Letters to the Editor
Miette
Published Letters: 30 Editor's Choice: 6
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Clarification
[Read the article: Is Star Simpson's "fake bomb" just an art jacket?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think there are some important facts being ignored here.
1. Star did not go to the airport to fly; she went to pick someone up. She wasn't planning to get on a plane or go through security. So all this about "would you want to sit next to that?!?!" hysteria is inappropriate.
2. She did make some errors; most notably, when someone behind a desk asked her what the blinky thing was, she didn't explain it to them. That's why the police reacted, and since the desk minion doesn't know anything about bombs and could only say hysteria-inducing things like "wires and some kind of putty", the police responded the way they were trained: with overwhelming force.
Now. Do you think it's appropriate that security responds with overwhelming force to every incident? Another headline had a bunch of streets shut down in Charleston today because of a suspicious package. Certainly, a lot of people prefer a better-safe-than-sorry approach to security, and anyone who innocently gets caught in the crossfire is either not actually innocent, or is an acceptable casualty.
I think that better-safe-than-sorry is actually the best way to guarantee that we, as a society, are pretty damn sorry. Once someone who knows a breadboard from a bomb looked at her, why wasn't she immediately released? Got to justify the reaction. And besides, anyone who gets machine guns pointed at them must have been doing something wrong.
Security forces these days are training to respond to any action with overwhelming force. When the world bank met a while back, the heavily armed police officers outnumbered protesters.
So let us not talk about airports or undergrads with LEDs. Let us talk about the change in security tactics and procedures and where it's gonna get us. Everything is indeed different after 9/11 - we accept greater surveillance and security, without question, and blame anyone who sets off a response. In this day and age, they should have known better.
We should all know better.
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Oh, one more thing.
[Read the article: Is Star Simpson's "fake bomb" just an art jacket?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To all the people shouting "fucking pigs" or "I hate cops":
There are good cops. There are bad cops. But this has absolutely nothing to do with individual cops. They were doing their job the way they were trained to, using the tools they were provided by their superiors.
The problem is not the cops. The problem is the training and procedures we accept as standard, reasonable security responses. Attacking the individuals as pigs guarantees that reasonable people will dismiss your opinion.
You cannot fix a systemic problem by blaming the individuals working within the system.
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@ Pyrian
[Read the article: Is Star Simpson's "fake bomb" just an art jacket?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Fedex to your hotel. Better anyway, you don't have to carry it or have anyone check it out in your luggage and you can pack it more securely.
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Hm.
[Read the article: Daily wanking]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Eight times a week is only every day and twice on Sunday.
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Connotations
[Read the article: Linguists: "Moist" makes women cringe]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All words have meanings beyond their basic dictionary definitions:
34 Moby Thesaurus words for "moist":
boggy, clammy, damp, dampish, dank, dewy, drippy, drizzly, fenny, foggy, gooey, humid, lachrymose, marshy, maudlin, misty, muggy, mushy, rainy, roric, roriferous, sappy, slushy, soggy, soupy, steamy, sticky, swampy, tacky, tearful, teary, undried, wet, wettish
This is a feature, not a bug. Words with negative connotations - or sexual connotations - are not offensive, and we shouldn't let them become so. But we should keep the connotations, and let them change with time, because they enrich our language. Is it because vaginas get wet that so many of these wet words have negative connotations? Probably not. Probably it's because it sucks to get caught out in the rain. But it does say something about us when we hate on a perfectly good word like moist on a sexual basis.
Although maybe we should hate on moist when it's in a sexual context. If the vaginas involved in your sex are merely moist instead of sopping, dripping, or wet, you've got other problems.
A friend of mine likes to ask, "absent any other context, which word is worse: used or moist?"
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....I can't imagine.
[Read the article: Once and for all, proof that Macs are cheaper than PCs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I simply cannot imagine buying a computer based on resale value. Or on logo. It seems inherently absurd to me. I buy and operate the cheapest machine that meets my needs.
Macs don't meet my needs, because you pay more for less machine. And I absolutely loathe the UI with a deep and abiding passion. I know it's secretly linux now, but it's linux that *acts like a mac*.
No way I'm going to pay more for a gimpy machine with a one-button mouse that costs a fortune to upgrade just because it's white and shiny.
I'm glad Apple is around, I'm glad that it drives competition and innovation. Maybe its chewy linux center will convince Adobe to make the software I need in a linux version so I can punt windows.
But buying a mac is not like buying a beemer, and it's not like buying a ford. It's like buying a dodge neon with a snazzy paint job and a souped-up sound system. Looks real nice in the driveway, but it won't accelerate uphill and the blind spot will drive you nuts.
Also, well, you know, if your machine has a lower resale value, it's less likely to be stolen and sold on ebay.