Letters to the Editor
amspeck
Published Letters: 357 Editor's Choice: 50
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Relentlessness
[Read the article: Microsoft doesn't matter anymore]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not a new thing to say Microsoft is obsolescent, over invested in the poor products coming from their group-think labs, and that every major project outside the operating systems (and even the operating systems) essentially suck. I remember exactly this conversation from the parallel roll-outs of NT and the Xbox. The Xbox was expected to crush the console industry but instead taught gamers to think in multiple consoles by rolling out premier titles written just for them.
Microsoft doesn't have to hit everything out of the park. They just have to be relentless. And they've got the size and the money to be that. They are committed to winning on Search, but it's not going to happen through which browser we choose. It will find it's way into Explorer, which already does both internet and system browsing, become the default way people find their stuff on their boxes, and then naturally become the way they look for stuff to buy. People will still think they're "Googling" because they're taking the same actions, but it will be a different company serving the ads and getting the revenue.
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Tobacco
[Read the article: Ask Pablo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One possible culprit I find very scary which people can do something about are the pesticides used on tobacco. If you smoke and are worried about bees consider finding brands that use tobacco not grown with pesticides.
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The Anger Thing
[Read the article: This town hall didn't help John McCain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was a McCain supporter in the 2000 race. I remember hearing about McCain's temper, but discounting it. Now I can see it, and this is a scary guy. The more on the ropes he is, the more he pouts. The more he talks over the other guy. The more he tries to be funny by cutting other people down. In the first debate he did angry push-ups on the podium, in this one he did angry stalking around the stage. His body has been broken by torture, but clearly it's undergone decades of storing anger for McCain. He isn't able to be fluid, only tough.
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McCain's Deception
[Read the article: A Fannie Freddie debate primer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The real deception at the heart of John McCain's insistence in the debate last night that his call for action on Fannie and Freddie would have allowed us all to avoid this pain is this: Last night he said he called for more regulation.
In 2005, the prevailing thought was that the companies should be fully privatized instead of continuing in their partial privatization state. What full privatization would have brought -- at least in the short term -- was increased profits. Increased profits come from freeing up more capital held aside by government regulations and investing that capital in instruments paying a higher interest rate than cash. The best performing non-stock instruments until about 9 months ago were collateralized debt obligations from sub-prime (including liars loans) pools. In short, what McCain and Greenspan were calling for in 2005 is the freedom to get more subprime debt on the books, not less!
McCain and his cronies -- chief among them Phil Graham -- have rewritten the financial laws of this county in the pursuit of better returns. But the pursuit of better returns is a collective action problem. The only way you win is to have the best returns of all, because when the folks on the bottom get their returns, that establishes the inflation mark. You have to beat inflation to get growth. The human brain is not capable of thinking its way out of a collective action problem when it is in the middle of it. Banks cannot regulate themselves out of collective action. Car buyers motivated by safety will buy big cars even though it makes the roads less safe. Nations with access to advanced weaponry will build up arsenals if they feel threatened. The only way to stop collective action run-ups is to enact regulation that artificially caps what's available so we can turn our energies to other things.
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Ethanol
[Read the article: Zooming to the future]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good survey of the trends in shopping for our cars for the future, but you hid ethanol in "multi-fuel cars" and that's not fair to the cars. Ethanol can be made on the community scale from food that's past its due date or not good enough for the shelves. It can be made from anything that would go in a compost bin, and what's left from fermentation is still good for composting. Two of the best ethanol cars out there would fit right into our streets -- the Honda Fit and the Honda Civic. These are both sold exclusively in Brazil and there are no rumors about bringing them to the US. I think part of the reason for that is that journalists writing about cars forget that they're even a possibility.
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Sad
[Read the article: "His name says it all"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What sad, scared people.
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Third possibility
[Read the article: Your daily Palin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The third possibility about the ring is that Cindy McCain has taken our candidate aside and warned her about the dangers of wearing bling in a rope line.
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Beans
[Read the article: Coping with a crazy-making economy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My girlfriend said a similar thing a couple weeks ago -- looking in the pantry she said, "I'm glad we have so many beans." I got defensive because people have made fun of me stocking food in the past, but my family's habit of keeping a 20# bag of beans around really was a comfort to her.
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"when we could afford it"
[Read the article: McCain co-chairman questions Obama's drug use]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I believe the line from the book is pretty close to "[we did] blow when we could afford it." That's not the admission of an addict, that's the admission of a young man trying things out. "Dreams from my Father" is written in the format of "Prodigal Son finds his way home" and that's a great example of finding his way home.
In contrast, John McCain's prodigal years consisted of wrecking two fighter planes and cutting power lines while clowning around in a plane in Spain. How does trashing a couple million taxpayer dollars and endangering the lives of others compare to scoring blow "when you can afford it"?