Letters to the Editor
Miette
Published Letters: 29 Editor's Choice: 6
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Numbers
[Read the article: The corporate takeover of U.S. intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So if 70% of the budget goes to contractors, and this includes office supplies, nifty tech toys, and buildings, what exactly does the other 30% go to? Salaries?
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Dudesheet
[Read the article: Female genital mutilation a growing problem in Britain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We should totally have a dudesheet.
I get that the argument that we need a pink ghetto because all the news is male-centric, but... well... how is Salon male-centric? Is political news only for men? Do women not care about Iraq? How about global warming? I've always been vaguely annoyed by Women's Media. Why do we think that only women care about gender relations, puff pieces about raising children, or whatever? We should repaint the pink ghetto a lovely shade of green and give everyone their cotton candy.
But if we're going to keep Broadsheet pink, might as well have a Dudesheet too. I'd read it. It'd be nice to have an appropriate place to wank about things like "why are men in television commercials so stupid?"
FTR, my genome goes XX.
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Nits
[Read the article: I hate buzzwords! It's not "carbon," it's "carbon dioxide"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I may be just a Northern girl, but I'm pretty sure it's y'all.
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Punctuation and Quotes
[Read the article: I hate buzzwords! It's not "carbon," it's "carbon dioxide"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I always get punctuation in quotes wrong, so I pulled out my trusty Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition. It's so solid. So orange. So satisfying to beat people with.) and asked it.
It said that periods and commas always go inside the quotes, and other punctuation always goes outside the quotes, unless the other punctuation is part of the quote. It suggested that if this is a problem, you can move over everything to the Oxford style, where only punctuation that is part of the quote goes inside the quotes, but that this requires "extreme authorial precision" and works best with single quotation marks.
I'm gonna stand by "periods and commas inside the quotes." If you'd like to disagree, I've got this big orange book I can beat you with...
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@Woodside
[Read the article: Let us now praise editors]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are correct about both of those commas.
The first probably got there because people automatically stick commas in places when there's a series and a conjunction. The second is a very common error made more likely by the interjection.
People are always screwing up commas, especially in casual writing. The internetz will be the death of good comma hygiene.
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I like anonymity
[Read the article: Who are you, Anonymous?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I gave up reading many pages in, so I don't know if someone's covered this.
One of the reasons I like the anonymous posting is that I find the "read this user's other letters" kind of creepy. Everything I might say ever that is context-sensitive is available for people? Am I writing a blog here, or responding to articles?
Creepy. So when I make a comment I don't want forever logged and available at a single click, I do it anonymously.
I'd like an opt-out button for "read everything I've ever posted".
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Easy Answer
[Read the article: "Show me your hose"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nobody should be forced to march in a parade. Simple. Clear-cut. It doesn't matter what parade we're talking about: gay pride, patrick's day, fourth of july... if you don't want to march, nobody should be making you.
Seriously. How is this even a question?
It's shameful that gay people get the harassment they face every day, and it sounds like an unpleasant scene all around. But maybe gay firemen who choose to march are ok with "Show us your hose!"
But everyone at the event could have behaved like angels and it still would have been wrong to force them to march. Freedom of association, anyone?
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Viagra Ad
[Read the article: Roundup: Viagra, women who like money and more]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The thing that gets me about that ad is the loving looks the musicians give each other. And the dog.
I didn't think they were all going to drive off home to boink their girlfriends and wives, that's for sure...
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Population and the Environment
[Read the article: Greening the mommy wars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How can anyone seriously be confused about the connection between population and the environment? Every person who is on the planet uses resources. Some of those resources are not renewable. More people == fewer resources. I think we should be encouraging a gradual and managed decline in world (and especially first-world) population, to avoid sudden and cataclysmic declines caused by war and disease.
Of *course* this is something we should be talking about.
It's something we should be talking about even if we're not talking about the environment, because population trends affect everything. Economics, wars, culture, public health, you name it.
Also, I find the notion that we should outbreed our political enemies to be noxious. What a burden to place on your children! What if they grow up to disagree with you? Shouldn't you have better reasons to want children?