Dear Joy Behar,
A beautiful woman in a beauty pageant put on baggy clothes and humbly walked across the stage to talk proudly about her career, and her passion for caring for other human beings, and the only thing you and your co hosts could muster in response were insults grounded in ignorance.
Rather than being offended or getting angry, I will instead, take a moment to teach.
I am a big believer that the first step in resolving ignorance is education. So allow me, for a moment, to educate you.
The stethoscope is a medical device used to auscultate (that means listen to) the inner workings of your patient. (read; heart, lungs, and bowel)
Doctors do this when they examine their patient.
So does the Respiratory Therapist.
The Physician Assistant.
The Nurse...
Lifestyle
Dear Jim Koch,
My name is Pat Berger and I'm a huge fan of yours. I've been following you and your brewery since the late 80's when I started home brewing and really getting into beer. Your Boston lager is both drinkable and flavorful with a soft malt background and a spicy noble hop finish. It does an equally great job at accompanying food as it does quenching a powerful thirst on a hot day. It is truly a great beer. As a veteran bartender it was often the Boston Lager I would crack open at the end of a long and grueling shift while I cleaned up and pondered life.
Your contributions to the popularity of craft beer cannot be measured in this short letter. From brewing tasty beer available almost everywhere to your integral part in the formation of the Brewers Association and even...
2,370
Dear Will,
We first met many years ago when you were State Senator Emil Jones’s education aide. Many of us in the Chicago school reform community were impressed with you then, and felt that you understood what we cared about – that is, a strong parent and community voice in school governance, and strong public schools. We found you to be approachable, smart, and helpful – one of the good guys.
I was pleased when you decided to run for office and was happy to vote for you to be my state representative and my alderman. We’ve had a very cordial relationship for many years.
In 2013, the year after the school district voted to phase out Dyett, I wrote a blog post (http://pureparents.org/?p=20323) on the web site for PURE, a group I directed until my move out of state last year. The...
2,450
Dear Hon. May, Mulcair, and Trudeau,
As former Parks Canada staff, we are deeply troubled by the seemingly unjustified and arbitrary firing in mid-June of Dr. John Wilmshurst, who was the Resource Conservation Manager in Jasper National Park.
Dr. Wilmshurst is a highly respected scientist and well-regarded manager. His career with Parks Canada spanned just 15 years, yet in this relatively short time, he made very significant contributions to the advancement of ecological integrity within the national park system. As a Grasslands Ecologist based out of Winnipeg, he developed and led an integrated engagement and research project designed to better understand and communicate native prairie ecosystems. In 2008, he transferred to Jasper National Park where he assumed responsibilities as...
2,619
Dear Sirs/Madam
We, the undersigned, representing diverse constituencies from across Africa and the world, working towards food sovereignty, are strongly opposed to the human feeding trials taking place at the Iowa State University involving the so called genetically modified (GM) ‘super banana’ – GM Matooke, Sweet and Roasting bananas.
These trials funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are being carried out under the leadership of Dr. Wendy White of the Iowa State University, on 12 young students, with the intention of introducing the GM banana first in Uganda and later, to other countries in East Africa. The GM banana, currently undergoing field trials in Uganda, was developed by scientists at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, similarly also funded by the...
2,362
Dear Naomi,
A few years ago, when you were in Oxford finishing your thesis, you came to one of my lectures on language and gender. So I was disappointed when I saw your latest piece in the Guardian, exhorting young women to stop using “destructive speech patterns.” Evidently I did a poor job of explaining the basics of my subject. Professional pride compels me to give it another try.
The patterns you’re mostly complaining about, vocal fry and uptalk (aka creaky voice and high rising terminal intonation) are not new phenomena in English, but in recent years they’ve become more noticeable because more people are using them more frequently. Like most such shifts, this one started among younger speakers. In language-use as in other practices of self-expression (like fashion, music and...
2,715
Dear Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Reid, Speaker Boehner, Minority Leader Pelosi, and Ambassador Froman:
We the undersigned—professors and scholars of international law, arbitration, and dispute settlement—strongly support a robust, even-handed, and careful discussion about investment treaty arbitration (ITA), which is sometimes referred to as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). We believe, however, that the discussion should be based on facts and balanced representations, rather than on errors or skewed information.
To that end, we offer the following responses to the letter circulated by the Alliance for Justice.[1]
Sovereignty and the Rule of Law
Far from an abdication of sovereign responsibility, entering into international treaties of any kind—including...
2,382
Dear Friends and Comrades in Peace,
As you are well aware, our world is at a critically dangerous juncture: the possibility of a military, potentially a nuclear, confrontation between NATO, led by the United States, and Russia. The militaries of the two nuclear superpowers are once again facing each other, this time in Eastern Europe, especially in Ukraine, and in Syria. And tensions are increasing each passing day.
In a sense, we can say that a world war is already taking place. Currently, the governments of 15 countries are bombing Syria. They include seven allied NATO countries: US, UK, France, Turkey, Canada, Belgium, and Netherlands. They also include non-NATO allies of the United States: Israel, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and Australia; and most recently,...
2,359
Dear Gawker,
So, you removed that post. You know, the one about a married man (whose name we will not be mentioning) trying to score some hot gay sex on the sly, away from his wife’s prying eyes — or maybe with her blessing, we don’t know the terms of their marriage, and neither do you. You have said you’re sorry, SORT OF. You SHOULD be sorry, not that your “apologies” really count at this point, since the story is already out there on the internet, even if you’ve removed it, and you’ve likely done immeasurable damage to him and to his family in the last 24 hours.
While we have made great strides in the world of acceptance for LGBT people, it’s still a sad fact that there are millions of men and women who are, for whatever reason, in the closet. When people like that inflict...
2,397
Dear John.
We are disappointed to learn of your unwanted touching of a cafe worker. We appreciate your apology to her and we understand that your actions were well-intentioned and not meant to offend or do the worker any harm.
You no doubt know that it’s never okay to touch someone without their permission. You probably think that you’ve never touched someone in such a way before. However, this incident shows that you have crossed the line. You will now be aware of the impact – the worker described how vulnerable and embarrassed she felt.
We don’t see this as an isolated case and the real story is not about you. Rather, the fact that our Prime Minister has joined the list of people outed for sexism highlights how much sexism is a part of our culture. And it starts at the top....
2,711