Letters to the Editor
DLF
Published Letters: 267 Editor's Choice: 24
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Forest and trees
[Read the article: Who needs a Prius anyway?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is a big picture here that nobody (so far) has mentioned: neither the article nor any of the letters (again, so far) has said one word about any of the former "Big Three" US car makers. Why is that not surprising?
The first car I ever bought, in 1982, was a 1979 diesel VW Rabbit. Got it mainly because my wife and I were planning a long trip to Mexico; at the time, US cars had all gone over to unleaded gas, which was still unavailable in most of Mexico. The diesel seemed like the perfect solution. The great mileage -- average of 48 to 50 mpg -- was just a nice bonus at first, but I soon got spoiled by the infrequent pit stops. After many years, when the Rabbit finally turned into a puddle of rust and worn out parts in the roadsalted Michigan landscape, we upgraded to a 1989 VW diesel Jetta -- bigger car, HUGE trunk (bigger than I've seen in any other cars, even the giant US boats), still 48-50 mpg. The longest I ever went between fill-ups was 725 miles (the Jetta has a 14.5 gallon tank).
Ok, after 15 years, with a kid in school etc., we decide we need a second car. I go to every US auto dealer in town (Ford, GM, Chrysler) to see what they have. My first question: what do you have that gets better than 40 mpg?
The dealers universal response: they laugh in my face. "Nobody cares about gas mileage!" It was late 2003, gas had fallen to around $1/gallon. Let's just burn all the gas! It's so cheap, who cares!
That was the attitude of the dealers, and worse, the attitude of the designers and execs of the US car companies. There was literally NO PLANNING for the day when gas would hit $3/gal (not that anybody knew it would come so soon, but any idiot should have known that it would happen sooner or later, especially the way we were all burning gas back then).
So there you go. My wife has a nifty 2004 VW diesel Jetta. After looking around, trying the hybrids, bugging the uninterested US car dealers, we decided that was the best we could do. I still drive my rusted-out '89 diesel Jetta, when I have to drive at all (now that our son is off at college, I average about 1000 miles/yr driving, get around by bike whenever I can otherwise). Both cars run on biodiesel (or so it is labelled) sold at the local gas station. The '89 still gets 48 mpg, the '04 gets about 45 (the AC works on the new car!).
Maybe I'll get a hybrid someday... or maybe there will be a solar-electric car by the time the old Jetta bites the dust... But will there be a US car maker that sells a car (made in the US) that gets better than 40 mpg? Somehow I doubt it...
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Florida, and...
[Read the article: Another election fiasco in Florida?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So what are we here in Michigan, chopped liver?
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Best Keef ever!
[Read the article: The K Chronicles ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Strip away the BS"... brilliant!
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Usage
[Read the article: The case of the angry colonel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For Boylan, versus = vice. Maybe he's using a voice recognition program instead of typing, who knows.
For Farhad, disinterested = uninterested.
Sorry, just had to point that out.
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Last word on "vice"
[Read the article: The case of the angry colonel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From the Oxford English Dictionary:
vice, prep. In place of; in succession to. [Historical examples:] 1770 Scots Mag. Jan. 55/1, 6th reg. of foot: Capt. Mathew Derenzy to be Major, vice John Forrest; by purchase. 1787 Gentl. Mag. Nov. 1015/1 The Lieutenant-Governor has appointed..James Miller..Lieutenant of the said fort, vice Frederic Gottsched, who is gone to Hallifax. 1806 BERESFORD Miseries Hum. Life III. ix, A jarring bat; a right-hand bat for a left-handed player; a hat, vice stumps. 1849 THACKERAY Pendennis xxii, He was gardener and out-door man, vice Upton, resigned. 1886 C. E. PASCOE London of To-day xi. (ed. 3) 111 It was..soon afterwards reorganized, with Mr. Randegger, vice Mr. Leslie, as conductor.
...So I was wrong about vice. Right about "disinterested," though. And I am interested in the whole affair, particularly the underlying question of the politicized military.
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Poco has learned his lesson well
[Read the article: Tom the Dancing Bug]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who needs violent repression or censorship, when the powers-that-be can convince enough people that "all politicians are the same" and "it doesn't really matter"?
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fakes and fakes
[Read the article: The "real" fake Col. Steven Boylan's e-mail]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As another writer just noted, googling the names (Edward "Nina Kaminsky") is all it takes to reveal the rental scheme. So much for that fake.
As for the rest of it: chasing after email accounts and servers is just so much red herring. All it takes is reading the texts to see that the "fake" Boylan email was written by the same writer who sent all the indisputedly "real" Boylan messages. Just call him "Faker Boylan" and leave it at that.
Or rather, get back to the point of the whole story: the unacceptable politicization of the military.
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DK has a broader appeal than you might think
[Read the article: Stop lying to yourself. You love Dennis Kucinich]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I keep in email touch with a bunch of guys I knew way back in high school. In social terms, they're mainly a bunch of white males from the tonier suburbs of Dallas Texas, and their politics shows it. But when some of them took the WQAD candidate questionnaire, almost everyone left of Tancredo reported that Kucinich came up as their preferred candidate. And he did for me, too. Kinda spooky, isn't it?
Of course, living in Michigan now, I never have had (and probably never will have) any say in who gets the nomination, so I don't get too worked up about it.