Letters To The Editor
Over the line
Note who is calculating lead risk
Boise’s Idaho Statesman (March 22) ran a full-page story discussing the Silver Valley schools that had not been tested for lead in more than 10 years. It made the observation, “If a person ingested an amount of lead equal to one-2,500th of an aspirin tablet daily over a period of time, health problems could result.” The article explained that lead is a subtle poison that can cause kidney disease and neurological damage, especially in young children.
An article in the April 6 Spokesman-Review has a mining company spokeswoman stating that only 40,000 of the 500,000 pounds of lead that the Coeur d’Alene River dumps into the lake every year is in dissolved form. This is the form of lead that people can most readily absorb.
I wonder how the rest of the country (including the CEOs of Boise’s rapidly expanding high-tech firms) views the fact that the lake is contaminated with only an extra 40,000 pounds of easily absorbed lead a year. Wouldn’t it be an interesting math problem to calculate how many aspirin tablets that would make? I’ll bet those CEOs from Boise, or from anywhere else, have already figured it out. Paul Valanoff Moscow
Stripping no way to make living
I’m a freshman at West Valley High School and I feel it is completely wrong to put ads in the newspaper about Stateline Showgirls.
While reading the newspaper recently, I noticed a comic in the letters to the editor section. I was shocked to see that it was a comic about men going to see the Stateline Showgirls. It made me feel terribly sick.
A place like this should not be around. This is not a healthy way for young girls to make money. What’s so wrong with working at Albertson’s or somewhere else where you don’t have to go and get naked to make money? Do the girls who work there think they are not good enough for a different job? Or do they just feel that the only suitable way for them to make money is to bare everything for men’s pleasure?
Even though many of the men who go there are single, you can bet I am right when I say some of those men are married. What I can’t understand is why men feel it is OK for these girls to be showing their bodies.
For the men who go there, ask yourself, how would you feel if you showed up there and saw your daughter on stage? Molly E. Sherrill Spokane
Firearms
Liberties taken with amendment
The Second Amendment means right to nuclear arms, doesn’t it?
The Second Amendment is not made very clear. In fact, there are two possible interpretations.
The text of the Second Amendment states that “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
From one side it can be argued that guns may only be owned by members of a militia that is necessary to protecting the security of the United States from foreign invaders. However, it can also be interpreted another way. The amendment never actually states the word “gun.” Instead, it uses the word “arms.” There seems to be nothing to stop a wealthy American, under the Second Amendment, from purchasing a large amount of “arms” - be they small handguns or nuclear warheads.
Our Constitution is clear and concise. Had the founding fathers wished us to be able to own any arms we chose they would have simply said, “The people have the right to have arms.” Just as if the founding fathers had wished us to own guns they would have said, “The people have the right to have guns.” Instead, they guaranteed in the Second Amendment the right of the military to have arms in order to protect citizens from foreign invaders - namely, the British.
It is time we re-examined the Second Amendment and see what it really means: protection, not a right to kill. Nowell Bamberger, age 15 Spokane
Complacency can cost you your rights
Ken I. Nielson (Letters, April 9), you are absolutely correct in everything you stated in “Gun foes never satisfied.” The real problem here is that most people are not looking deep enough into the present administration’s true intentions where the gun-control issues are concerned.
I recently sent an e-mail to the director of presidential e-mail at the White House. I was immediately responded to, and this is the response: “Since June of 1993 the president has received 2.8 million messages from people across the country and around the world advocating gun control in this country.”
Now if you take the population of the United States at 280 million people, the 2.8 million messages means that slightly less than 2 percent of the American population wants anything to do with gun control. I’d be willing to bet that of that 2.8 million people, many of them are from foreign countries and definitely have ill intentions for the American Constitution.
Our U.S. Constitution is the only document that has stood the test of time other than the Bible.
We’ve had seven years of a president who has done everything in his power to tear our country apart, all the way from gay rights to gun control. Could it be that America is not paying attention? Wake up, America! Clint Derr Coeur d’Alene
Other topics
Court decision defies belief
I am appalled that there has been no public outcry about the 3-year-old boy who was crushed to death by his “family’s pet,” a seven-and-one-half-foot python (Spokesman-Review, March 25). The family lived in a trailer.
Apparently, the python was not restrained or not sufficiently restrained. One night, while the parents slept (or so they claimed) the python crushed the life out of the little boy.
Subsequently, the parents were tried for endangering the child. But the judge - refusing even to hear closing arguments - acquitted the parents, finding that they did not know to a “practical certainty” that the python would harm the child.
What lunacy. This story made my hair stand on end. Who among us would spend even one night in a small, enclosed structure with a huge python snake whose natural instinct is to quietly slither up to its prey and crush the life out of it?
What happens now? Will the parents be allowed to endanger another child? Who will speak for the little boy and for future little boys and girls who are luckless enough to have such reckless and senseless parents? One thing seems certain: a “practically certain” safety standard does not adequately protect defenseless children. Bill Scott Liberty Lake
Evolution simply doesn’t compute
It’s obvious from 50 years of human work with coded computerized information systems that these complex systems never arise by accident. With our very great parallel knowledge of genetics, it’s absurd to imagine that genetic information systems are any different. The information on this page isn’t in the chemistry of the ink but in the sequence of the letters, in accord with our common language. It’s the same with genetics - the code is in the letter sequence, not in the chemistry.
Probability enters here with a vengeance.
In an Internet demonstration last year it took more than 1,000 PCs four months to crack a 56-bit encryption code. The human genetic code alone is equal to a several-billion-bit encryption code. Then you have 4,000 higher animals with codes about as complex, plus millions and millions of bugs, plants, microbes etc., with codes in the billions of letters.
Given our computer and genetic knowledge, it’s simply an affront to reason to imagine all this is an accident of evolution. Let’s not be fooled; in evolution, all atoms must be arranged by chance - there’s no other mechanism, no magic is allowed.
In his excellent book, “Evolution a Theory in Crisis,” Dr. Michael Denton, a non-creationist M.D., titles one chapter “Beyond the Reach of Chance.” As a molecular biologist, he clearly demonstrates that evolution is statistically, mathematically, impossible.
As continuing research demonstrates even more persuasively the astonishing complexity of the living world it will be more and more obvious to everyone that evolution is truly a fairy tale. Ken J. Clark Spokane