Second coming
BY JONATHON KEATS
(11/29/99)

Any attempt to get people to dust off the Bible and approach it in a new way is welcome, and I will be interested to see if the Pocket Canons will have as much impact on religious thinking as Jonathon Keats hopes. However, before he knocks the Gideons Bible again, Keats may want to be aware that the translation the Gideons use is none other than the King James Version that the Pocket Canon has repackaged.

-- Brendan O'Sullivan-Hale

Utter coolness. I have always thought that the Bible in small doses could reach more people faster. And with all that hipness that comes attached to it, maybe some people can get some spiritual ease. Whatever their religion or secularism.

When I first read the King James Version, I was about 6 or 7, and all those begets had me taking a doze. When I got older, though, I read it from time to time for inspiration and found none of the fundamentalist BS that subsequent preachers had told me over the years.

Though my religion has changed over the years, I still find the Bible a good read. So who knows? I just might go down to my local megabookstore, buy this book and sit down to read some probverbs with a cup of cappuccino.

-- Michelle Rudd

While I would agree that fundamentalists have done more damage to the Christian message than legions of avowed anti-Christians could ever hope to do, I submit that Jonathon Keats has missed the point. He suggests that the Bible is good literature (it is) and is at the center of Judeo-Christian morality, but he seems to have failed to grasp that the main point of nearly every story in the Bible is that there is a source from which this morality comes, and that this source (which Christians and Jews, among others, call God) has an enduring love for humanity in general and each individual in particular.

That is the message that the fundamentalists have obscured by their insistance that there is only one way to understand or interpret Biblical writings, and that failure to interpret the writings THEIR way merits divine condemnation. One of the reasons that the Bible is so integral to our culture is that it really identifies a point of moral commonality between a large number of belief systems. As he points out, these writings ring true to most people. The Judeo-Christian belief maintains that this is due to the fact that all morality comes from the same source.

-- James F. George

Keats' silly railery against fundamentalists and his talk of "rescuing the Bible" from them, makes him sound far more like a nutcase zealot than any of the fundies I know. Apart from everything else, his article left me puzzling over his arrogant assumption of personal superiority over those vulgar people who actually read their Gideons and try to live by the words contained therein. Keats is patting himself on the back for having rediscovered the wonder of the Bible, while mocking those who figured out the same thing long ago, and didn't need an intro written by Bono to enlighten them.

-- Hiawatha Bray

Jonathon Keats reveals a lot about the dynamics of modern Christianity and secular culture in this piece. The utter contempt he displays for "fundamentalists" totally betrays the "liberalism" of modern thought. I wonder at those who consider the belief that God knows more than man to be a manifestation of lamentable ignorance. The skepticism expressed by Keats is something with which evangelical Christians do struggle. But our faith in the wisdom of God leads us to painstakingly reconcile what we observe in the world with the eternal, though at times elusive, truths we believe have been given to us in the Bible. I rejoice that more of the unchurched are reading the Bible. A context of honest inquiry is never threatening to the truth.

-- Lenise Baxter

Cyberslacking epidemic
BY MARK GIMEIN
(11/24/99)

Cyberslacking has become the latest bogeyman of corporate Internet anxiety. We expect people to juggle all their responsibilities and multitask their way through the workda.y Why should that not include a little online personal business as well? We are rapidly moving toward a work force that will meld business and personal life into one. The workday will be all day and personal time will be where we can make it. Management needs to throw out the book on keeping employees under the corporate thumb, and find some common ground in defining individual and company goals. Successful businesses are, and will continue to be, those that give their employees a reason to succeed.

-- S. Sloan

If management doesn't trust employees to act responsibly on the job, then why did they hire those employees? I submit that any manager who keeps an employee that can't be trusted is an idiot and deserves whatever she gets. As for Internet use for personal reasons while at work, I plead guilty. Last year, rather than take two hours off work to go to the secretary of state's office, I renewed my drivers license in about 10 minutes via the Internet. Was I wrong to use the Internet at work to save taking two hours off? I don't think so. Clear communication and trust from managers has a far greater effect on productivity than Internet use for personal reasons.

-- Jack Farrow

The persistant annoyance of recurrent hangnails -- cured!
BY TOM TOMORROW
(11/29/99)

While I can appreciate the underlying humor in this cartoon, I find the resulting "punch line" appalling and offensive. First, it promotes the idea that Tourette Syndrome is nothing more than "potty mouth" -- when in fact only a small percentage of people with TS actually have coprolalia. Second, it promotes the idea that coprolalia itself is nothing more than "potty mouth" when nothing could be further from the truth.

Cartoonists purporting to be social commentators should perhaps do some research, and use some intelligent thought before succumbing to the idiocy of the masses.

-- Barb Mientus

TOM TOMORROW RESPONDS ...

This cartoon was meant to satirize the pharamaceutical industry advertisements promoting medications with potential side effects worse than the affliction they remedy. In my list of satirically intended side effects for the cartoon's fictional hangnail medication, I included Tourette's Syndrome, which has led a few TS sufferers to take me to task. No disparagement was intended toward TS victims. The disease was chosen at random because it is, with all due respect, a condition most people would find undesirable.

The vice president's stiff comedy
BY DANIEL KURTZMAN
(11/29/99)

Daniel Kurtzman pondered why America hasn't been alerted to the fact that Al Gore has a sense of humor. My theory: The Gore campaign must have hired the same consultant who told Bob Dole he should stifle his sense of humor. And we all know how things turned out for Bob. I hate to say it, but our nation's capitol is pretty much devoid of any sense of humor or personality.

-- Jayme Deerwester
Silver Spring, Md.

If the intention of the writer was to show a man with a sense of humor, all I could see was man making a jerk of himself, and doing it at the expense of others. I think the American people need a man of honor, who should be willing to tell the president what he really thinks, instead of making fun of him behind his back. Somehow I am not laughing.

-- Patricia Ancona

If you can't beat 'em ...
BY JOE CONASON
(11/30/99)

The activists in Seattle are not the ones to lecture on what "fair trade" should mean in this world. What they are protesting is an unaccountable organization that further shifts the balance of global power into the hands of multinational corporations. Sure, an enlightened WTO is a dream worth striving for, but its present incarnation is unacceptable. Until the public understands this there is no hope for true "fair trade," and without the activists, there would be little hope for public understanding of the issue. That is why we must stand with the protesters in solidarity -- an uncommon occurance in today's leftist circles.

-- Michael Lambert

Joe Conason's commentary on the WTO smacked of usual anti-U.S., anti-business rhetoric. He doesn't appear to take into account that we, in the United States, have a higher standard of living then anywhere else, or that workers in this country are the safest anywhere. Though he probably thinks it was luck that put us here, it was in fact a free market with less government intervention than anywhere else in the world.

Conason asks, "How can market forces and technological progress be directed to serve humanity, instead of enslaving humanity to markets and technologies?" The fact is that progress has always served humanity. Conditions have never taken a step back because of new technologies or market forces. The standard of living has only improved in free markets.

-- Shane Hanson

Everything you need to know about the WTO
BY DAVID MOBERG
(11/30/99)

Reporting on world trade talks discusses everything, it seems, except world trade. If it were so obviously one-sided as so many articles suggest -- if our national interests were in labor rights and sea turtles -- why do we even participate in the WTO or NAFTA? The fact is this: Import duties and tariffs create a deadweight loss that can be measured. If we have to pay a higher price for goods, fewer people will possess those goods, fewer will be made, fewer persons employed, fewer paychecks exist to buy other products -- it is a detrimental cycle that ripples through the entire economy.

-- Michael Gordon

The WTO turns the entire concept of representative government on its head. Any system that places such enormous power in the hands of a few non-elected arbitrators is ripe for abuse. Recent hisory should provide a sobering reminder of what happens when a judiciary is exempted from political oversight.

-- Paul Goodman

The whole world is watching
BY L.A. KAUFFMAN
(11/30/99)

L.A. Kauffman gets it wrong by stating that nonviolent protests in Seattle are rooted in the anti-nuclear protests of the 1970s. The roots of nonviolent protest began much earlier: In the United States, the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s featured nonviolence, for instance; and the organizers of those protests used Gandhi's nonviolent methods as a model.

-- Michael Lieber

A tale of two marathons
BY STEVEN A. SHAW
(11/24/99)

Steven Shaw throws out broad statements like "Many obsessive runners are victims of either exercise addiction or fitness (aka non-purging) bulimia" with no research to back it up. To say that "most" of the women running were "anorexic and unappealing" is irresponsible and mean-spirited.

Anorexia is a serious disease. It is not a word that should be thrown at women who happen to be thinner than society's "norm," which is overweight. And to call these women "unappealing" is just uncalled for. As a group, female runners are strong, focused and determined people who ought to be lauded for their accomplishments -- raising children, working, going to school, maintaining a household and still finding the time to train for a marathon -- and not belittled by someone standing on the sidelines.

-- Rosemary Brewer