_______________ADOPTION TRILOGY (01/05/99)
	I have been following your series on adoption with great interest. My 32-year-old daughter, Catherine, was adopted when she was 3 weeks old. Around her 30th birthday, she elected to register with her adoption agency in Maryland and see if she could be "matched" with her biological mother. Amazingly, her biological mother was seeking to find her at the same time! There was so much synergism in the seeking and the finding that it took all of our breaths away! I had always also supported this possible reunion since I began telling my daughter of her adoption as an infant. When we all met at the Austin airport, it was one of the greatest experiences of all our lives. The most significant intellectual factor I carry with me to this day is that I am convinced that personality is almost totally genetic. Environment certainly shapes, enhances and constricts the personality as experiences in life unfold, but the basic structure arrives with the soul. Catherine and her biological mother are so much alike in all and more of the following ways: values, speech patterns and voice quality, physical gestures and mannerisms, sense of humor, world view, gifts, academic strengths and weaknesses, organizational skills, an inherited brain structuring called synesthesia, and on and on. She has not found her biological father yet, but I won't be surprised to see other significant personality characteristics gifted from him as well. For me the nurture/nature controversy is no more. Nature wins hands down! I'm actually not so surprised since neither of my adopted children's personalities have really radically changed since they were put in my arms as newborns. So, I always "knew" this instinctively. Now I know it through experience and emerging science. -- Barbara Mathews Blanton
_______________LEFT HOOK: WHY LOTT AND BARR HATE CLINTON BY JOE CONASON (12/22/98)
	Joe Conason's column is an excellent exposé of these hypocrites. I was born and grew up under apartheid rule in South Africa and have a sixth sense about discrimination. I can also tell you by just looking at a person and observing his behavior whether someone has mixed blood in his ancestry and is trying to conceal this. "White" South Africans who had some color in their background but who did not want to admit this fact became the most fanatical racists and joined hate and militia groups who espoused a pure Aryan nation. They then became the most rabid hatemongers and attacked anyone who stood for equality. This was so that they could better fit into the white race group and have no questions asked about their relatives of color. Look into Barr's roots, past his white pigmentation (his features tell the tale of miscegenation) -- he is descended from blacks somewhere in the past and hates this! I know whereof I speak because I can identify one of my own. -- Soma Moodley
_______________ARE WE HAVING HIGH-TECH FUN YET? BY JANELLE BROWN (12/23/98)
	High tech fun and games are great for folks who enjoy interacting with machines, but Entros is about playing with each other -- not machines. Janelle Brown understood this when she and her boyfriend enjoyed The Blender, Entros' Game Show, featuring a live, entertaining emcee and a chance to test their wits against 40 other live contestants. Although she didn't mention it, Brown probably also sacrificed a virgin or two, jumped around on a bouncing pin ball tour of the world and reenacted Lucy and Ethel in the bon-bon factory race to put together wooden hamburgers. The tens of thousands of people who have enjoyed Entros at our Seattle and San Francisco destinations don't return for the technology, they come to enjoy each other through playful games with a healthy sense of humor. I'm glad Janelle enjoyed the Asian/Southwest fusion cuisine, but she didn't get the price right. To enter Entros is free and the experience starts at the door. A full evening, four hours for dinner drinks and games costs on average $30 per person (the average entree price is $12). This is very affordable when you consider the cost of dinner, drinks and a movie for two in San Francisco. -- Stephen Brown President, Entros Inc. N E X T+P A G E+| Ph.D.s find jobs and satisfaction outside of academia