Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 123 Editor's Choice: 9
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Attacking our own
[Read the article: Congressman loses it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe I'm horribly naive, but this guy looks like one of the best allies the anti-war movement could have. He's a Democrat, he's against the war, he voted against it in '02, he has his facts straight and he has a plan for getting the job done that goes beyond issuing sound bites. It's unfortunate that he had to stick it to a veteran's mother to defend his position, but I can imagine how frustrating it would be to try to do the right thing and still get attacked for it.
But sure, let's keep trying to pull up the most unflattering depictions of our Democratic leadership and see how quickly we can lose control of Congress again.
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Strange, isn't it.
[Read the article: The death of hi-fi?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, music these days is all about convenience and availability. For proof you need only compare the iPod with SACDs and DVD-Audio. The day it was launched, the iPod became one of the hottest consumer items in human history, whereas SACD and DVD-Audio players and media were introduced to little fanfare and dropped off most people's radar within a year or two. The iPod added convenience; the other technologies added quality. People wanted convenience.
On the other hand, people DO care about video quality. Bigger and better HDTVs are selling well, and HD home video is starting to take off... unlike the once-promising and now-dead PSP media format, or personal video players in general (the iPod video sells well because it's an iPod, not because it plays video). And despite all the carrier-generated buzz about cell phone video, I have yet to see a single person watch an episode of 24 or whatever on their phone.
The lesson, I guess? People only care about music if they can have it everywhere, but they're still content to watch TV at home.
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It's not a vegan issue, it's a friendship issue.
[Read the article: My vegan friend insists I justify myself]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been a vegetarian for nearly 13 years, which means I started when I was 16. Back then, there was a natural synergy between the newness of my beliefs and my snappy, rebellious state of mind, and it was inevitable that I'd end up harassing the non-veggies of the world (primarily my parents). Thankfully, that phase was relatively short-lived, and nowadays the only real "technique" I use to sway others to my side is cooking great vegetarian food and ordering great veggie dishes at restaurants to demonstrate that it's not merely possible to live this way; it's fun and fulfilling too.
Demanding that a close friend justify his or her carnivorous lifestyle strikes me as wrong in a pretty good number of ways. First and foremost, it's being a bad friend, and I'm hard-pressed to see it any other way. Putting a social, political, or religious issue ahead of a friendship (especially a long-term one) is being a bad friend. Putting anything ahead of a friendship, unless it's something that threatens life or well-being, is being a bad friend. I would like to know how this vegan friend would react to having another friend demand a justification for why he wouldn't accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Because that's not really any better or worse than demanding a justification for non-veganism, but it's a similar issue because god knows there are plenty of well-meaning but wrong-headed religious people out there doing exactly that.
I do believe that vegetarianism (and veganism if you're able to go that far) is right, and sure, ideally I'd love to have all my friends share in that. But that's really not my main concern. My main concern is that they're my friends and we love each other and enjoy each other's company. If I valued their socio-political leanings above all that, then I wouldn't be friends with them. I'd just seek out a bunch of other vegetarians to befriend, and my world would be that much more reassuringly insular. So, I'm glad I don't have that need.
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Other people's thoughts
[Read the article: My husband read my journal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"And I forgive him for reading it. It would have taken Gandhi or Mother Teresa to turn away from such a document."
I know my girlfriend keeps a journal, I know where it is, and I could easily read it pretty much whenever I want. Of course I don't, because (a) I respect her right to privacy and (b) I have enough trust in our relationship to be confident that the feelings she shares with me are honest.
On occasion I have access to co-workers' private emails. I don't read those either. Again, simply because I respect their rights to privacy. (Then again, I probably don't want to know that much about their personal lives.)
What I'm trying to say is that I don't think the obvious temptation to read private material in any way excuses the action. Infidelity is mighty tempting to a lot of people, too.
And I think it's sad to have to keep your private thoughts locked up from a loved one. If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. I just hope it's a stopgap rather than a permanent solution, and in the interim her husband learns to respect consciously the limitations on what percentage of her brain he's allowed access to.