Readers respond online
Readers respond online
In response to “A flood of inexcusable garbage, how the ‘economy’ is ushering in our doom,” published April 5, 2010
The US has been drilling in the Gulf of Mexico since the mid 1960s. Having worked on literally dozens of these, the chance of an oil spill of the type you describe is very low … much more likely that you will be hit by a stray airplane as you walk to class today … Also, with today’s drilling technology, even if a rig were completely removed from its site, no oil would escape. As for coal: let’s decide to mine it or not. If we do decide to continue to use coal, the most efficient (method) by far is to use those resources that cannot be mined conventionally. Again, with today’s technology, there is no need to fill in the valleys, and replanting/replenishment of the hilltops can actually result in a cleaner environment with better habitats for wildlife.
If the country were not scared by the anti-nuke crowd 25 years ago, over 62% of our energy could be produced today by nuclear power. It would power our vehicles, not have us burning food for energy (the whole corn/ethanol trade) and have a pool of talented engineers and scientists continuing to improve the systems. Instead, we are only learning from a handful of future thinkers in Europe and … soon to be North Korea and Iran. Hmmmm.
I hope one can learn to have an opinion based on facts and experience without resorting to using objectionable words.
George
pathannifin@yahoo.com
In response to “Police called after students deliver letter to Rao,” published April 5, 2010
As disinclined as I am to agree with a group of college socialists (Really? You’re going to change the world, huh?), they make a valid point. We pay our administrators huge salaries, certainly enough to offer significant support to some graduate students.
You can talk a good game about wanting to be a major research university, but if you don’t support up-and-coming academics financially and institutionally, you can’t expect our reputation to improve. We lose many great candidates for higher degrees because the support at other institutions is simply better.
And calling the cops because there are a group of students standing together on a college campus is a pretty dumb idea.
Joe Anderson
Andersonjj2@vcu.edu
