Industry must help recycle

I agree with Hasso Hering (Viewpoint, Feb. 11) that it is our responsibility to do a better job of recycling rigid plastic containers, however it would be a mistake to waive the responsibility of the manufacturers.

Twenty percent of our landfills is packaging and it's important that the manufacturers play a role in reducing this part of our waste stream as well as working to help recycling. When the Oregon Legislature passed these rules, they were right to not worry about a soap factory in Ohio. They put those rules in place to help ensure that Oregon's recycling programs continue to be successful.

Something tells me that the most logical way to increase the recycling rate of rigid plastic containers - an expanded Bottle Bill - will not be supported by these industry groups. Plastic containers that are currently covered by the Bottle Bill are recycled at a rate approaching 80 percent. Plastic containers not covered by the Bottle Bill are recycled at a rate closer to 20 percent.

Of course it's the responsibility of each one of us to recycle our rigid plastic containers, but the way to increase the recovery of these plastics is not to allow industry to change the semantics of the rules.

Please urge your representatives to support Rep. Vicki Berger's effort to improve Oregon's Bottle Bill.

Bailey Payne, Corvallis

Remember Lincoln's words

Doug Huntley claims in his Feb. 11 letter, "Again: Iraq/9-11 are unrelated" that "The average American is a zombie" (synonym: a puppet or a robot); I can come to one conclusion: You are either not paying attention, or you are stupid.

Certainly, many of us are ignorant of past and current events. The reason for that, I believe, is the relatively easy lifestyle that many of us average Americans have enjoyed since the end of World War II. Since then, we have become susceptible to the behest of those we trust as leaders.

Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." What could be said about Americans today is: "You can fool enough of the people enough of the time, you can control all of them."

Bob Weinman, Corvallis

Depleted uranium: No worry

In her Feb. 4 letter, "Poisoning by uranium," Linda Stewart gave her views on the threat from uranium when used in the warheads of some missiles.

The warhead is made from U-238 that remained after the fissionable U-235 had been separated, and it is used because its heavy weight assists in penetrating solid targets such as Army tank walls. Nearly all is fragmented and scattered by the shock wave. Little is vaporized.

To see if the uranium constitutes a health risk, its radioactivity should be compared with that from other sources. All carbon in living things is radioactive, due to the C-14 content, as is all potassium from its K-40 component. A 150-pound person contains about 27 pounds of carbon in tissues and 0.81 pounds of potassium in 28 liters of intracellular fluid, to give 240 million radioactive disintegrations from C-14 and 907 million from K-40, for a daily exposure of more than a billion.

By comparison, a U-238 half-life of 4.5 billion years says that one gram of uranium would be required to give the billion disintegrations per day to equal that from the body's natural radioactivity. (The alpha radiation from U-238 can be somewhat more damaging than the beta radiation from C-14 and K-40 but, on the other hand, most of the uranium taken internally is excreted.

Regardless of how these exposures are viewed, either together or separately, the threat is inconsequential when one realizes that we are constantly exposed to more intense whole-body nuclear radiation from our natural surroundings and cosmic rays, without any observable effects (e.g. M. Eisenbud, Environmental Radioactivity, Academic Press, N.Y.)

L. Michael Foster, Corvallis

Stop N. American Union

The actions under way by the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) creating the North American Union are intensifying and on track.

The SPP agenda is now getting the public scrutiny and backlash that has been absent for far too long. The 74th Oregon Legislative Assembly is advancing legislation, LC-2236, which urges the U.S. Congress to withdraw the United States from all activities moving forward the creation of the North American Union (NAU).

Similar requests have been passed by other states and the efforts across the nation to stop the NAU are intensifying.

As citizens, we must inform ourselves of these egregious activities against our nation. To diminish the significance of these new policies being implemented by President Bush's administration as "far-fetched" or "conspiratorial" is wishful thinking and dangerous. If we allow the creation of this "Union" to continue, our nation will become subordinate to the larger unified body, threatening our constitutional republic.

The free movement of labor within the new "North American community" will reduce the standard of living for most U.S. citizens. I encourage everyone to contact their state legislators and encourage them to stop the activities under way by the SPP and support LC-2236.

Our local and national media must begin discussing these activities as they will continue to affect all of us. We must demand that these activities be stopped.

Todd C. Wurster, Oregonians to Stop The North American Union, Corvallis

Water woes and wrong planning

After reading the article regarding the search for new water resources in the Prineville area, and the cost to the city and existing residents in that failed search, it occurred to me that there could be a lack of far-sighted resource planning in our state and down to our municipal managers.

Are cities convincing themselves that the water resources that we depend upon to survive are inexhaustible?

Are cities so enthralled with empire-building and mesmerized by the monetary benefits, propounded by developers in new and expanding developments, that they have lost sight of their responsibilities to their existing patrons?

Over the last 40 years I have watched the Bend area become nothing more than a mini-Aspen-type community. So chic and sophisticated that most of us can't afford to go and stay to enjoy the vistas and natural beauty of the area. Let alone live and work there.

I have lived in this state all my life, as did my parents, and their parents. I have no desire to live in the great state to our south and assume that type of megalopolis lifestyle.

Oregon's quality of life is at risk. At some point we have to realize that we have limited water resources.

Municipal development plans must be cognizant that our natural infrastructures have limited inventory and potential of replenishment.

I miss Tom McCall.

Rick Carter, Albany

Cursive neither fastest nor best

As a handwriting instruction and improvement specialist (http://learn.to/handwrite), I must note that the woes and failures of handwriting instruction (Sunday, Feb. 11) come in very large part from teachers damnation-bent on equating "good handwriting" with "doing it in cursive."

Actually, according to a 1998 study in the Journal of Educational Research (citation below) the fastest and most legible handwriters break about half the rules of cursive. It turns out that the fastest handwriters (and especially the fastest legible handwriters):

• join only some letters, not all of them - using only the easiest joins, skipping the rest; and

• use some cursive and some printed letter-shapes (where printed and cursive letters seriously "disagree" in shape, highest-speed highest-legibility handwriters tend to go for the printed shape).

Note that these high-speed high-legibility habits do not fit with the cursive writing that the article (Dec. 11) exalts. They do fit, though, with Italic handwriting - widely known in Oregon, though your article didn't even mention it.

(Citation: Graham, S., Berninger, V., & Weintraub, N. (1998). The relationship between handwriting style and speed and quality. Journal of Educational Research, volume 91, issue number 5, (May/June 1998), pages 290-297.)

In other words, cursive writing comes in, at best, second-best.

Further, the law doesn't require cursive for signatures. Legally, your signature consists of whatever you intend as your signature when you write it.

For more information on this point, including legal sources and documentation, please visit the Handwriting Repair FAQ page at global2000.net/handwritingrepair/

KateFAQ.html and scroll down to the material on signatures.

The myth that "signatures legally require cursive" apparently originated with some elementary-school teachers as a "motivational device" they could concoct in order to persuade the children to accept the forcible change to cursive from the printed handwriting that they had just spent two years on.

Teachers have to do a lot of things to educate the next generation but - in my opinion as a teacher - education must not include telling untruths about the law of the land. Why not just teach the kids to read cursive and to write the simple Italic style that requires no vast overhaul of handwriting style when it comes time to join letters?

Kate Gladstone, Albany, N.Y.

The writer is director of the World Handwriting Contest and CEO of Handwriting Repair.

Great to have a wise adviser

I just read the Sunday letter to the editor from Doug Huntley, where he referred to us average Americans as zombies. How fortunate for us that we have someone like Mr. Huntley who is kind enough to share his wisdom on complex global issues. We can hope that he remains only in an advisory position.

Guy Douglas, Albany

Warming? It's cheap to do right

It doesn't really matter if anyone believes the thousands of scientists and studies on global warming. Whether we are messing up the atmosphere or our planet with foreseeable results in our lifetime or our kids' lifetime, it's hard to refute the consequences of increasing population, energy use and material use.

Luckily it is cheaper to do the right thing than to not through energy efficiency.

In the Northwest we tend to forget that almost 80 percent of the electricity we get from PacifiCorp is from coal. Coal, acid rain, global warming - it's not the cleanest way to make electricity.

We have an abundance of incentives to get us to use energy efficiently. Some of these:

• Energy Trust of Oregon (www.energytrust.org) provides incentives for home owners and business for everything from screw-in compact fluorescents to insulation to energy efficient motors.

• Oregon State tax credits (http://oregon.gov/ENERGY). Oregon has had for years the only program in the country providing tax credits for both business and residential energy efficiency.

• Federal EPACT bill (www.energytaxincentives.org). This provides federal tax incentives for consumers and business.

• Low interest loans from the Oregon Dept of Energy for energy efficiency (http://oregon.gov/ENERGY/LOANS/selphm.shtml).

I could go on for a while, but I hope we all get the idea. The solution is in our hands. No one is going to win the $25 million prize from Richard Branson anytime soon for taking C02 out of the atmosphere. It's up to us to make our houses more comfortable and tighter, our factories more efficient and profitable.

Or we can sit back and let the Japanese take over the car industry, watch glaciers melt around the world, the air get dirtier.

The future is in your hands.

Peter Greenberg, Albany

Cars are convenient? It's not so

Sorry I'm late in writing about the Feb. 4 Sunday edition. I've been out of town - just got off the bus from visiting relatives. The bus trip wasn't easy, but ethical and convenient aren't always synonymous.

Anyhow, I'm amused you're on such a defensive about automobiles. Your rebuttal choice "Cars: What we know isn't so" (by Balaker, Staley) was a case study in twisted reasoning.

Where to begin criticizing such a terrible article? Well, how about myth one: Americans are addicted to driving. Actually, Americans aren't addicted to their cars. Remember Bush's 2006 State of the Union: America is addicted to oil? We can infer America is also addicted to automobiles. Bush said this, not the anti-suburb culture.

Furthermore, the idea that cars and computers allow people to accomplish tasks faster and more conveniently deserves skepticism. If you'd pay attention to your publication, you'd know that Ivan Illich calculated the auto's average speed at "5 mph, when the hours spent working to pay for the vehicle, fuel, insurance and maintenance are added to driving (and idling in traffic) time, (letters, Sept. 5, 2004, Drew Fulano). Do your math.

Fanatically clinging to cars after they're proven absurd and destructive, if this doesn't fit the definition of addiction, what does?

Drew Fulano, Corvallis

Science article was leftist spin

It would be a nice service if the editor would eliminate guest articles that are obviously and flagrantly dishonest. Such is the case with "Let's take the spin out of science" (Feb. 11).

The article is totally left-wing spin. At least give it an honest title. I have spent my entire life in science and I resent disingenuous reporting of what are serious scientific issues. The only kernel of truth was the quote of Richard Feynman: "Nature cannot be fooled."

The point of this long-winded diatribe seems to be that we need more government regulation of scientists. I believe the current debate on global warming completely refutes this premise.

The "mankind is causing global warming" crowd cites the consensus of a large group of scientists from around the planet. As a scientist I was taught that the data is sacred and you must insure the integrity of the data. So let's examine the large group of scientists as a point of data.

Were they randomly selected from the pool of scientists with expertise in climatology from the different countries? No! Did the governments select the most qualified scientists or did they choose those who would support the position they wanted supported? You decide.

But consider our own Gov. Ted Kulongoski's approach. He has not been able to get George Taylor, Oregon's climatologist, to give up his principles in favor of Ted's political expediency, so he opts to dump him. If Kulongoski was selecting a scientist to represent Oregon you can be assured it would not be George Taylor.

There are many excellent scientists who share George Taylor's views on global warming but you know they weren't selected to be part of the scientists who convened and by coincidence were unanimously in favor of the same view of global warming as the governments who sent them.

George Taylor forgets every day while riding his bike to work more about global warming than Ted Kulongoski will accumulate in a lifetime. Conclusion: the consensus of a few hundred scientists selected by politicians from around the world has no validity.

Perhaps we should consider the possibility that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the mechanism our planet uses to maintain a moderate climate that we can survive in and furthermore it is self-correcting. Vegetation takes in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and returns oxygen. When temperatures go down, the amount of vegetation reduces and consequently the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. This causes temperatures to increase, glaciers to recede and vegetation to increase, pulling more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and both increasing the oxygen and lowering the temperature.

The process continues to oscillate like this and has for millions of years. We are currently well within the temperature extremes the Earth has seen in the last several thousand years. This cycle maintains temperatures suitable for life. If intelligent design wasn't so absurd, I might suggest it was a brilliant design.

Gary Siewell, Albany

Counting letters: Opus wrong

I would just like to point out that the Feb. 11 Opus had an error. Anagrams are taking one word or phrase and turning it into another word or phrase using ALL the letters, right? OPUS said that "Chunkey Lord Voldemort" is an anagram of "Dick Cheney Va-Voom." Wrong. For one thing in the first phrase there are two d's, yet in the second phrase there is one d. For another thing there are two r's in the first phrase but none in the second phrase. Finally (the end of the examples) the first phase has one v but the second phrase had two.

Obviously, the cartoonist didn't look too closely at what he was doing. Now I wish that I had paid better attention to those earlier Opus anagrams.

Keith Staneart , Lebanon

Oregon's heritage lies in farming

Negative letters keep coming in about our way of life in the Willamette Valley. Some don't like farmers and loggers. I need to speak about this now. Many of these complainers are new to Oregon.

The Willamette Valley found settlers coming here by way of the Oregon Trail, including my Dad's parents. Some of the thousands walked most of the way to Oregon. One out of 10 died on the way, and they came to farm in the richest soil in the northwest. Our valley is the best farm land in the state of Oregon and we must save it for future generations.

Housing developments are taking our farm lands and building homes. Where will our food for future generations be coming from? I don't like imitation food and hope I never live to see the day that we take a tiny pill for nourishment instead of vegetables, orchards, berries and grains and all the fine crops that we grow in this valley.

And jobs for the people that live in this valley are important also. Farmers and loggers do not destroy the valley. Field burning is needed to purify the soil, for clean grass seed that is sold all over the world. We should be proud of being the largest grass seed producer in the world.

Now the soil is being destroyed by "developers." We must choose where housing is allowed, not on farm land. There is enough land at the edge of the valley that won't grow crops, that is mostly clay soil; it could be used for housing. The greed for money could eventually ruin our way of life. Measure 37 could destroy the farm lands and timber lands by allowing subdivisions to take all the good farm land that is left for growing crops.

Citizens that have lived here for generations love it here. Wake up friends! We don't want to see complainers getting things changed that are not good for our valley. The Willamette Valley is a good place to live, and has been for our family for five generations.

Bob Waibel, Sweet Home