The Barbie fixation
BY JANELLE BROWN
(07/28/99)

My wife is a project manager in the IT industry. Having listened to her gripes on many an occasion, I know that what she wants is technology which works. Forget the bells and whistles; if it fulfills the requirements and is robust enough to withstand amendments, that is enough. If it's pretty too, that is an advantage. Many people in this business focus on the "neat" factor to the exclusion of the practical. Maybe it's time for more female values?

-- Rik Meucci
London

I was at the New York MacWorld Expo, where the iBook was introduced. Though Apple had row after row of iBooks to try out, there were lines of people waiting to get their hands on one. Many computer journalists had egg on their face last year after they criticized Apple's new iMac; the iMac broke all sales records at Apple and was key to their financial comeback.

There are many people like myself that are simply trying to run a business and want to use a computer that can get the work done, without having to call up a consultant every couple months. I (a 42-year-old male) would love to get a new iBook. And yes, my 17-year-old daughter told us that she would very much like to take a new iBook with her to college next year.

-- Glenn Grafton
Telford, Pa.

Dvorak is right on target. I don't know anyone in my business who has expressed an interest in the iBook, primarily because of the "sissy" colors. Many of my associates have an iMac, but who wants to be seen with the new iBook? Would you take this thing into a new business presentation? I think not. In my professional opinion, the color scheme gives the iBook very limited marketing/sales potential to the very market it intends to flood.

-- Dave Riley
New York

When I read Dvorak's column, I thought that he was ridiculing nothing else but himself. I, for one, do not think of the iBook as "girly" or "effeminate," and will be happy to lug one around as soon as I can lay my hands on one.

-- Alain Chammas

Girl talk
BY JANELLE BROWN
(07/28/99)

I find nothing troubling about the idea of teenage girls using the Internet as a forum to discuss their questions and anxieties about sex. Fifteen years ago, when I was a teenager, those of us whose parents weren't comfortable discussing these issues had to make do with stealing issues of Playboy from our older brothers' bedrooms -- or, worse, through trial and error with early sexual partners. It seems much healthier for girls to have a place where they can learn about orgasms and birth control without embarrassment, and without having to learn through their own experimentation.

-- Sarah Gold
New York

Margaret Cho: Celebrity as a disease
BY CINTRA WILSON
(07/28/99)

No one put a gun to Margaret Cho's head and marched her into a sitcom and celebrity. Stardom dictates its own terms. Why is she so surprised that the perceived love of millions comes with demands?

As for the pressure to lose weight and conform to "standards of beauty": Cho proclaims her love for "faggots and drag queens," but does not hold them accountable for setting the "beauty standard" -- which caused her so much suffering -- as the creative directors of all the major fashion magazines, and most of the top fashion photographers, make-up artists, stylists and fashion designers. Straight boys like their girls with some meat. Just check Playboy magazine's demise through the '80s, as fetish magazines took to bookstore shelves.

-- Jeremy Rogers
New York

It's time to say "Shut up!" to every celebrity who is tempted to whine and complain about how terrible and horrible fame is. It's disgusting, and at the same time laughable. Note to Margaret Cho: Do your stand-up thing at a podunk comedy club in nowheresville. The next time someone comes knockin' with a big fat contract for a TV show, turn it down. Then you won't be so burdened.

-- Lori Guthrie

The pits
BY MEI YAN LEUNG
(07/28/99)

I remember my mother chasing me through the house with a razor and tweezers back in the '80s, telling me that my eyebrows needed shaping! I can happily report that my eyebrows are still happily unmodified; I shave only when pushed into it by circumstances. To be honest, I think the whole thing is a conspiracy on the part of the razor manufacturers to sell razors.

Oddly enough, I have been told that prostitutes in some parts of Europe are just about the only women who shave their legs. A smooth-legged friend of mine had an uncomfortable run-in at a religious event when she encountered some young men visiting from Sweden.

-- Chris Geary-Durrill

There could definitely be a link between breast cancer and women shaving under their arms. The underarm area is one important body location for toxic material to exit the body, and underarm hair facilitates the evaporation of sweat and toxic materials from that area. In addition underarm deodorants stop up this natural exit and can cause additional problems from the chemical materials in the deodorants. When this area is stopped up the toxins that should have exited the body can then migrate to adjacent soft tissue (the breast). Cancer is the body's attempt at isolating toxic material in a skin sac within the body, in order that the body may maintain its normal function as long as possible. It may be time for women to reconsider shaving.

-- Alfred Morrissette
San Rafael, Calif.

Let the circus begin
BY SUZI PARKER
(07/28/99)

Does Giuliani have any other issue to run on besides Hillary Clinton's non-residency? I'm so sick of his jokes on the subject that I'm actually thinking about voting for Hillary. Guess what, Rudy? New Yorkers get it. Hillary Clinton isn't from New York. You've gotten it through our thick New York City skulls. Now can you talk about something else, like why you wouldn't meet with key black members of your staff until the NYPD killed some unarmed man?

-- Juliane Schneider
New York

Rudy Giuliani goes to Little Rock to tweak Hillary Clinton for carpetbagging, and is greeted by ... Lt. Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, of the New York Rockefellers, who is about as home-grown as Jeb Bush. Must every state have at least one politician named Bush, Kennedy or Rockefeller?

-- Michael Treece

A few questions:

If "carpetbagging" is so awful, how come Giuliani energetically supported Massachusetts resident Bobby Kennedy's successful 1964 bid for a United States Senate seat out of New York?

If Rudy is such a wonderful choice for Senate, how come the residents of his own city, the ones who know him the best, are by far the least supportive of his Senate bid?

And why haven't we seen his lovely wife, Donna Hanover, at Giuliani's side lately? Her presence would be just the thing to dispel all those nasty rumors that Rudy just married her in order to take advantage of her status as a local New York City TV personality, then dumped her like a bad habit once his butt was safely behind the mayor's desk.

-- Teresa Huberty
Minneapolis

Revenge is theirs
BY ALEX TODOROVIC
(07/27/99)

Two wrongs don't make a right, naturally. But of all the Serbs in Kosovo who say they're staying in Kosovo because they "haven't done anything," I wonder if that means they actually stood up against the genocide waged by Serbs on the Kosovars, or if they really didn't do "anything." Because if the latter is the case, they are no better than the Serb soldiers who carried the weapons, and they can hardly be surprised by the reaction of the returning Albanians.

-- Scott Stanford

Considering that the Serbs had only had the upper hand in Kosovo since the death of Tito, things are simply back to the way they had been. From the '50s, when Tito encouraged Albanian immigration into Kosovo to further undercut the Serb minority, Albanians had a free reign to terrorize the Serbs. They are simply returning to their old habits.

-- Damon Burkhart