Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 29 Editor's Choice: 3
-
Getting Rid of the Penny
[Read the article: Trashed, abolished, deleted, repealed and out of here]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay, clearly there are more important issues in the world. But I find this kind of interesting in a geeky way, and thought I'd, um, add my two cents.
The US used to have half-penny coins, until they were ditched in 1857. It's hard to accurately figure inflation over a century and a half, but my best I'm-not-an-economist estimate based on resources I could find online suggest that the 1857 half-penny had the buying power of approximately $0.38 today.
So, really, we could probably stand to get rid of nickels and dimes too, and pushing on ditching quarters. (We could round sales tax *down* to the nearest $0.50. Heh.)
-
Perhaps this is giving them too much credit....
[Read the article: Morning-after poll]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but perhaps there were multiple different versions of this poll with various different wordings, and that itself is part of what is being researched?
-
firefly
[Read the article: Cao Cao, where art thou?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nothing profound, but I'm reminded that the characters in Joss Wheaton's short-lived series Firefly swear in Chinese...
-
corporate natural rights
[Read the article: Bill Gates vs. the WHO]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Quote: "It is the natural right of corporations to fight for their own interests."
It is? It's certainly a natural right of *people* to fight for their own interests -- in fact, arguably the only real "natural" right. But corporations are not natural and so have no natural rights -- just the rights we as a society give them under our system of laws. It may be good to grant corporations a sweeping
anthropomorphic package of rights -- or maybe they should be considered to be only legal entities, leaving the possession of rights to the actual, *natural* human stakeholders and to the humans affected by their actions. The first situation may be the case under current law, but it sure ain't natural.
-
wireless
[Read the article: One hacker, a little wi-fi ... and an election victory can be yours]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think wireless is such a "no brainer". Wireless with good peer-reviewed encryption can be more secure than an unencrypted wired connection. The more important issue is demanding a physical audit trail.
-
download the full version
[Read the article: Tyger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The YouTube version does not do this justice -- it's very worth watching the high-res version from the artists' site:
http://www.guilherme.tv/tyger/
-
"must all"
[Read the article: Tyger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]HBL -- or maybe you're just projecting something from yourself.
-
requirements
[Read the article: Crazy Dolphins vs. the Mad Cows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"This content requires the Adobe Flash Player version 8.0.0. Get Flash"
Thanks, but the "Get Flash" link does no actual good.
Adobe does not produce a Flash Player 8 for Linux, although they promise 8.5 soon. Does this *really* require that version?
-
the difference
[Read the article: Crazy Dolphins vs. the Mad Cows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rob -- there's a difference between "That's fine and all" and "arbitrarily doesn't work". Additionally, Firefox is open source and runs on just about any platform, so there's no real comparison. I'd happily install something if it was an option.
But really you're right; since IE7 will support PNG properly, that message is out of date and I should remove it.
-
Boston Herald
[Read the article: Bill O'Reilly's misinformation campaign]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is one thing for O'Reilly to be given free rein by Fox News, but the Herald should be ashamed of itself for publishing this unsubstantiated tripe.
Oh, they should be ashamed alright, but one should be surprised by the Boston Herald acting like Fox News -- it's all Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
-
Organic Whole-wheat
[Read the article: The bunny vs. the blue box]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I realize the article is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there's a point that's glossed over that deserves more attention. Yes, not all Annie's products are organic, and they're not all whole grain. But Annie's Organic Whole Wheat Shells & Cheddar sure is exactly what it claims to be. Kraft (remember the title of the article?) offers nothing like that, even in their "Back-to-Nature" brand.
-
ADHD medication trends
[Read the article: Worldwide ADHD pandemic?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't help but frame this story in terms of the recent tragic death of four-year-old Rebecca Riley (see http://www.townonline.com/weymouth/homepage/8998949288989949950 ), who was apparently "diagnosed" with ADHD at age two. Two. The parents are charged with giving an overdose -- but come on, at that age, clearly any dose is unreasonable.
-
Seriously, Salon
[Read the article: Bad news dad]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This pathetic, whiny guy is the best you could come up with?
It's not that I'm offended (as the author surely hopes some readers will be) by his "oh, look at how I prod the sacred cow!" tone. I'm just disappointed that Salon thinks this passes for clever. Bad fathers are a dime a dozen, and enough of them believe themselves interesting that you could fill a thick volume with this tripe.
But please don't. How about next year, you find someone with something interesting to say?
-
kool-aid.
[Read the article: Another iPhone feature -- it crashes!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, "fluke", clearly karma is what is causing the problems here. Probably if the author would think more happy thoughts, perhaps about unicorns and daffodils, there wouldn't be any bugs. That works for computer problems, so it's pretty likely to be effective here too.
-
ow, my eyes.
[Read the article: Airbrushing the baby]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yet, I can't stop clicking "more samples". And speaking of eyes, have they actually never seen real human ones? Creepy.
-
modern assumptions, easily checked.
[Read the article: Scientists: Chicks like pink]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's pretty solidly documented (see http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=238733, for an example with references) that when we as a culture started color-coding babies not so long ago, pink (being a pastel version of manly red) was for boys and pale blue (perhaps being associated with the purity of the Virgin Mary) was for girls. I don't doubt the results of the study for what it examines, but the speculation about evolutionary origins is clearly absurd. This is a 20th-century Western trend.
-
white pages?
[Read the article: What happens on Facebook no longer stays on Facebook]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, it's a great white pages for someone named "Farhad Manjoo". All one of them on Facebook. Less good for someone named "Matthew Miller" -- I can't even tell you how many of us there are with Facebook accounts right now, because the search engine times out before returning results.
If you've got a common name and want people to be able to find you, better hope you're distinctive-enough looking to be clearly identified by a thumbnail-sized photograph in the middle of 500 others, because that's all you're gonna get. Facebook doesn't let you customize this "listing" at all.
-
What *do* they say about highways in Hell?
[Read the article: Obama: Don't pander to homophobes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, seriously. They all lead to Rome? What?
-
wow, a whole lotta not-reading-the-article going on
[Read the article: The filthy, stinking truth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Quietmind -- as the article says, people are very obsessed with bathing, but few people actually take the time to ever wash their hands properly, which as both you and the article note is a very important sanitation practice.
-
Placing blame
[Read the article: Facebook caves on privacy-invading ads, kind of]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Shouldn't we be complaining to the "partner sites"? After all, they're the ones sharing personal data with Facebook.