Letters to the Editor

Letters posted here are associated with the following Salon Premium Member:

droogoy

Published Letters: 590     Editor's Choice: 9

  • Answers

    [Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    792038z wrote:

    How does godless evolution explain human evil?

    The tri-partite brain (composed of meso-cortex, paleo-cortexa and neo cortex) has the propensity for "evil" built into it. For example, the reticular formation and associated regions (e.g. amygdala) have circuits built in for lust, territoriality and warfare-genocide.

    These circuits are largely detached from the thinking, reasoning centers.

    One astute person has compared the evolutionary format of the human brain to a Lamborghini (neocortex) with a 1957 Chevy engine (meso-cortex)atop a Model T chassis (paleo-cortex)

    Given this, it's a wonder humans don't demonstrate more "evil" than they do.

    In any case, no "devils" are needed!

    To what or whom do you credit a person living perfectly or nearly perfectly with next to no bad attitudes, next to no torts against others, and next to no selfishness?

    Good genes and damned good parenting!

  • Internet pamphlets

    [Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    verelse wrote:

    Nice try to seem more knowledgeable, droogoy, by pointing to an internet pamphlet with very deep organic chemistry. Did you write it? I think not, somehow

    So WHAT????? The link conveniently embodies not only EVIDENCE but TESTS for FALSIFICATION which YOU SAID didn't exist. My point wasn't to proffer an absolutism, but merely to refute your brand of bollocks that evolution lacked falsifiability and predictions that could be confirmed.

    Must I "reinvent the wheel" each time I am making a point, when there are dozens of sites and forums on which I debate? I think not. Not any more than I need to reproduce opacity tables each time I discuss stellar evolution or nuclear reactions within O, B type stars.

    Only a moron or fool would expect that one create or produce original work in response to each intemperate remark by some lunatic halfwit on the net.

    All you do is confirm my original take, that you are an ineffable bozo, and twit. You are not worth the time and troulbe to respond to beyond this little takedown.

  • Berkowitz is an idiot.

    [Read the article: WSJ Op-Ed page decries hatred of the president]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    Berkowitz is a total idiot. In fact, Bush hatred is totally justified. Here is a moron who barely eked thorugh, and indeed LOST the popular vote by over 540,000. Any sensible person who lost the popular vote would govern temperately by giving an ear to all, and keeping a low profile. He would not, I repeat would not, act as if he had taken 49 of 50 states in a landslide. THAT sort of brash, cowboyism is what launched Bush hatred. (That plus his stupid, incoherent speech ....at the level of a low grade imbecile)

    By contrast, JFK also got in by a very narrow margin, he did win the popular vote - but by barely more than a hundred thousand. He governed with a tenor of noblesse oblige and always reminded himself of his narrow edge, lest he act too precipitously.

    Not so the cowboy Bush!

    As for the WSJ, these maggots on the op-ed page are still writing and acting like they are all in la-la land.

    Yesterday there was a piece by some HMO ignoramus asserting that Americans still have it better than their European counterparts because although health care is so expensive, they get paid more than European workers! (Hmmmmm......why do my Swiss and German friends still insist they prefer the benefits?)

    Three weeks ago, another academic twit wrote an article bemoaning all the attention to income inequality. He had the chutzpah to ask why so much attention to this, when Americans clearly had no such inequality in their happiness index, or in their optimism index.

    Errrr.....mayhap because those don't pay the bills, moron!

  • Actually

    [Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    verelse wrote:

    Sorry I took you seriously. Should have recognized a baiter.

    No, sorry I took you seriously, I should have recognized a grade A bozo when you first insisted there were no falsification tests for evolution.

    Fits the standard modus operandi for the zealots, morons and pseudo-intellectuals I have had to debate (including in real life forums) for the past twenty -eight years.

    If you are some kind of intellectual, you are a disgrace to the name. If you possess a Ph.D. it ought to be revoked. You ought to go soak your head someplace.

  • Debasing the facts

    [Read the article: WSJ Op-Ed page decries hatred of the president]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    "mr snoid" wrote:

    In 1962, when I was 17, I was one of 150 people out of Metropolitan Chicago's 4 million to feel compelled to demonstrate in downtown Chicago against John Kennedy's bringing us to he brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis

    Methinks your historical facts are amiss, else you were too young (or too inattentive) to process those facts as news at the time. Let me assist.

    JFK DID NOT bring anyone to the 'brink". IRBMs were found on Cuban soil (later - in 1993, confirmed by Robert McNamara that they were all ARMED - with single megaton warheads) and so he of necessity HAD to do something.

    He adopted the most minimalist approach which was a naval blockade to prevent more parts, launchers from making their way in.

    This did not sit well with the JOint Chiefs, especially Gen. Curtis LeMay who pushed JFK for a full pre-emptive strike and invasion. JFK resisted all their pressures, despite being compared to Neville Chamberlain. As we know now, and as McNamara reported in a 1993 interview, had an invasion been launched the world would have been evaporated in a thermo-nuclear war.

    Once more with feeling: JFK's blockade solution was a temperate one. Something had to be done, the Russian missiles in Cuba could not have been neglected (just ask those of us who lives in Miami at the time, as I did.)

    If you must blame anyone or anything for taking us to the brink, blame Nikita Khrushchev for installing those missiles in the first place, and arming them. Don't blame JFK for acting as he had to. Especially as he resisted the most extreme responses that WOULD have incinerated everything.