Letters to the Editor
amspeck
Published Letters: 321 Editor's Choice: 48
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The School's Role
[Read the article: So was it a "pact," or more of an informal agreement?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The school should be teaching these girls that having children while still in high school isn't the way to a better life? First, that they have a high school should get that message across. Why else would we invest hundreds of millions of dollars to teach kids reading, writing, arithmatic, biology, chemistry, American Literature, French, Spanish, and computer programming. Every class offered at a high school says that education is better than pregnancy.
But the great thing about teens is that with the bodies of almost adults and without the conceptual brain engaged yet, they're a great reflection of the *actual values* of a community.
These girls saw that their lives were going to get better with a baby around. It increased their social connections. They found a support group they weren't getting at home or school. They identified ways their community supported them. (Like telling them that having a child was better than free condoms.) They were going to be taken more seriously as mothers than they would be as just another teen. And they took their community up on all those unspoken values.
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Woman gets attention by showing bra
[Read the article: SOS double-D]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Woman drops bra to save her life
Woman discovers the 11th essential
Yoo hoo! Boys! Over here!
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Another Reason
[Read the article: Why $140-a-barrel oil is no surprise]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with the idea that oil is beginning to reflect the true cost of obtaining a limited resource. Are we seeing Enron-style market manipulation? McCain adviser Phil Gramm has done his best to ensure businesses are free to engage in similar scams, but it doesn't make sense. Investors are buying less of everything that's not backed by real assets, so it's hard to argue that Exxon is hiding it's debts and selling the cheap oil elsewhere while the expensive oil is sold here.
What does contribute is that despite our decades-long admission that we are energy addicts and that our chief source of energy were two dirty substances that were extracts -- oil and gas -- we stubbornly refused to invest significantly in renewable fuels. The renewables we do have -- nuclear and ethanol -- depend on oil and coal inputs to manufacture.
The Bush Administration, while harassing the Democrats for failing to do anything in the face of rising gas costs, in fact recently halted solar and wind installations on federal land, claiming a need for additional environmental studies.
It's like "Who Killed the Electric Car?" If the government does not create incentives for the things we will need proactively, over the resistance of businesses that want to focus on maximizing profits today, then when the time comes that we actually need the technology (electric cars, massive installed solar and wind capacity) we go through incredible growing pains as we shift there.
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Other results
[Read the article: Why $140-a-barrel oil is no surprise]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think that the trends Mr. Leonard cited in this article will end up having an effect on many other parts of our lives as well. For example, it is currently cheaper to create toilet paper from virgin logs than it is to use recycled pulp. It is currently cheaper to manufacture a new plastic bottle than to re-use an existing glass one. These are evidence that the cost of transportation and manufacturing isn't high enough, because applying "reduce, reuse, recycle" should result in saving money.
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Must be hard
[Read the article: Next stop, 30 percent approval ratings]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Must be hard for a guy who coasted through life on his charm and his daddy's connections to actually have people dislike him based on job performance. Two really foreign concepts. One can see why he believes the dislike is an aberration and people will come around.
Or maybe he's planning a beer-drinking tour to help people change their minds!
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Another Recommendation
[Read the article: Doug Fine's excellent nanny goat adventure]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you liked that, you should also try Catherine Friend's story of starting a poly-culture farm with her partner. It's called "Hit by a Farm".
She also has a new book out on how to be a compassionate omnivore.
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Since he's going to be offended anyway...
[Read the article: McCain campaign gets greedy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How about we break out some flip-flops and purple heart bandages?
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The first volley
[Read the article: The mommy wars, interrupted]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the beginning of the ink on the subject starts a generation (or two) earlier with Barbara Kerr's "Smart Girls, Gifted Women" on women who were smart-tracked as girls, made it into a prestigious college, and the choices they made afterward.
But what's interesting to me about the mommy wars is the idea that it's the mommy side of the equation that's broken. My personal suspicion is that more company men need to take significant breaks and look at new options for careers in order to be healthier human beings. Perhaps if we were arguing for a new definition of work instead of whether it's more feminist to adapt to a hierarchical corporate system or to choose families and nurture, the argument would sound less false.
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Excellent!
[Read the article: Matthew 25 Network takes its message to Christian radio]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Democrat's message can be very motivational for those in the evangelical block who care about social justice. I'm glad someone is stepping out and starting make the case.
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Long distances?
[Read the article: American epitaph: "More is more"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Americans don't actually like driving long distances. The vast majority of our trips are under 5 miles, a distance easily covered by bicycle. And while we do drive long distances for work, we get there stressed out, angry, and less productive than those who work closer.
So it's not that we enjoy our 12,000 mile a year contribution to global warming.
It's that we think we're stuck doing it. And that's exactly what incentives are supposed to help us with -- getting unstuck.
We've done an excellent job of getting unstuck over the past couple months. Small car sales have shot up, miles driven have fallen, people are buying bikes and riding public transportation like crazy.
Where would we be now if we'd started this in 1992?