Letters to the Editor
Henry Hotspur
Published Letters: 81 Editor's Choice: 4
-
Assumptions, assumptions ...
[Read the article: Blaming the victim?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The article itself makes a variety of assumptions. For example, it leaps from "drunk" to "comatose, drunk women, often covered in vomit, often lying in streets, on the floor, without any notion of what's happening to them."
That's a pretty big assumption.
Part of the reason men are interested in talking about the "Ooops. I was drunk, therefore raped" argument is because that's something a guy who isn't a rapist has to worry about.
"Don't have sex with a comatose woman." That's sort of the beginning and the end of the conversation, isn't it? It's a non-issue for me, and, I suspect, for the overwhelming majority of male "Broadsheet" readers.
But the other extreme could be an issue. I've seen it happen to friends of mine (and without going into details, let's just say that it's clear that she wasn't comatose, resisting or even saying 'no'). I don't think it happens often - but I don't know, and I think other posters should be careful before making assumptions about the ratio of comatose-drunk rape victims to appeared-to-be-enjoying-it-at-the-time drunk women.
It would have been nice if the Broadsheet article had been a little more specific in their reporting. If their definition of "drunk" is "over the legal limit to drive" then we're probably talking about a lot of women in that second category. If it's "comatose" then clearly we're talking about more women in the first category.
But "drunk" is a pretty vague word, and neither the Broadsheet article nor the BBC article it cites do much in the way of clarifying what htey're talking about.
-
This couldn't be done with an unlocked phone ...
[Read the article: Going mobile]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They're pushing the technology on the network side with a few of these features (eg visual voicemail), which is the sort of thing which requires a technology investment from the network providers.
If they sold an unlocked phone, some of these features wouldn't work with carriers who hadn't made sufficient upgrades. This would create a situation Apple hates: the end user experience is out of the control of the company. A lot of users would be unhappy because their experience out-of-the-box wasn't what was advertised by Apple, but there's nothing Apple could do about it.
While they could have picked T-Mobile instead of Cingular, Verizon's business model would requite them to cripple the phone; again, it's hard to see how Apple would be ok with that.
But to get the technology upgrades on the server side, nationwide, to ensure a smooth rollout, Apple almost certainly had to promise the network providers something. In this case, exclusivity.
I'm not anti-Cingular. I currently use Verizon. I'm concerned, because Cingular doesn't score particuarly well in most customer satisfaction surveys ... but I'm also not sure I need a phone with this much power yet.
-
Can't we just ignore these guys?
[Read the article: How the left caused 9/11, by Dinesh D'Souza]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If I recall correctly (and there's a small chance I'm conflating speakers), I met Dinesh about 12 years ago, when he came to speak to my small, liberal arts college. He gave a lecture, and then talked with a small environmental studies class of mine. The thing I remember about that class (other than the classmate who was so infuriated that he refused to let any other student speak. If I recall correctly, my classmate wanted to engage Dinesh in an extended argument about the number of trees.) was Dinesh's complete inability to view any fact in any context other than his own "conservatives are good, liberals are bad" agenda.
As one of the few Enironmental Studies students who was also an Econ major, I was happy to punch holes in his Econ 101 level understanding of markets. Not that he cared to be proven wrong by an undergraduate, he - as now - simply ignored any argument that he couldn't easily dismiss.
At the time I was dismissive about him. I figued Dinesh would do a college tour and then vanish.
I underestimated where conservatives would take political discourse in this country.
But, that being said, I still find myself wondering why Dinesh didn't just vanish. He's not particularly bright, or nimble, or original. (Even his 9/11-was-caused-by-liberals argument is at least five years old at this point.)
I think the reason he didn't just vanish is that smart, intelligent people engage with him.
People, there is no reason to listen to Dinesh. There is no reason to read his books. There is no reason to listen to him speak. He's proven himself intellectually bankrupt on literally hundreds of occasions.
If we all ignore him, maybe he'll go away.
Salon should be doing better than giving a platform to yahoos like this. For someone like him, there's no such thing as bad attention. You've just helped him sell a few books, and therefore given him a reason to write another one, and to take another book tour, and to bother us all with another round of his inane chatter.
There are intellectually rigorous conservatives who are worth engaging with. Dinesh D'Souza, with his intentionally inflamatory, let's-see-if-I-can-goad-liberals-into-giving-me-free-publicity schtik, isn't one of them.
Stop giving him interviews. Stop listening to him. Stop writing about him.
Please.