Letters to the Editor
Paulus
Published Letters: 106 Editor's Choice: 9
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What ifs
[Read the article: Should I tell my boyfriend's wife about our affair?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What if someone had told the LW many, many months ago that her BF was married. She deserved to know, right? And she would have done the smart thing and gotten rid of him.
Oh wait, she didn't. She was lonely and carried on with him and the thing that is spurring her towards the seemingly not-yet-happened breakup is that she will be moving away to college.
Sure the wife deserves to know. But do it anonymously. Maybe, like the LW, she knows or suspects and has her own reasons for staying, whether good or bad. Doing it anonymousy allows the wife to retain her privacy while she decides what to do. Doing it face-to-face (at the office!?)forces the wife to have an immediate reaction. And who knows what that would be. Maybe both women will agree that he is a scumbag. Or the wife could accuse her of seducing her wonderful husband. Or she could be devastated. Or could go into denial. Best to have that happen in private rather than in front of her husbands girlfriend.
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Extremes
[Read the article: John McCain, Internet dunce]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We go from a presidential candidate who invented the internet to one who doesn't know how to use it. The first one lost, the other one....?
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Parallels
[Read the article: Chaos in the Caucasus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Georgia wants to join NATO and is sponsored in this regard by the US. This would allow NATO nations including the US to station troops there. A sovereign nation is entitled to do as it pleases, right? How dare Russia try to interfere.
What if Cuba, a sovereign nation, wanted to establish a Russian missile base in its territory. The US would have no grounds to object, right?
It was a some time ago, but remember Grenada? The US invaded that country with the excuse that some US students living there were under potential threat from the government.
How much force can a country use to regain a part of that country that declares its independence? Before answering remember that the Civil War cost a million lives.
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Forging isn't about art
[Read the article: A fraud's life]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Forging is all about money. Or more precisely the willingness of rich collectors to pay for a name. The aristic and esthetic value is secondary.
The Romans made numerous copies of Greek scuptures and no one today calls them forgeries.
If an artist makes copies of his own works (there are 5 copies of "The Scream" and Rennaissance workshops routinely made more than one copy of a painting) each is considered an original and worth a lot of money. A reproduction made today would be worthless.
There is much scolarly debate about which of the known Rembrandts are were actually painted by him and which were made by his students or contemporaries. Such judgements can make differences of tens of millions of dollars yet the painting hasn't changed.
At the heart of this debate is a human desire to place great value on an object that has a connection with someone famous. The object is then imbued with some undefined and irrational magical quality. A baseball that was used in setting a home run record is worth a fortune. Yet if that same baseball were to put in a box with 99 other balls and the box closed and shaken, the ball would instantly lose all of its value. The ball hasn't changed, only our perception of it. Or in this example, our inability to distinguish it from the other 99 fakes.
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Let's all vote
[Read the article: Doctors fighting about money: Now that's rich]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Question 1: Would you want either the LW or her husband for
a) your doctor
b) your neighbour
c) your friend
Question 2: Should they have children.
Question 3: How long will this marriage last.
Question 4: How much fun will it be to financially settle the divorce.
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Some points
[Read the article: Speculation nation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here are a couple of salient points not mentioned in the article.
It is an illusion to think that having your home go up in value every year is making you beter off. All the other homes are also going up in value so relatively speaking you are standing still, unless you move from a fast rising market to a slow rising market; or plan to sell your house and live in a tent.
Over the long term it is not possible for house prices to rise faster than the increase in wages or the growth in the economy. If house prices go up faster than wages, the cost of owning a home as a percentage of a person's income will increase until home ownership becomes unaffordable. Historically some adjustment to this relationship has taken place by allowing working wives' income to be part of the morgage/income calculation and increasing the term of the morgage from 20 to now 40 years, all to keep the monthly morgage payment affordable. But it is not possible to have home prices increase at 6% every year when wages go up by 3%.
The US govenment debt has increase dramtically. Credit card debt is increasing at phenominal rates. Home equity loans have resulted in a decrease in the average amount of equity that people have in their home. It is all a low grade Ponzi pyramid that will one day crash.
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What would be nice
[Read the article: What's up with black names, anyway?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wouldn't it be nice if what made a person distinctive was who s/he was and what s/he did or accomplished. What is it about the idea that having a unique name somehow makes that person unique. It really is some kind of magical thinking.
If George Bush was called Great Destiny would he have been a better president?