Letters to the Editor
amspeck
Published Letters: 357 Editor's Choice: 50
-
Self-labels
[Read the article: T-shirt: "I was raped"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am a survivor and I started taking karate at 30 as a way to reclaim some sense of power over my body and my space. I was well through counseling at that point and had been through support groups. I struggled with whether disclose my status for a few months after starting. Then one Saturday morning I was working with a woman who was visibly terrified in class. After class I was talking with an instructor and quickly learned that she was a survivor who identified with being a survivor, that all the instructors knew and had talked about it, and that no one expected her to be comfortable holding the pads for a fellow student.
I decided then that I would not disclose. Not because I didn't occasionally panic in class when something felt too familiar, but because I wanted the expectations of being normal so that I could learn to be normal.
In the same way, I attended the Vagina Monologues this week with friends. In the past I have stood up during the women who have experienced violence section, but this week I didn't because I know that while my experience has a name that falls into that category, their experiences are equally painful, equally motivated by gender, but not so easily labeled. We all stood up together during the friend or relative of a woman who has experienced violence.
-
Fair
[Read the article: Greenspan: "This is really quite unfair"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If my bank can quote Alan Greenspan when trying to sell me an ARM when "interest rates are the lowest in years!" thereby guaranteeing that they'll see more of my money in the coming years, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to say Alan Greenspan has lead us (in part) astray. After all, he did little to vehemently educate or dissuade American consumers about their irrational enthusiasm for alternative mortgage financing.
-
Blogging
[Read the article: How can I get a writing job?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you're not blogging, you're not serious about wanting to be a writer. If you are, you're creating your own clips. When you can produce something interesting and polished every day, start looking around. There are lots of blogs that will let you write for them in exchange for part of the traffic revenue. That gets you more clips. Make sure you're writing at work. You're not just an administrative assistant, you're in a place, meeting people, learning about your industry. Watch the professional publications that go by. Is there something you know you could write for them? There's another clip.
As Cary said, there's a lot of competition for writing *jobs* -- that is pre-packaged positions with bosses, paychecks, and benefits. But almost every job includes writing. Excel at that, and you'll find yourself doing more and more writing for your paycheck.
I wrote book reviews for a 'zine and that got me into the finals for a position writing response letters in my company. My writing chops got me that position, which itself turned into a piece of my resume for being a tech writer.
I always dreamed of writing poetry for my work. I'm not publishing chapbooks, but my writing pays my mortgage.
-
Bikes and Prii
[Read the article: Beware the ninja Prius]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One difference between bikes and Priuses is that when you are approaching someone who seems to not be aware of you on a bike, you can actually use your voice to alert them. Or a bell, or a toot on a horn. All of these are sounds that are appropriate to the noise level of the activity. They aren't sudden, loud sounds coming out of nowhere, like a car horn is.
I think that when most of the cars on the road are electric, there won't be a problem hearing them. There is the sound of the rubber meeting the road. There are sound "holes" when a Prius passes. But right now, we don't have a continuous sound that can help one judge position, distance, and speed.
My idea for what to do to provide this is what mountain drivers use for deer. The mount an inconspicuous whistle that uses the force of air passing by it to make sound.
-
Parallel article
[Read the article: The technology that will save humanity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A good parallel article to this one appears in May's Vanity Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/rfk_manifesto200805
It's by Robert F. Kennedy. It discusses the political and infrastructure issues a bit more expansively and talks about a range of RE technologies, including concentrating solar.
-
False opposites
[Read the article: John McCain's bad week]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think you have to be anti-war to see that John McCain could well be hurt by his pro-interventionist stand. I know several military families who are fed up with corporations feeding at the trough, who are embarrassed by our very real acts of torture, and who feel like the GOP is using the blood of their sons to grease their money machines.
Similarly, one can be a Democrat and believe that there are very real times when sending an armed force into a conflict is the best moral choice.
-
The wrong solution
[Read the article: McCain-onomics: Cheap gas in every tank]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Current gas taxes take only the slimmest portion of the subsidies we pour into gasoline back. Reducing those taxes only encourages us to hide still more of the true cost of gasoline in our federal budget. If every American saw the $20 a gallon gas really costs when they filled up at the pump, real change would happen, and happen quickly. Oil companies don't want real change, so they donate to the GOP to keep our oil addiction safe, legal, and affordable.
My favorite proposal is to pay for the Iraq war through a "temporary" tax at the pump.
-
Penguin Nipples
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Only mammals have nipples. Except some marsupials. Only mammals and marsupials have nipples. Maybe Opus isn't really a penguin, but some kind of penguin/platypus hybrid.