Thank heaven for little girls
BY STEPHEN LEMONS
(12/04/99)

Can you imagine hoards of grown women salivating over adolescent boys, hoping to find ones that look as close to underage children as possible? Why don't these guys grow up?

"Fortunately, true pedophiles are very rare birds indeed," says Jeffery Douglas in the article. Really? Tell that to the one in three females who will experience some form of sexual assault before the age of 18, or to the 84 percent of children who experience sexual abuse who had the experience before the age of 12.

Child pornography laws are in place for a reason -- the industry puts children at risk. Pedophiles (or people with tendencies in that direction) are not so rare, and Barely Legal is just another way around those laws.

-- Heather Morgan

The difference between pedophilia and normal lust lies in the sexual maturity of the object of desire. Our society has chosen the age of 18 or thereabouts as the age at which a person can decide to have sex, regardless of their sexual maturity. I have no qualms feeling lust for a sexually mature female who happens to be under 18 (though I would not act on it, since our society deems it a crime). I would classify as pedophiles those who are sexually aroused by people who aren't sexually mature yet.

-- Mike Persons

The free PC is dead!
BY MARK GIMEIN
(12/03/99)

Mark Gimein wonders who will get the last laugh in the fall-out of the free-PC phenomenon. It certainly won't be buyers, who will realize what a cheap system that low sticker price really got them. EMachines uses cut-rate parts and sells at such low margins that it will likely make sense just to replace the whole computer when anything small goes wrong.

The real last laugh will be Steve Jobs'. While the sub-$1,000 market has torn the heart out of low- and mid-range PC makers, Apple has avoided the pitfall and is busy pumping out pricier -- but far better built, and far easier to use and, hell, just cooler -- computers. With 2 million iMacs sold in the first year, a stock price over $100 and analysts bullish on a $125 or better, Apple has the answer: Screw the trend; make good, cool products; and you'll laugh all the way to the bank.

-- Scott McKim

Mark Gimein makes a huge assumption when he calls a home PC costing $650 "almost free." For many Americans, that's still a lot of money; it's a month's rent, a doctor bill, three car payments. Even with rebates that can bring the up-front price down by a cool 400 bucks, we're still talking about $250. If you support a family of 3 on a $10-per-hour wage from Home Depot, you might opt to squander your cash on the luxury of groceries rather than that "almost-free" computer.

Mark, can I borrow $250? I need a home computer. Or so people keep telling me.

-- Laura Magzis

Adrift in America
BY MICHAEL SHAPIRO
(12/02/99)

I find it unbelievable that anyone in the United States could justify keeping this Cuban child in this country.

Every day, in courtrooms across this country, children are returned to their drug-addicted, jobless, unloving and uncaring and/or abusive parents. Parental "rights" often outweigh the best interest of the child, in spite of the fact that there are loving, caring, nurturing homes for these children -- and that the return of these children often leads to further disastrous results.

The Cuban child's father appears to be none of those things; the only justification for keeping him here is political. It bothers me tremendously that this Cuban child is not being returned when -- in the name of "parental rights" -- children who are American citizens are given less consideration and are not protected from more terrible situations.

-- Donna Davis

Let's imagine that it's the 1850s, and a black woman with a little boy takes the Underground Railroad to Canada, but does not survive the trip. Then the boy's slave father is brought forward, on his Massa's front porch, to publicly proclaim his passionate desire that the boy be returned to his loving arms.

Should we return the boy? Should we even take the father's protestations at face value, made as they are under pressure if not outright duress?

If, instead of demanding the child's return, Juan Gonzalez had stated the obvious truth that his son was better off in America, he would have at the very least lost his job -- privileged by Cuban standards -- as a doorman at a tourist hotel.

-- Taras Wolansky

Elian Gonzalez should be immediately returned to his father. Were he an American lad of Cuban descent on a trip to Cuba and his mother, who had reared him, had suddenly died, but his relatives who had remained in Cuba had decided that he belonged in Cuba, how would the American government respond?

I dread the answer. There would be volunteers lining up to invade Cuba to rescue the "American boy." Shame on American immigration for not immediately returning the lad to his father.

-- Lillian Adelman

I am an American Cuban whose family fled from Cuba in the early 1960s. Does the writer know that the children of Cuba are only allowed the quota of milk (a glass a day) till the age of 2? That children watch as their family members are beaten and sometimes shot in their presence? Does he know what it feels like to hand over a child to strangers, not knowing if you will ever see him again? Would he have sent a Jewish escapee back to Nazi Germany?

-- Allyson Arcieri

Unhappy meal
BY MARY ROACH
(12/03/99)

There is a great movie about Mary Roach's somewhat unsavory subject. Marco Ferreri's 1973 "La Grande Bouffe" (starring Marcello Mastroianni) is a funny and disturbing piece about four bourgeois guys who decide to eat themselves to death. Highly recommended for anyone (like Roach) who has an unhealthy fascination with overeating.

-- Stephan von Pohl
Oakland, Calif.

Mary Roach overlooked a famous (and happy) overeater, Diamond Jim Brady, who "typically ate single dinners consisting of three dozen oysters, half a dozen crabs, two bowls of soup, seven lobsters, two ducks, two huge portions of terrapin, a sirloin steak, assorted vegetables, a platter of pastries, and a 2-pound box of chocolates -- all washed down with a gallon or two of orange juice" (from "The People's Almanac No. 2," by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, 1978).

-- Richard Corwin

Appreciation: Quentin Crisp
BY JODY ROSEN
(12/03/99)

Quentin Crisp not a "self-hating gay"? Please! Crisp is responsible for some of the most vitriolic, odious comments about homosexuals ever. The most famous, of course, is (in a paraphrase from "The Naked Civil Servant"), "No homosexual, no matter how exalted, is the equal of any heterosexual, no matter how degraded."

-- Michael Taeckens

The name game
BY RUTH SHALIT
(11/30/99)

Ruth Shalit's article was neither serious nor accurate. She misquoted, misplaced and misspelled her way into a mess. The vituperative put-down of the name "Agilent" that Shalit attributed to Rick Bragdon was cobbled together from Rick's opinions of a completely different name, as well his thoughts on a particular research methodology. Shalit made an even more egregious error when she attributed a quote to Rick suggesting that we don't like it if clients fall in love with our names. Nothing could be further from the truth! That's why we're in business -- to create names that our clients love. A clue that Shalit misattributed this quote is the fact that she simultaneously misidentified Rick as working for our competitor Lexicon. To top all this off, she originally misspelled his name as "Bragden."

Shalit also made light of Idiom's idea that naming and creativity should be fun, by suggesting that we were "sheepish" about having created the name "iMotors." For a company selling used cars over the Internet without a $50 million advertising budget, iMotors is a simple, direct and memorable name. We had as much fun creating iMotors as we did naming Fogdog Sports (formerly SportSite.com), AirTouch (formerly PacTel Cellular), Dreamery (the new ultra-premium ice cream from Dreyer's Grand), Gather Round (Intel's new photo-imaging Web site), Yumsters (Yoplait's newly renamed yogurt for kids) and literally hundreds of other names.

Shalit did an excellent job of creating controversy where no controversy really exists. In the highly subjective world of names, we all have opinions. And guess what? We tend to like our own names better than the names of our competitors. This is neither news nor newsworthy.

-- Rick Bragdon and George Frazier
Idiom
San Francisco

RUTH SHALIT REPLIES ...

I apologize for the misspelling of Rick Bragdon's name, and for referring to his company, Idiom, as Lexicon in the third reference. But Bragdon is wrong to use these regrettable errors as an excuse to disavow quotes that were, in fact, accurately reported and presented in context.

Bragdon claims that his criticisms of the name "Agilent" were actually directed towards "a completely different name," which he mysteriously declines to divulge. This is nonsense. My notes make it clear that Bragdon was referring to Agilent, Hewlett-Packard's new instrumentation and measurement division, when he declared: "Thank God it's a terribly important company ... Because this is the most namby-pamby, phonetically weak, light-in-its-shoes name in the entire history of naming."

The comment about not wanting clients to fall in love with names was part of a longer discussion about brand differentiation, and how to create a brand that stands apart from its competitors. "Emotionally, if you're very comfortable with the name, that's not a good thing," Bragdon told me. "Brands at their core have to be differentiated. If a name doesn't provoke you, and irritate you, and get under your skin, how memorable is it going to be?" It was in this context that Bragdon told me he considered it a bad sign, not a good sign, when clients fell head over heels in love with his creations. "If you fall in love with the name, it's a good sign that there's something wrong with the name," Bragdon told me.

I wanted to capture Bragdon's perspective as accurately and vividly as possible, which is why I interviewed him twice, with both interviews lasting over an hour. While I'm sorry Bragdon felt misrepresented by my account, I stand by the piece as reported.

Trapped and torn
BY LISA GUIDE
(12/03/99)

As a mother who lives and works in a neighborhood many consider dangerous, I frequently ask myself if I'm doing the right thing to expose myself (and my child) to the possibility of being caught in someone else's violent act. I know that there are other mothers who don't have the choices I do, who bring up their children here by necessity. And partly for them I remain here -- to keep it from becoming a forgotten place, to daily walk in and out of the neighborhood and invite others to do the same, and to bring our neighborhood issues to the attention of people in power.

Guide serves the same purpose at the WTO talks and her daily job. We all take risks; some of them have bigger payoffs than others.

-- Robin Mohr

Lisa Guide wrote, "I have always believed that the most important local action a person can take is to assume responsibility for her own family, to make sure they have what they need to be safe and happy: shelter, food, laughter, clean air and water. Places to play." Sure, if you're wearing sweatshop-manufactured skirts from Banana Republic, pieced together by exploited 12-year-olds, and live in a neighborhood where anyone gives a damn about clean air, water and playgrounds.

Guide is an elitist bleeding heart of the highest degree. She is a living, breathing example of why the WTO protests, while unfortunate, were necessary -- a wake-up call to ignorant bureaucrats like her.

-- Sylvia Chan