interweaving ideas

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: In response to Minnesota Rep.-elect Keith Ellison’s intention to swear his oath of office on the Koran, Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode recently wrote his constituents that to “preserve the values and beliefs…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: How ironic that an opinion survey on race relations would include the blatant sampling bias inherent in phone interviews. Families that are more financially well off own more phones per person, if…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: I was shocked to find a billboard outside the River Road Middle School voting station endorsing “Republican” judges. It is unsettling to think not only of all the right-wingers who took those…

Bishop Little Joe Powell Jr. said during an NAACP forum, “God made Adam and Eve. He didn’t make Adam and Steve.” This literal interpretation of Genesis may or may not be true, but God certainly did make Roy and Silo, two male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo who have been in a monogamous…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: In just the last four years, the ACLU has filed over 20 lawsuits defending the rights of Christians to express themselves publicly. This includes the rights of students to wear T-shirts baring…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: The more than 100 people attending Currituck’s Board of Education meeting in opposition to Ms. Danielle Smiley’s efforts to establish a Gay-Straight Alliance in her school is exactly why such a club…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: Attempt to enact broad legislation to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country? Check. Attempt to amend the Constitution to ban flag desecration? Check. Attempt to amend the Constitution to ban homosexual…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: I need to challenge an assertion made in last week’s interview with music industry veteran Jerry Heller that gangster rap artists are portraying the “reality of their way of life.” Of NWA’s…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: Now that Israel has withdrawn from Lebanon after inflicting $3.6 billion dollars worth of damage and leaving hundreds of civilians dead, Hezbollah, apparently funded by Iran, now takes up the cause of…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: Shirely Powell recently wrote, “The well-being of a few water moccasins shouldn’t be put above that of our people,” referring to flood problems that cannot be alleviated because the EPA may be…

This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: I am outraged at the International Astronomical Union’s ridiculous decision to demote Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet.” The new criteria defining planets, that the celestial object has a clear orbital…