to these children, prisoners in their own houses?"
Tina, I'm sorry, but this is heartbreaking ignorance. Please read up on the subject. Grace Llewellyn's "Teenage Liberation Handbook," anything by John Gatto. And Mary Pipher includes a wonderful case study of a homeschooling family in "The Shelter of Each Other."