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Founded in 1876 Saturday, October 06, 2007 Edition Nº 1778
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Home   >  Argentina   >  Your View (Letters)

Your View (Letters)

Saturday, September 29, 2007
Your view


Carry on Letters
What’s wrong with including Mr. Hayes’ letters in nearly every Saturday paper? (See last Saturday’s letters.) He is an open-minded person who loves writing letters and many of us enjoy them. You may agree or not with his original thinking but I don’t see it fair to hold him out because some readers disagree with his points of view. Congratulations for the Your View section and keep on publishing Bill’s letters!
María T Berardi
berardiguridi@yahoo.com.ar

Greenspan blues
In my opinion the most salient factor in Alan Greenspan’s book (September 18) was the sentence, The war in Iraq was all about oil.
Even Paul Kruman and Frank Rich did not have the balls to come right out and say what we all know to be true. This sentence, coming from a Republican says it all.
Halliburton have moved their Head Office to the United Arab Emirates, oilmen Bush and Cheney will retire to Texas and reap the benefits from the spoils of war for years to come.
We have close to five million refugees in and out of Iraq, hundreds of thousands dead and maimed for life. There are 25,000 US mercenaries operating in Iraq under the name of contractors with no accountability to anyone.
Paul Krugman reported in the Herald that the Democrats would look at General Petraeus and be so intimidated by his uniform they would question nothing in his own appraisal of his performance for fear of being considered unpatriotic.
Democracy today in Washington means supporting a military dictatorship in Pakistan and not recognizing a democratically elected government in Gaza or the West Bank.
We get the governments we deserve and the economy of the US is in tatters and will eventually cause far more problems than the unlawful invasion of Iraq.
Hurlingham, BA
William Hayes
argentinebeefpackers
@yahoo.com.ar

Scientists and business
 A recent article in La Nación headlined “Scientists must have a business outlook” (September 9) refers to an interview with Karin Hersley, formerly at the MIT. The interview reflects strong support for technological advantage over science.
This view is not shared by the world’s leading scientists. Of course, the argument can come from the MIT in the US, where they have a formidable scientific structure.
But we don’t even have science here (see Herald, August 24, 2007), so we cannot promote technology in preference over science. National universities are in disorder, the brain drain is alarming, so we can only just hope to hold up science.
The experience described by Hersley teaches us nothing here. Argentina’s problem at present is another: we need to develop our science, and only science. Technology comes later.
City
Dr Meny Bergel
Environment policy
Government sacks pulp mill negotiator, for saying that Néstor Kirchner’s government has no environmental policy (September 21).
 I do not think that is news to anyone, especially the Argentine people who must live with the incompetence of their Environment Secretariat and the hypocrisy of the government’s position on the Fray Bentos pulp mill.
Argentina’s shadowy position and pronouncements on environmental disasters on the river Paraná, resulting from other mills, are an international joke, as is their concern for internal environmental problems that plague their own people.
It is somewhat refreshing to read in the article that there appears to be someone in Kirchner’s crowd who speaks the truth, Raúl Estrada Oyuela.
Canada
Dr Wayne Dwernychuk
Environmental Scientist (ret)
lwd347@gmail.com

Fouled expressions
Although foul language in films is hardly news nowadays, a recent screening provides the substance to make some considerations on this subject, which may be useful for those persons interested in the origin of words and expressions.
In what could also be seen as sheer laziness on the part of the scriptwriter, three very different situations were dealt with resorting to the same two-word, ear-jarring expletive that uneducated people use to express dismissal and scorn.
First, when one character should have said something like, “I am not interested in your opinion.”
Second, a scene in which the proper line for the protagonist should have been, “Goodbye madam, my love for you has sadly faded.”
And third, near the end, when a shipwreck had occurred and the audience expected to hear a civil explanation such as, “Sorry, mister, there’s no more room in the lifeboats:” no less than the smooth thing to say in such a situation.
But all three lines of dialogue were given short shrift in identical manner. However, according to a little-known historical theory, this expression is a regrettable transformation of a most noble and distant one.
The story begins with the Hundred Years’ War.
 The first engagement in this conflict was the battle of Crécy, in 1337, in which the English archers routed a far superior French force consisting of a vanguard of Genoese crossbowmen backed by the mounted nobility.
This victory was made possible by the longbow, which the English plucked with such accuracy and vigour that they could pierce a coat of mail at a hundred paces.
In those times archery was the weekend sport throughout England, so the preparation of her warriors assured them deadly proficiency on the battlefield. The longbow was six feet long and made of yew, a coniferous tree with particularly straight branches, ideally suited for this weapon.
 As an aftermath to the battle of Crécy, the French pledged that every English archer that fell in their hands would have his index and middle fingers chopped off. That would spell the end of the longbow.
But it was not to be.
The next battle took place in 1356, near the town of Poitiers. The French army was four times as strong, with the king himself ready to give the English “led by the Black Prince” a walloping to serve them right for once and for all. The result was a victory even more overwhelming than at Crécy.
And so it happened “the historical version continues” that the English forces paraded before the wretched French prisoners, their king included, holding their indexes and middle fingers high up and chanting “Pluck yew! Pluck yew!”
How these fully justified and respectable expressions came to be altered in the course of time, and to such improper lengths as they are known today, remains a mystery.
Daniel Ginhsom
dginhson@dd.com.ar

Dereck Foster and wine
 In his Sunday September 23 wine column Dereck Foster writes: “If we leave (Robert) Parker aside, one could say that the majority of wine writers and tasters have come from the UK.”
There are two problems with this argument. First, one can not leave Robert Parker aside. Add up the wine critics in the UK and everywhere else and their influence does not come close to equaling that of Robert Parker.
Second, the fact that Britain’s per capita wine consumption is equal to that of Argentina does not necessarily mean that Britain is going to become an imperial arbiter of wine standards.
I would like to ask Mr. Foster where he gets his statistics regarding the number of “‘tasters,” in the world. By tasters does he mean professionals who make their living from the wine industry? I have my doubts that there are more in the UK than the US.
The huge US wine industry (not only the Napa and Sonoma valleys but also the Pacific Northwest, the Finger Lakes region of New York state and other less well known areas of the US) has produced a flourishing wine culture with a vast array of wine publications, wine courses, wine competitions, wine articles in newspapers and magazines, etc.
Robert Parker is not the only US wine critic. I especially enjoy the reviews of Frank Prial who has written for the New York Times for many years. Prial is just one of many competent and highly respected wine critics in the United States. I cannot see the evidence that Britain is going to take the lead in what Mr. Foster calls “wine matters.”
In an increasingly sophisticated and globalized world it is unlikely that any single country will assume the elite (“elitist” might be the more suitable term) position to which Mr. Foster refers.
 If, however, such a lofty role were to evolve it would seem more likely to descend on a nation that produces wine rather than one that just drinks it — that nation could very well be the United States, or perhaps Argentina!
City
Antonio Conrado

 

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