The reason people in Silicon Valley don't date is the same reason they don't have other hobbies. The prevalent focus of their mental, physical and spiritual energy is twofold -- work and money. Men brag in locker room tones about how much they've earned, spent or worked lately -- not about their sexual conquests. Getting some means you're wasting your time and energy, spilling your seed, if you will -- a sort of Silicon Valley onanism that is simply not looked upon highly. After all, why bother [with sex] when your portfolio is easier to manage, and your conquests in the office at 3 a.m. are so much more provable? It's just another symptom of a place with very strange priorities; one that grows sicker all the time. The fetish people are the healthy ones -- at least they're getting out occasionally.

-- Elizabeth Olson

Paulina Borsook's article about engineers in Silicon Valley glossed over the important issue of growing up as a "geek." The term "geek" currently has some positive connotations. But at the time when today's engineers went to high school, the term was purely derogatory.

Being a geek in high school often meant being excluded, not getting invited to parties and being made fun of. Every day it was made crystal clear that dating was a game that was never going to get you anywhere. This delivers two blows to a person. First, you are convinced that you're undesirable. Second, even if you decide you are desirable, you have missed several critical years in developing the social skills required for dating.

Engineers are still held as something of an oddity. Borsook's article is evidence of this. She is examining this group of people as if they are different and need to be explained to the rest of the "normal" world. She even goes so far as to refer to her dinner companions as "creatures" -- decent creatures, but creatures nonetheless. Perhaps engineers would date more if they were accepted as normal people.

-- Matthew Calef
Somerville, Mass.

As a senior (and founding) editor of Business 2.0 magazine, I can assure you that no one wearing a polo shirt has ever graced our cover.

-- Eric Hellweg

An article written partially in "code" is clever for the first few paragraphs, then increasingly trying. I gave up on the second page.

-- Katey Pearson

Bush gets religion
BY JAKE TAPPER
(12/14/99)

I just finished reading the article about the third debate and I must write about one comment made by Alan Keyes. The quote was that Bush doesn't have the "depth of understanding to articulate the relationship between this country's moral principles and the great serious practical issues." Maybe that is what makes him the front-runner. I for one find it refreshing after all these years of Clinton's articulating on this country's moral principles to listen to a man who speaks from the heart and isn't trying to do the "Washington shuffle" with every question that comes down the Pike.

-- Sharyne A.
salon.com | Jan. 19, 2000

Read more letters: Hands off Harry Potter! Plus: Good grief! Don't dis Charles Schulz, an American icon; No one's forcing third world techies to come here

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