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Letters: The Pope’s Gesture Toward Gays

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 31 Juli 2013 | 13.26

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Re "On Gay Priests, Pope Asks, 'Who Am I to Judge?' No Change in Doctrine" (front page, July 30):

It is noteworthy that Pope Francis used the modern universal English word "gay" in his reply to a reporter on his flight back to Rome from Brazil, saying about gay priests:

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"

Indeed. This change in vocabulary when speaking about homosexuals from a Catholic of celebrity status should be expanded to all priests, bishops, cardinals and the Vatican itself when mentioning the issue of sexual orientation, because words matter.

It is also noteworthy that while thousands of Catholics and tens of thousands outside the Basilica of the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in São Paulo greeted the pope, and more than a million celebrated a joyous Mass with him on Copacabana Beach in Rio, almost four million gay men and lesbians and their supporters participated in São Paulo's Gay Pride this year.

Perhaps Francis can be the "gay pope," showing respect and kindness instead of targeting gays for public spiritual abuse and secular civil discrimination.

MARSHAL ALAN PHILLIPS
Curitiba, Brazil, July 30, 2013

To the Editor:

An acquaintance described Pope Francis's remarks about gay people as showing "progressive" leanings. This is far from the case. The pope made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that while homosexual desire is not a sin, homosexual acts are. Thus, according to the Catholic Church, a gay person is still "less than" a heterosexual, who is sanctioned to participate in and to enjoy fully the love — in all its spiritual and physical aspects — of another person.

This is not a departure from Catholic teaching, and there is nothing progressive or revolutionary about it. If you're gay, according to the church, love is off limits.

GRAHAM COURSEY
Mount Vernon, Ohio, July 30, 2013

To the Editor:

Who are Pope Francis and his predecessors to judge women aspiring to the priesthood? That door, hanging on rusty ancient hinges, remains closed.

New pope, same old story.

MARIA SCRIVANI
Buffalo, July 30, 2013


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Letter: Big Ben vs. Big Brother

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To the Editor:

"New Apps Know the Answer Before You Ask the Question" (front page, July 30) was fascinating. The idea that a hand-held device might direct me to Big Ben in London was especially illuminating. The absence of a warning that it might direct Big Brother to me was less so.

The more information that we put in those devices to pour through, the less likely it is to be ours. It becomes public domain — whether that is our wish or not. It will answer the questions of others before it answers ours.

RICHARD A. ROSEN
Mount Vernon, N.Y., July 30, 2013


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Letter: HPV Vaccine in Schools

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Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is correctly dismayed by the stagnant fight against the spread of a common and preventable infectious disease ("HPV Vaccine Not Reaching Enough Girls, C.D.C. Says," news article, July 26).

As a former health commissioner for New York City, Dr. Frieden knows that school-based health centers are the straightforward solution to preventing the spread of infectious diseases among adolescents.

School-based health centers provide comprehensive care to children and adolescents in a setting that is trusted, familiar and immediately accessible: their school. The problem is that there are not enough of these clinics to fulfill this mission.

Unchanged vaccination rates, whether against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, or other preventable diseases and infections, show that we need investments in place-based, accessible health care so our country's students can remain healthy and ready to learn.

LINDA JUSZCZAK
President
School-Based Health Alliance
Washington, July 29, 2013


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Letter: Domestic Abuse

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For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Re "Police Take On Family Violence to Avert Deaths" (front page, July 25):

It is great to see that the New York Police Department is investing more resources to protect those most at risk of escalating violence by an intimate partner and is taking an aggressive, hands-on approach.

More police officers dedicated to domestic violence, using smarter strategies, can make a difference, but the criminal justice system is just one piece of the puzzle.

Civil legal remedies are equally important. When the family lawyer or immigration lawyer works together with the district attorney and the police, you get a coordinated community response that's proved to be effective.

One of the many reasons women may reconcile with their batterers is that there are children involved, so until our family courts give weighty consideration to domestic violence in the custody and visitation orders they issue and understand the risk factors for lethality, serious gaps will remain, leaving too many victims at risk.

KIM SUSSER
Director, Matrimonial and Family Law
New York Legal Assistance Group
New York, July 25, 2013


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Letter: Ending Genital Cutting

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As former executive director of Unicef, I was personally involved with efforts to end the practice of female genital cutting, so I was pleased to see progress reported ("Genital Cutting Found in Decline in Many Nations," front page, July 23).

However, the impression left of Tostan, the nongovernmental organization mentioned and quoted in the article, could be misunderstood. Despite years of failed attempts by governments and NGOs to change the religious and cultural beliefs that produced the practice, Tostan has been the only organization to achieve significant success.

In Senegal alone, more than 5,500 communities have banned genital cutting and child marriages. The report that Senegal's "support for the practice among women and girls had not noticeably declined" is not surprising when the national survey did not specifically sample Tostan villages where demonstrable progress has occurred.

Unicef and numerous other independent organizations have evaluated Tostan's work and seen significant drops in prevalence, some after 10 years. The government of Senegal expects to end genital cutting by 2015 because of Tostan.

ANN M. VENEMAN
New York, July 26, 2013


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Letter: Shattered Bats, Next Year

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 30 Juli 2013 | 13.26

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For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

To the Editor:

Re "Science Lowers Shattering Risk at Home Plate" (front page, July 26):

I predict that the number of shattered bats will be dramatically reduced in the 2014 baseball season. Mariano Rivera is retiring this year.

KATHIE COBLENTZ
New York, July 26, 2013


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Letter: Palm Oil Biofuel

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For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Re "Looking at Oil Palm's Genome for Keys to Productivity" (news article, nytimes.com, July 24):

As conservation biologists suggest, the solution to the palm oil problem indeed lies beyond its DNA.

The environmental devastation caused by the oil palm tree industry illustrates the need for new policies and practices that better respect the complex and delicate interconnections among our food, water and energy systems and how those systems interact with the natural world.

A new special report from the Wharton Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership states clearly that meeting the demands for global resources "will require thinking in terms of systems, not silos." The report says, "It will take collaborative approaches that embrace rather than battle natural processes."

Unsustainable palm oil biofuel production in Southeast Asia is a prime example of policies and practices that embrace silo thinking and are at war with nature.

KYLE RABIN
New York, July 25, 2013

The writer is program director for Water and Energy Programs at the Grace Communications Foundation.


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Letters: On Charity: Doing a Better Job of Doing Good

To the Editor:

Re "The Charitable-Industrial Complex" (Op-Ed, July 27):

Peter Buffett concludes that many funders of the rapidly growing nonprofit sector condition their support on the application of business principles — like investing where the return on investment is highest. There's some truth to this, but it's also worth remembering that a good many funders still pay little or no attention to what their donations actually accomplish as they pass through the hands of nonprofit managers. It's a crime to waste money, however well intentioned.

Somewhere between the benign neglect of traditional charity and the blind acceptance of benefit-cost analysis is a sweet spot for philanthropists of all stripes to move toward.

RAY HORTON
New York, July 27, 2013

The writer is a professor of ethics and corporate governance and founder of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School.

To the Editor:

I have worked for more than 30 years in the nonprofit and for-profit sector, primarily in Africa. Peter Buffett's simple sentence — "My wife and I know we don't have the answers, but we do know how to listen" — is profound and refreshing, and very, very unusual.

Most Westerners I've met who are trying to help the "less fortunate" don't listen. They diagnose, prescribe and, often, as Mr. Buffett points out, create disastrous unintended consequences. These are well-meaning people and organizations, but the simple act of listening is not part of their skill set.

Sadly, almost every negative consequence from earnest efforts — like the indiscriminate distribution of free mosquito nets or drilling water wells in the middle of villages, to name two — could be avoided by simply listening.

The people who are the targets of our help know their problems and they know the solutions. They're not waiting for us to diagnose the problem, much less force-feed them the solutions. They'd like us to listen and then work with them to provide the resources, whatever those may be, to solve the problems.

So yes, there is, as Mr. Buffett says, "a crisis of imagination." But before one even gets to imagination, one needs to listen to the people one is trying to help.

PETER V. EMERSON
London, July 29, 2013

The writer is a director of the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund and a visiting research fellow at King's College London.

To the Editor:

Peter Buffett laments that the nonprofit field isn't producing breakthrough answers and has a "crisis of imagination." I disagree.

Nonprofits involved in public change may not have the answers for worldwide teenage pregnancy, health care, education and the other global issues he mentions. But society grows primarily through small changes that can prove themselves — not sudden big answers.

A few examples from the program for nonprofit leaders that I run: faster ways to get elderly to the hospitals; better ways to stop lead poisoning in urban housing; ways for professionals who have continuing education requirements to use that time to help the needy.

The problem is that solutions like these often involve the need to press government to act. But foundations tend to stay away from public advocacy, afraid that they will be accused of lobbying (but public advocacy is allowed) and not wanting to pay for time-consuming efforts that may take several years to yield results, if ever.

If foundations began to finance public advocacy — and just small grants are needed — there could be thousands more changes for the good happening, and some might eventually become the large breakthroughs we all want.

ALLAN LUKS
New York, July 27, 2013

The writer is the director of the Fordham Center for Nonprofit Leaders.

To the Editor:

Philanthropy's elephant in the room is that charity targeting the rich-poor gap comes from sources that have produced this gap. Peter Buffett insightfully shows how giving does more to soothe the donor's conscience than to mitigate inequality. Often but not always.

Many nonprofits from coast to coast are redressing inequality. They efficiently use their contributions to provide second chances to Americans who have dim prospects for moving their lives forward without help — like offering kids an enriched early childhood education, mentoring at-risk youth or enabling the chronically homeless to move into permanent housing. They are proof that philanthropy can indeed be a vehicle for significant change. They do not, in Mr. Buffett's words, "only kick the can down the road." They're offering gateways to the American dream.

IRA SILVER
Framingham, Mass., July 29, 2013

The writer, a professor of sociology at Framingham State University, is the author of "Giving Hope: How You Can Restore the American Dream" and blogs at www.oppforall.com.


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Op-Ed Columnist: Detroit, a Love Song

Tell people that you live in New York City, and they ask which neighborhood. Tell them that you lived in Rome, and they ask how you could ever leave.

Tell them that you lived in Detroit, and they ask, "Why?"

They offer condolences. They wonder how quickly you fled. Maybe that's especially true in my case, because Detroit stands out among the cities I've called home over my post-college years: New York, Rome, Detroit, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. One of these things is not like the others. One isn't a beacon and magnet, a synonym for exciting, lucrative or at least balmy times.

That's exactly what I loved about Detroit. And I did love Detroit, not in an electric way but in the way you love something honest and unforced, the way you love someone who doesn't wear any masks or makeup and doesn't insist that you do.

I was there in the early 1990s, and Detroit wasn't in straits quite as dire as it entered earlier this month, when it became the most populous American city ever to declare bankruptcy. But it was pocked with abandoned houses, riddled with crime, rife with trouble. There was no longer a proper department store within the city limits. There were only a handful of first-run movie theaters.

The city's plight was best summarized by a pitiful slogan that its boosters put on bumper stickers and the like: "Say Nice Things About Detroit." As if positive thinking — and positive talking — could save the day.

There is one nice thing in particular I want to say about Detroit, by which I mean not just the city but the broader metropolitan area, including Dearborn to the west, Oakland County to the north and, to the east, the Grosse Pointes, where I lived for two years after three in downtown Detroit. Bereft of vanity, Detroit is bereft, too, of pose and pretense. The people there don't tether their identities to the luster or mythology of their surroundings. Their self-image isn't tied to their ZIP codes.

That's undoubtedly true of many, if not most, American cities, of Cleveland and St. Louis and probably Omaha and maybe Houston.

But if you inhabit the gilded precincts favored by those of us who fancy ourselves power brokers or opinion makers or players of one kind or another, it's a remarkable thing — and a welcome one.

The political operative in Washington, the financial whiz or magazine editor in New York, the studio executive in Los Angeles, the Internet impresario in Seattle or San Francisco: all are creatures not just of a profession but of a profession that blooms and struts in a given self-regarding place. Many have egos nourished by that terrain, which feeds a hyperawareness of status, a persistent jockeying for position.

And the denizens of cities with inimitable landscapes, nonpareil party scenes or idiosyncratic political sensibilities often bask in that geographic glow, the pride of the Miamian or the Portlander sometimes bleeding into smugness.

I encountered little smugness in Detroit. Sure, there were people who talked boastfully about buying a house in Grosse Pointe Farms rather than Grosse Pointe Park. There were people invested in the cars they drove. This was the Motor City, after all.

But Detroiters didn't dash as madly to the hot new restaurant. They didn't chatter as preciously about their preferred summer weekend destination. And that wasn't just about limited means. It was about different, more down-to-earth priorities.

They lived in the Detroit area not because it puffed them up but because it made sense. Maybe they had family there. Maybe they had other deep roots.

Maybe the Detroit area was where they'd found the best career opportunity at a key moment, and then they went on to build a life around it. That's what drew me to Detroit: a better job than the one I had in New York.

An even better one than that lured me back east, and I returned with mixed feelings, because while Detroit doesn't have mountains or an ocean or streets with much of a pulse, it has a terrific farmers' market in the city center. My friends and I bought our basil there and made fresh pesto for backyard barbecues.

Detroit has an arts institute with a first-rate film series that residents, not taking art-house fare for granted, relish. It has a 985-acre public park that, while needing more faithful upkeep, is situated majestically in the middle of a blue river. When I'd run there, I'd sometimes have the path to myself.

And the Detroit area has no paucity of smart, decent people. Most of the ones I was lucky enough to befriend remain there. They'd like better restaurants and music and theater and all of it, and they root for the city's resurrection.

But that's not because they want bragging rights. They long ago made peace with Detroit's absence of flamboyant beauty, its shortfall of romance. Home isn't about such shimmer. Their home, at least.

David Brooks is off today.


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Who Should Lead the Federal Reserve?

Updated July 29, 2013 10:15 PM

Debaters

  • Edward Harrison

    Obama Needs to Choose Janet Yellen

    Edward Harrison, Credit Writedowns.com

    In appointing Larry Summers over Janet Yellen, the president would be making a major political blunder.

  • Brad DeLong

    A Slight Preference for Larry Summers

    Brad DeLong, economist, U.C. Berkeley

    Larry Summers has an edge as the most creative thinker. If times are turbulent, outside-the-box thinking has its place.

  • James D. Hamilton

    Janet Yellen Is Best for the Job

    James D. Hamilton, economist, U.C. San Diego

    The central bank's leader must keep inflation in check, ensure financial stability and make sure the economy grows without creating new bubbles.

  • Allison Schrager

    Neither Should Get the Nod

    Allison Schrager, economist

    The ideal Fed leader is an economist with an academic background in both finance and macroeconomics, or someone with industry experience.

  • James Pethokoukis

    End the Fed as We Know It

    James Pethokoukis, American Enterprise Institute

    To better meet its dual mandate, the Fed should target a 5 percent or so growth path for nominal gross domestic product.


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Editorial: Airport Security Without the Hassle

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 28 Juli 2013 | 13.26

The chance of dying in an airplane is vanishingly small. The chance of being killed by a terrorist in an airplane is smaller still. Mark Stewart, a civil engineer who studies probabilistic risk, has put the odds at one in 90 million a year. Looking at these figures dispassionately, one might wonder if the Transportation Security Administration has found the right balance between safety and convenience with its notoriously burdensome airport screening procedures.

The T.S.A. seems to understand that the status quo is barely tolerable for many travelers and is seeking to reduce the hassle. It recently announced that it was extending eligibility for a prescreening program called PreCheck to all American citizens. People can apply online before visiting an enrollment site in person, providing their fingerprints, passing a background check and paying $85 for a five-year term. In exchange, they will gain access to a special lane at the airport where they can keep their belts buckled, their shoes tied and their liquids in their carry-on bags (but still no more than 3.4 ounces, please).

PreCheck will provide a measure of relief for anyone who signs on. But it is absurd for the T.S.A. to demand background checks and fingerprinting for what amount to small modifications in the screening routine. The agency could relax airport security for everyone without gravely endangering the traveling public.

The former head of the T.S.A., Kip Hawley, has argued that the agency should allow passengers to carry on all liquids, in any quantity. As a safeguard against explosives, passengers would simply have to put their liters of Evian in gray bins and pass them through scanners. Mr. Hawley sees reasons for keeping footwear checks, but those, too, are of questionable value. Passengers do not remove their shoes in the European Union, or even in Israel, one of the world's most security-conscious countries, with a famously stringent screening process.

It is time to stop pretending that annoying protocols like these are all that stand between us and devastation. The most effective security innovation post-9/11 was also the simplest: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, which has made it virtually impossible to hijack an aircraft.

As things stand, the T.S.A. asks its officers to enforce rules of questionable utility while giving them remarkably little discretion; they're more like hall monitors than intelligence personnel. That is a huge waste of human talent and a source of inefficiency. At Heathrow Airport in London, passengers need to remove their shoes only if asked to do so by security officers. Imagine that: a screening agent entrusted with the solemn power to wave through a teenager in flip-flops en route to Honolulu.


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Opinionator | Summer Game: Can You Guess What This Is?

RULES
1. Player has not seen the photo beforehand.

2. Player must try to give context for the photo.

PLAYER
Jeff Garlin is a comedian and filmmaker who directed and appears in the new movie "Dealin' With Idiots." He will also be in "The Goldbergs," a new ABC comedy this September.

Twitter name: @jeffgarlin

PLAYER'S GUESS
It's a child's clay sculpture that was broken by his mom, who thought it looked nothing like her. She felt bad the next day and glued it back together. Days later the child had much ice cream.

ANSWER
It was carved by an elderly man named Miles B. Carpenter. Miles did have a childlike spirit. He was known for driving around Waverly, Va., with life-size wooden dolls riding shotgun. Miles owned a sawmill and ice plant, which led him to sell cold sodas and scrap wood carvings outside his house. After he died in 1985, his home was preserved as a museum, where his sculptures are now displayed, including his homemade driving companions.


On Thursday and Friday, readers submit their guesses. See them in the comments below.

MY FAVORITE COMMENT
"This ceremonial ashtray has been passed down for generations. It is meant to represent a phoenix rising from the ashes accumulated in the ashtray."
— OMY, Los Angeles, CA

MOST ACCURATE COMMENT
"fabulous folk art, handcarved, painted with brilliant pigments, wooden frog leaping around on a (Persian?) rug. Artist portrayed it in mid-air, coming in for a landing. (hold the photo upside down…)

the artist is impressed with this creature's fabulous mouth. So am I.

I would like to guess the prehistoric Devil Frog, who lived in Madagascar and ate tiny dinosaurs, but it's more likely the currently endangered Goliath frog from a small habitat on the West Coast of Africa.

At any rate, it is absolutely lovely."
— mnydgs, hawaii

Come back next week to take a guess on a new clue.


Tamara Shopsin is a graphic designer, illustrator and the author, most recently, of "Mumbai New York Scranton."


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Exposures: The Brutality of ‘Corrective Rape’

Clare Carter/Contact Press Images

Tebogo Motswagi, "I was too afraid of the police to open a case. When you go to the police and you are a man and you tell them you have been raped they laugh at you. They say what sort of a man gets raped. They don't take our cases seriously."  More Photos »

South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of sexual assault. According to a 2009 government survey, one in four men admit to having sex with a woman who did not consent to intercourse, and nearly half of these men admitted to raping more than once. An earlier government study found that a majority of rapes were committed by friends and acquaintances of the victim.

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For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Just as disturbing is a practice called "corrective rape" — the rape of gay men and lesbians to "cure" them of their sexual orientation.

In one of the few cases to attract press attention, in 2008, Eudy Simelane, a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Her naked body was dumped in a stream in the Kwa Thema township outside Johannesburg. A soccer player training to be a referee for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, she was targeted because of her sexual orientation.

In 2011, Noxolo Nogwaza, 24, was raped, and stabbed multiple times with glass shards. Her skull was shattered. Her eyes were reportedly gouged from their sockets. Ms. Nogwaza had been seen earlier that evening in a bar with a female friend.

I read of these killings and began to research them. I was shocked by the contradiction between South Africa's law — it was the fifth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage — and what was actually happening on the streets. With horrific apartheid in recent memory, the country's 1996 Constitution committed itself to equality for the entire nation. But the new constitution could not erase deeply held biases and even hatred toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. If anything, the extension of formal legal protections exacerbated some people's worst homophobic inclinations.

Over two years, it became evident to me that multiple layers of South African society were responsible for the epidemic of corrective rape and that bias, apathy and culpability ran deeper than I could have imagined: in educational and religious institutions, the criminal justice system, and even within families. I met victims whose loved ones rapists back into their homes, or even abetted the sexual assaults, sometimes under the influence of local ministers. Police officers did not document or investigate these assaults.

I believe South Africa can have a bright future. Part of the legacy of Nelson Mandela will be his support for equal rights for sexual minorities. Given its historical travails with race, the country can be an example to the world of tolerance and pluralism. But 17 years after the adoption of the post-apartheid Constitution, gay rights remain more an aspiration than a reality — especially in the townships on the outskirts of the cities.

One woman I met, Simphiwe Thandeka, was "correctively" raped three times. A tomboy, she was raped at age 13 by an uncle who didn't approve of her "boyish" ways. "I didn't know at the time it was rape, because I was only 13," she told me. The next morning, she awoke bleeding and in severe pain. She spoke to her mother and grandmother, who insisted it was a family matter and was not to be spoken of again.

Some years later, Simphiwe's uncle decided that marriage would "cure" his niece of her sexuality. So he arranged a marriage for her. "He took me to his friend's house and told me I must have sex with this man, because I was going to marry him next month," she recounted. "I had no idea what was going on."

The friend raped Simphiwe multiple times, and beat her with a clothes hanger. "He told me I was going to be his wife and not a lesbian," she said. The following morning, the friend returned her to her uncle's house. "He told my uncle he couldn't marry me because I was still a lesbian, and returned the money my uncle had given him," she said.

During a hospital visit, Simphiwe learned that she had contracted H.I.V. from her uncle and had become pregnant by his friend. "My mum had known my uncle was positive, but she never told me," she said.

After giving birth to a son, she was raped again, this time by a priest in her township — who also impregnated her. She gave birth to a daughter. She gave her children Zulu names: her boy, Happiness, and her daughter, Blessing.

Clare Carter is a photojournalist.


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Opinionator | Draft: A Writer by Any Other Name

Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing.

After J. K. Rowling admitted that she, and not a military veteran named "Robert Galbraith," wrote the new mystery novel "The Cuckoo's Calling," The New York Times asked several writers to choose a hypothetical pen name and describe what kind of book they might write under — or perhaps behind — that name. (Note: This informal survey was conducted before any of them had a chance to consider "Carlos Danger" as an option.)

André Aciman

The author, most recently, of the novel "Harvard Square."

PEN NAME: Valerie Scott Smythe, a writer for a fashion magazine based in Oshkosh, Wis.

GENRE: Romance.

Ms. Smythe's latest novel, "Stella Goes Stellar," is a semi-erotic sequel to her previous best seller, "Lucy Goes Lunar," and picks up where the preschool teacher with sadomasochistic tendencies takes up bondage and time traveling with a vampire holding a giant wizard's wand.


Lydia Davis

The author, most recently, of "Our Village," in the chapbook "Two American Scenes."

PEN NAME: Percy.

GENRE: Memoir, of sorts.

For some months, a few years ago, I was planning to write a little book from the point of view of our cat Percy. It would center on his annoyance with our cat Tom. Percy was very smart, and Tom was a gentle, dreamy, affectionate soul. I took many floor-level photos of situations that interested Percy, and I wrote many sentences to accompany them in Percy's disdainful voice. I haven't completely given up on it.


Ben Fountain

The author, most recently, of the novel "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk."

PEN NAME: B. E. Fountainhead.

GENRE: Nonfiction.

"Looking Good and Feeling Fine: The Banking Industry Since 2009" tells the remarkable story of the "too-big-to-fail" banks' valiant struggle to return to record profits so that they might continue, in the words of the Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein, to do "God's work."


Carl Hiaasen

The author, most recently, of the novel "Bad Monkey."

PEN NAME: Rick O'Mortis.

GENRE: Fantasy.

I envision a series of vampire-romance novels set at an assisted-living facility in post-apocalyptic Boca Raton, Fla. Perhaps there could also be trolls and pythons. I'm already pitching it to HBO as a high-concept mini-series, so please don't spill the beans!


Anne Lamott

The author, most recently, of "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers."

PEN NAME: Dr. Morris Fishback. This has been my pseudonym for over 40 years, based on misremembering a name from the movie "A Thousand Clowns."

GENRE: Health and wellness.

"The Royal Baby Diet Book," which would include chapters on "Eating a Tiny Bit Less," "Getting a Tiny Bit More Exercise" and "Visualizing Greatness."


Stacy Schiff

The author, most recently, of "Cleopatra: A Life."

PEN NAME: P. G. Wodehouse.

GENRES: Satire and how-to.

If the ability to write crackling humor is part of the deal, a comedy of manners. No promises, but my mother-in-law might just find herself in there. If comic timing isn't part of the package but the federal witness-protection program is, a how-to book about reducing your anxiety, e-mail and carbon footprint by watching stupid cat videos.


Rebecca Skloot

The author of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."

PEN NAME: Rhoda Stokol.

GENRE: Children's literature.

"The Average Dog" is the story of a dog who wrote a best-selling book about animal intelligence. After watching her owner struggle to write the book herself for years, the dog stayed up nights with bowls of coffee, rewriting her owner's horrible drafts. The story blew open on national television when, instead of performing her usual trick of simply turning on the laptop as instructed, the dog typed her name: Rhoda Stokol.


John Wray

The author, most recently, of the novel "Lowboy."

PEN NAME: I write under a pseudonym already, so I suppose the equivalent would be to publish a book under my real name, John Henderson.

GENRE: Memoir.

I'm thinking of something along the lines of "Child of Disgruntlement: The John Henderson Story." Actually, maybe I'll hold on to that pen name a little while longer.


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News Analysis: The Hype Over Hospital Rankings

LAST week U.S. News and World Report released its annual list of "Best Hospitals." Web sites are being updated to celebrate victories. (Johns Hopkins ranks No. 1!) Magazines will be plump with advertising. (NewYork-Presbyterian is first in New York and tied for seventh nationally!) And, because I am a reporter covering health care, my in-box is accumulating e-mails from the "Honor Roll" of the Top 18 hospitals.

But what does this annual exercise mean for patients? And what does it say about American health care?

After all, Harvard and Princeton, which tied for No. 1 in the magazine's 2013 Top 10 national universities list, didn't take out ads to proclaim their triumph; they will fill their classrooms no matter. And as in the college ratings, there are no big surprises in the top hospital group: they are the big academic medical centers — the Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic. More to the point, even though you might well fly across the country for four years of schooling, you are far more likely to stay near your home for medical care.  No one's flying to Mayo in Minnesota to get inhalers for asthma, even though it ranks No. 1 for pulmonary medicine.

But American hospitals are a bit like restaurants, competing for your business (and donations). As such they go all out to promote their brand, even though hospitals and doctors are not permitted to advertise in many other countries.

For American hospitals large and small, it clearly pays to advertise, particularly in these tough economic times and with the Affordable Care Act poised to throw tens of millions of newly insured patients into the market. But for patients the rankings and, especially, the subsequent promotions generally have limited benefit, experts say.

"Nearly every hospital has a banner out front saying they're a 'top hospital' for something in some rating system," said Dr. Nicholas Osborne, a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Michigan. "Those ratings have become more important for hospital marketing than for actually helping patients find the best care."

What's more, Dr. Osborne compared the outcomes of two ranking programs — one by U.S. News and World Report and the other by Healthgrades — and found a "large discordance" in their results. "The two biggest rating systems come up with completely different lists," he said. "What does that tell you?"

If such advertising often adds little in the way of useful information, it certainly adds to health care costs. Hospitals with more than 400 beds spent an average of $2.18 million on advertising in 2010, surveys have found.

"We're pushing $3 trillion in health expenditures, and one-third of that is waste," said Dr. Eric Topol, chief academic officer at Scripps Health in California. "Those TV commercials saying 'I got my cancer care at X hospital' are a shame, definitely wasteful."

To be fair, U.S. News cautions that its national ratings reflect how hospitals perform in treating "technically challenging" cases and that the list is merely a starting point after which "patients have to do their own research."

But those caveats are lost in the subsequent barrage of advertising. And the magazine encourages hospitals to post its seal of approval. In return, the U.S. News Web site is bursting with hospital advertising.

Some critics decry the glut of hospital self-promotion as not just wasteful and costly, but also potentially dangerous.

"There are general fraud laws, but there is no law specific to hospital advertising, and there should be," said Robert Steinbuch, a professor of law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who studies the topic. "I can't tell you how many hospitals say, 'We have state-of-the-art CAT scanners' — there is no such thing! It's an old technology."

IN a country where numerous organizations — including Yelp — accredit, rate and rank hospital care, some accolades may indicate excellence and some don't mean that much at all, he added. And while teams of academics and scores of for-profit companies are developing "quality" metrics to guide health care reform and to help patients shop for their care, it turns out that rating a hospital accurately is extremely complicated. For one thing, hospitals that take on sicker patients might have more complications after surgery.

Yet even smaller hospitals tend to advertise their profit-making departments, like cardiology, even though they may not offer the full range of heart services.

"If they advertise cardiac care and don't have angioplasty, that's essentially fraud," Mr. Steinbuch said, adding that if a patient dies, "that could be considered criminally negligent homicide."

But health care advertising is probably here to stay. "Hospital advertising sets up an arms war, so that hospitals feel they can't survive without aggressive marketing," said Dr. Topol of Scripps Health.

And even skeptics concede that health care ratings, when properly developed and employed, may help hospitals improve their performance and provide patients with valuable information.

If you have a rare lung condition that has flummoxed local doctors, for example, you may want to fly to Mayo since U.S. News has ranked it No. 1 in pulmonary medicine. And if a dozen hospitals in your area offer hip replacements, a search of regional rankings on the magazine's Web site will yield some useful statistics. But take all those hospital advertisements with a grain of salt.

Indeed, with thousands of good hospitals across the nation, the best selling point for routine medical care may simply be convenience: some studies show that patients prefer nearby hospitals with worse results over ones with better outcomes farther away.

Elisabeth Rosenthal is a reporter for The New York Times who is writing a yearlong series about the cost of health care, "Paying Till It Hurts."

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the approximate amount spent on health expenditures mentioned by Dr. Eric Topol. He said the amount was pushing $3 trillion, not $3 billion.


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Letter: Crossing Over, in a More Innocent Time

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 26 Juli 2013 | 13.26

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Re "Bonjour, America!," by Stephen R. Kelly (Op-Ed, July 24):

We married in May 1967 and drove up to Quebec for our honeymoon. We meandered pleasantly through New Hampshire, assuming lazily that we were heading in the right direction. We knew that we were when we arrived at a modest roadside sign that read, more or less (it was 46 years ago):

"You are about to cross the border into Canada. If you need to speak with a border official, please turn around and drive 12 miles to the town of X, where the offices are."

We didn't, so we didn't.

The road continued dreamily through the same countryside, and the first proof that we had entered another country came when we pulled up at a gas station and the young man said "bonjour."

In the context of today's immigration and border hysteria, it seems like a dream sequence. But then, so do the group outings we used to take to the airport to have coffee and breakfast after a party and watch the planes take off.

No wonder there is a perennial generation gap: this relaxed ease must seem mythological to a generation brought up to consider shoe removal, pat-downs and "naked" X-rays a necessary norm.

JOSEPHINE NOVAK
New York, July 25, 2013


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Letter: At Least We Can Choose

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To the Editor:

Re "Windsors Versus Weiner" (column, July 25): Gail Collins writes that some politicians make you think fondly of a monarchy. As an Englishman, I can assure her that even the most cursory review of British royal history makes one think fondly of politicians.

At least you Americans can decide not to vote for a politician with Anthony D. Weiner's sexual proclivities; we are stuck with whoever is up next.

JONATHAN MILLER
Winter Park, Fla., July 25, 2013


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Letter: Homophobia in Russia

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Re "Russia's Anti-Gay Crackdown," by Harvey Fierstein (Op-Ed, July 22):

Russia is indeed in the midst of an appalling homophobic crackdown. The new laws do ban the adoption of Russian children by both gay couples and any single parent living in any country where same-sex marriage is legal.

And a discriminatory, homophobic "propaganda law" provides for the detention and deportation of foreigners if they are engaging in "propaganda," but not simply on suspicion that they are gay.

Yet make no mistake, that's harmful enough, because propaganda, as Mr. Fierstein notes, in this context means anything that presents homosexuality in anything but a negative light.

The same law includes any positive information about "nontraditional" sexuality among a long list of other information that is considered harmful to children. Other harmful information includes pornography, tobacco and alcohol advertisements, and "propaganda" on violence, drug addiction, antisocial behavior, and (ironically) racial and class intolerance.

The antigay crackdown is most definitely part of a broader crackdown on rights in Russia.

RACHEL DENBER
New York, July 23, 2013

The writer is deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch.


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Letter: A Diagnosis of Dementia

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To the Editor:

Re "Dementia's Signs May Come Early" (front page, July 18):

I am 88, and a procrastinator from birth. I have been complaining of memory loss, but have been constantly reassured.

Perhaps there would be a silver lining to a diagnosis of progressive dementia, even in the absence of any treatment. In my case, it would prompt me to start attacking all those things that I have been putting off for a rainy day.

Already I have updated the beneficiary designations on my insurance policies and other documents; I have started going through endless papers, to dispose of most of them, and organize and explain others to my descendants. I need to organize old family photos to give them names and stories (for those that might be of interest to my children).

I need to do various repairs to my house, to make it easier to sell. On the whole, I think that I would be stimulated into a much more active life.

GARDINER TUCKER
Shelton, Conn., July 20, 2013


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Opinionator | The Stone: Return of the Stingy Oddsmaker: A Response

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

This is a response by the author to readers of his recent post for The Stone, "Nothing to See Here: Demoting the Uncertainty Principle."

Thanks to readers of The Stone for their feedback. The point of the article was essentially twofold: (a) to pry apart what the uncertainty relations actually say from the typical "Copenhagen interpretation" gloss given to them, and (b) to point out that when one does so, then the uncertainty relations are still downright strange, but they don't support the kind of metaphysical excesses commonly assumed. I hoped that the Stingy Oddsmaker metaphor usefully performed (a) and that the examples of "quantum theory without observers" supported (b).

Many readers bridle against the idea that measurement fundamentally is unimportant in quantum mechanics. In expressing my frustration with this idea, I can't do any better than to quote the physicist J.S. Bell:

It would seem that the theory is exclusively concerned about "results of measurement," and has nothing to say about anything else. What exactly qualifies some physical systems to play the role of "measurer"? Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better qualified system … with a Ph.D.? If the theory is to apply to anything but highly idealized laboratory operations, are we not obliged to admit that more or less "measurement-like" processes are going on more or less all the time, more or less everywhere. ("Against 'Measurement' ")

I admit that we are usually taught that the observer is fundamentally important when learning quantum physics. But that is an artifact of history. There is no reason for it anymore. Quantum mechanics can be formulated in ways that treat the observer as part of the quantum system. Doing so is not merely an aesthetic desideratum, but instead necessary if the theory is to be applied to the cosmos as a whole, as in quantum gravity. Readers with further interest in "quantum mechanics without observers" might find Shelly Goldstein's paper of that title useful.

Other comments quite rightly point out that the Stingy Oddsmaker metaphor isn't mathematically precise. Nowhere do I mention Planck's constant or conjugate variables, never mind the many fancier mathematical formulations available or these recent experiments. This is not because, as some suggested, I am a philosopher, but because I was writing an essay for a general audience, not for a physics journal. Equations tend to put off readers who are not familiar with them. The Stingy Oddsmaker metaphor expresses what's odd about the uncertainty relations when they are shorn of metaphysical mischief. Adding the technical details is obviously deeply important to physics, but not for communicating my main point. Those desiring more detail can read this wonderful article by the physicist and philosopher Jos Uffink.

Some comments make sophisticated claims about the physics that I believe it's important to correct. One reader writes that Bell proved that formulations of quantum theory such as de Broglie-Bohm can't reproduce quantum statistics. To such a reader it will then come as a surprise that Bell himself strongly endorsed de Broglie-Bohm. Were there two "Bell"'s, one approving the theory while the other showed it impossible? No, Bell proved that no local so-called "hidden variable" theory would work, but de Broglie-Bohm is non-local (and in agreement with experiments). Another reader insists that de Broglie-Bohm is false because it violates relativity and another that it doesn't extend to quantum field theory. Here I can only point out that the theory agrees with experiment and has been developed along these lines in various ways (see here and here), but that I agree there are challenges in satisfactorily extending the theory. Even if false, however, there are other formulations of quantum mechanics without observers.

Finally, some readers worried that I characterized a straw man. Were that only so! By beginning with television shows and films, I can see how one might get that impression. Alas, wild mischaracterizations of uncertainty seem to be the rule, not the exception, in academia outside physics. A Google Scholar search of "uncertainty principle" coupled with various buzzwords from social theory will quickly reveal some. I was just too much of a gentleman to name names.


Craig Callender is chair of the philosophy department at the University of California, San Diego. He recently edited "The Oxford Handbook for the Philosophy of Time," and he is finishing a book on time and physics entitled "What Makes Time Special."


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Op-Ed Columnist: A Policy of Rape Continues

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 25 Juli 2013 | 13.26

By Ben Solomon

Darfur, Forgotten Too Soon: The Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof reports from Eastern Chad, where Darfuris flood into camps to escape the violence in their homeland.

ABGADAM REFUGEE CAMP, Chad — Kaltouma Ahmed cried softly as she told why she fled Darfur this spring: Armed men in uniforms attacked her village, shooting her 13-year-old son dead, burning her home and then stripping and raping her.

As the men raped her, she said, they shouted insults against her ethnic group, the Salamat Arabs. "We'll exterminate the Salamat men, and Salamat women will become slaves," she quoted one of the attackers as saying.

Darfur isn't in the headlines anymore, partly because there has been a lull in the killing in recent years and partly because so much else is happening worldwide. The Sudanese government, which tends to calibrate its brutality to the degree of attention it receives, is taking advantage of the lack of scrutiny by stepping up its decade-long campaign in Darfur of mass murder, burned villages and sexual violence.

We're at the 10-year-anniversary of the beginning of the genocide in Darfur, yet, instead of subsiding, it has been amplified this year. Just in the first five months of 2013, according to the United Nations, another 300,000 people in Darfur have been driven from their homes — and untold numbers killed or raped.

Rape happens all over the world, of course, but, for 10 years, the Sudanese government has used rape as a weapon of war to humiliate the ethnic groups that it targets. This strategy is effective because it terrifies villagers into fleeing and is so stigmatizing that women are extremely reluctant to talk about it.

Yet six brave women who are refugees from just one Darfur village, AbJaradil, were courageous enough to speak out about having been raped. They say that it is their way of fighting back.

Timoma Abdurahman, 25, said that her ordeal began when armed men in Sudanese military uniforms from the government-backed Miseriya tribe surrounded her house.

"You Salamat are slaves," she recalls a leader of the attackers shouting. "This land does not belong to you."

Ben Solomon for The New York Times

Timoma Abdurahman, 25, watched men in Sudanese military uniforms kill her father. Then they took her to a military camp and raped her.

As Timoma watched, the attackers then killed her father. "They ran over him with a vehicle, over and over, until he was dead," she said, breaking down. When she had composed herself, she continued her story: She and her sister were then force-marched to a military camp and raped, as attackers mocked them and the Salamat tribe.

This is the last stop on my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a student with me on a reporting trip to the developing world. The winner, Erin Luhmann of the University of Wisconsin, and I interviewed these brave survivors from Darfur here at the Abgadam Refugee Camp in eastern Chad. (You can read Erin's reports from the trip, and see her video on my blog.)

I began the win-a-trip journeys in 2006 partly out of hope of encouraging university students to pay more attention to genocide in Darfur. I would never have imagined that these mass atrocities would be continuing in 2013. The standard refrain after such episodes is "if only we had known" — well, we've known about Darfur for 10 years, and hundreds of thousands of deaths have ensued.

The survivors whom Erin and I interviewed say that the Sudanese government is behind the attacks, noting that many of the attackers wore government-issued military uniforms and arrived in trucks with mounted machine guns, sometimes with government license plates. And, after all, this is the same script that Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has followed for a decade all across Darfur (and, before that, in South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains).

Granted, there are no magic wands to end the horrors of Darfur, but groups like the Enough Project have outlined solid proposals to put pressure on Sudan. Bipartisan legislation now in Congress — the Sudan Peace, Security and Accountability Act of 2013 — might help.

Even speeches, news coverage and other expressions of international interest tend to curb the brutality a bit. And Sudan's leaders are particularly sensitive to revelations about their policy of rape. So let's hope that these women's courage and outspokenness will lead us to find our own voices.

Ben Solomon for The New York Times

Jawahir, 17, was held captive for 11 hours and raped by three men. She is speaking out as a way to fight back.

Jawahir, a 17-year-old Salamat girl, said that three men, wearing military uniforms and carrying guns, had taken turns raping her during 11 hours of captivity. One held her arms, another her legs, while the third raped her.

"We're going to finish off the Salamat this year," she quoted one of the attackers as telling her. It has been three months since then, and Jawahir said she still has health problems related to the attack.

"My fiancé knows the situation," she said. "He's a long way away, so we don't know if he'll accept me or not."

I asked Jawahir how she found the courage to speak about such a taboo subject.

"This is something that happened," she said. "So people should know. I want the world to know."


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Op-Ed Columnist: Standing Our Ground

This is not the time for evanescent anger, which is America's wont.

This is not the time for a few marches that soon dissipate as we drift back into the fog of faineance — watching fake reality television as our actual realities become ever more grim, gawking at the sexting life of Carlos Danger as our own lives become more dangerous, fawning over royal British babies as our own children are gunned down.

This is yet another moment when America should take stock of where the power structures are leading us, how they play on our fears — fan our fears — to feed their fortunes.

On no subject is this more clear than on the subject of guns.

While it is proper and necessary to analyze the case in which George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin for what it says about profiling and police practices, it is possibly more important to analyze what it says about our increasingly vigilante-oriented gun culture.

The industry and its lobby have successfully pushed two fallacies: that the Second Amendment is under siege and so are law-abiding citizens.

They endlessly preach that more guns make us safer and any attempt at regulation is an injury to freedom. And while the rest of us have arguments about Constitutional intent and gun-use statistics, the streets run red with the blood of the slain, and the gun industry laughs all the way to the bank.

Gun sales have surged. And our laws are quickly being adjusted to allow people to carry those guns everywhere they go and to give legal cover to use lethal force when nonlethal options are available.

This is our America in a most frightful time.

When Illinois — which has experienced extraordinary carnage in its largest city — enacted legislation this month allowing the concealed carrying of firearms, it lost its place as the lone holdout. Now "concealed carry" is the law in all 50 states.

And as The Wall Street Journal reported this month, "concealed carry" permit applications are also surging while restrictions are being loosened. Do we really need to have our guns with us in church, or at the bar? More states are answering that question in the affirmative.

And now that more people are walking around with weapons dangling from their bodies, states have moved to make the use of those guns more justifiable.

Florida passed the first Stand Your Ground law (or "shoot first" law, as some have called it) in 2005. It allows a person to use deadly force if he or she is afraid of being killed or seriously injured. In Florida, that right to kill even extends to an initial aggressor.

After Florida's law, other states quickly followed with the help and support of the N.R.A. and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Ironically, the N.R.A. and other advocates pushed the laws in part as protection for women, those who were victims of domestic violence and those who might be victimized away from home.

The N.R.A.'s former president, Marion Hammer, argued in support of the bill in 2005 when she was an N.R.A. lobbyist: "You can't expect a victim to wait and ask, 'Excuse me, Mr. Criminal, are you going to rape me and kill me, or are you just going to beat me up and steal my television?' "

But, of course, the law is rarely used by women in those circumstances. The Tampa Bay Times looked at 235 cases in Florida, spanning 2005 to 2013, in which Stand Your Ground was invoked and found that only 33 of them were domestic disputes or arguments, and that in most of those cases men invoked the law, not women.

In fact, nearly as many people claimed Stand Your Ground in the "fight at bar/party" category as in domestic disputes.

And not only is the law rarely being invoked by battered women, it's often invoked by hardened criminals. According to an article published last year by The Tampa Bay Times:

"All told, 119 people are known to have killed someone and invoked stand your ground. Those people have been arrested 327 times in incidents involving violence, property crimes, drugs, weapons or probation violations."

And, as the paper pointed out, "more than a third of the defendants had previously been in trouble for threatening someone with a gun or illegally carrying a weapon."

In fact, after Marissa Alexander, a battered Jacksonville wife, fired a warning shot at her abusive husband (to make him get out of the house, she said), her Stand Your Ground motion was denied. She is now facing a 20-year sentence.

Something is wrong here. We are not being made more secure, we are being made more barbaric. These laws are an abomination and an affront to morality and common sense. We can't allow ourselves to be pawns in the gun industry's profiteering. We are real people, and people have power.

Attorney General Eric Holder told the N.A.A.C.P. last week: "It's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods. These laws try to fix something that was never broken."

We must all stress this point, and fight and not get weary. We must stop thinking of politics as sport and spectacle and remember that it bends in response to pressure. These laws must be reviewed and adjusted. On this issue we, as Americans of good conscience, must stand our ground.


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Editorial: Realities in Global Treatment of H.I.V.

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The missing ingredient is enough financing by international donors and many afflicted countries to make treatments widely available.

Currently, an estimated 34 million people around the world are infected with H.I.V., mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. About 9.7 million of them are being treated with antiviral drugs that can prolong their lives for decades. Some seven million more were eligible for the drugs under the previous guidelines but are not yet receiving them.

The new guidelines will widen the gap. They recommend that infected people be given antiviral drugs even earlier than is now typical, when a person's CD4 white blood cell count is relatively high, indicating a still-healthy immune system. The new guidelines make about 26 million people in poor and middle-income countries eligible for the drugs, up from 17 million before.

Ideally, virtually all people known to be infected should get drug treatments immediately, in a single pill, no matter what their CD4 counts.

That would greatly reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to others and prolong lives by preventing deterioration of the immune system.

A vaccine would be surest way to prevent infection because a person would be protected for a substantial number of years, perhaps for a lifetime, without the need take antiviral drugs indefinitely. But an effective vaccine could take years to develop and might be only partially effective. Early drug treatments will remain vitally important for the foreseeable future.


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Editorial: A Failure to Intercept

After 30 years of research and an estimated $250 billion investment, the Pentagon's defense program against intercontinental ballistic missiles from adversaries like Iran and North Korea had another failed test this month. The advanced missile interceptor launched on July 5 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California failed to hit its target over the Pacific Ocean, the third consecutive dud. The military has tested the ground-based midcourse defense system 16 times; only eight were successful, the last in 2008.

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One might expect the record to be near perfect since the tests are rigged, conducted in what the program's director, Vice Admiral James Syring of the Navy, calls a "controlled, scripted environment." The Pentagon is doing a review to determine the cause of the latest failure. But whatever the cause, it is apparent that the program's weaknesses go beyond this case.

Two studies — one by the National Academy of Sciences released in September and another by a task force of the Pentagon's Defense Science Board in 2011 — have expressed doubts about whether the technology to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles can ever be truly reliable and whether the program is worth the cost. Some experts describe its technical core as shattered.

Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, raised a lot of the right questions when Vice Admiral Syring testified on last Wednesday before the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense. Mr. Durbin noted that the system's track record "has not improved over time" and wondered how the Pentagon could be confident defenses will work when tests are conducted against intermediate range missiles but not the longest range and fastest missile, the intercontinental ballistic missile, which could reach the United States.

Predictably, many Congressional Republicans blame the problems on President Obama and budget cuts supported by the Democrats. But experts say design flaws crept into the program during the George W. Bush administration and the problems were compounded by a rush to deploy the system before tests were run. Along with the Pentagon, many Republicans are now pushing for more missile defense tests as well as the development of 14 more ground-based interceptors (for a total of 44 at sites in California and Alaska) for an additional cost of $1 billion. Some lawmakers also want a new missile defense site on the East Coast that could run as high as $3.6 billion.

The North Korean and Iranian missile programs are a threat that the United States must guard against. But it doesn't make sense to keep throwing money at a flawed system without correcting the problems first.


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Editorial: Justice for the Mentally Disabled

Gov. Andrew Cuomo closed out a shameful period in New York's history earlier this week when he agreed to give about 4,000 mentally ill people held in highly restrictive institutional settings the option of moving into supported housing, where they can live independently with the help of social service organizations. The agreement, outlined in a consent decree filed in federal court in New York City, ends a long legal battle and could bring a new day for people isolated in inadequate, for-profit residences that make their disabilities that much harder to bear.

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In the last decade, state-sponsored panels have found serious shortcomings in the way mentally ill citizens are treated. One investigation found pervasive patterns of neglect in privately run residences; a second panel discovered that many people confined to these adult "homes" did not belong there. A series of articles by The Times's Clifford Levy in 2002 highlighted these conditions, and, a year later, lawyers for the disabled filed a federal lawsuit charging the state with violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by needlessly isolating the residents.

The consent decree makes clear that the Cuomo administration is prepared to make significant improvements in the way mentally disabled people are treated.

New York is already nationally known for innovative housing developments where mentally ill people who present no danger get the medical and social services they need to manage their lives independently. Under the decree, the state is required to give all but the most severely ill residents the option of moving into such housing. The state must set up a minimum of 2,000 units and create more if the need arises.

To get the process started, the state will need to help mentally ill residents understand their options. If faithfully executed, the agreement will improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable and bring New York into full compliance with federal disability law.


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Letters: Detroit’s Bankruptcy: The Next Steps

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 24 Juli 2013 | 13.26

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Re "Billions in Debt, Detroit Tumbles Into Insolvency" (front page, July 19):

Detroit played a huge role in creating America's modern economy, not to mention building the tanks and warplanes that helped us win a war that threatened our way of life. And in the postwar years it was a Detroit-based union, the United Auto Workers, that negotiated the breakthrough contracts that opened the doors to the middle class for blue-collar workers.

Maybe it's time to repay these large favors. We talk about investing in infrastructure: Why not help a downsizing Detroit bootstrap its recovery by tearing down empty eyesores and replacing them with affordable housing? Why not make long-term zero-interest loans to replace decrepit ambulances and streetlights and hydrants? Why not pool our resources to ensure that Detroit workers get the pensions they've earned?

In short, why not help make Detroit a shining example of what this nation can still do when we put our heads together and commit to the common good?

THOMAS N. BETHELL
Washington, July 19, 2013

To the Editor:

If we can bail out the banks, we can bail out Detroit for a lot less money, and more assistance to those who need it.

PATRICIA LOVING
New Haven, July 19, 2013

To the Editor:

Re "Cries of Betrayal as Detroit Plans to Cut Pensions" (front page, July 22):

It is reprehensible to cut the pensions of retirees in Detroit. Why should there be shared sacrifice? Detroit workers did not cause this crisis, and in fact have made many concessions over the past decade, including large pay cuts.

Their pensions are not a bonus or gift; they are a deferred part of their wages. The banks and bondholders that invested in Detroit were hoping for a profit, but knew they might take a loss. They should bear the whole burden. After all, when you invest money, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. That's the way the market is supposed to work, right?

ANITA CAREF
Chicago, July 22, 2013

To the Editor:

Re "We Have to Step In and Save Detroit," by Steven Rattner (Op-Ed, July 20):

For years the residents of Detroit elected officials who they knew were spending billions more than the city's revenues. For years the union representatives of municipal employees extracted from those same officials, on pain of nonsupport for re-election, unfunded pension contributions.

Now Mr. Rattner argues that the American taxpayer should pick up the tab. No, there must be consequences to greed and irresponsibility.

RICHARD E. MILLER
New York, July 21, 2013

To the Editor:

I agree with Steven Rattner that Detroit must receive a government bailout.

However, I'd like to suggest a way that would result in a win-win for everybody. Rather than sell off the treasured paintings of the Detroit Institute of Art and have them hang in the private homes of the 1 percent, where very few would see them, why not have the federal government buy the entire collection? This way, the collection would stay in place to help stimulate the local economy, and the American people would have sound collateral for their investment.

KERRY BRIAN EGDELL
San Francisco, July 22, 2013


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Letter: Composting in New York

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To the Editor:

Re "Our Coming Food Crisis," by Gary Paul Nabhan (Op-Ed, July 22):

New York City's neighborhood groups have been coming together for a few centuries now to carry out community improvement projects that address any kind of quality-of-life issue.

But now we see a surge in micro-grants being made to advance the number of hyper-local composting sites across the city (in line with the mayor's recent initiative) and a rising demand for D.I.Y. rainwater harvesting workshops for everyday New Yorkers to combat the scorching Julys of the last few years.

As Mr. Nabhan notes, cities are "a great source of compostable waste." They are the true activists that fight big agribusinesses but are far too seldom credited for their grass-roots advocacy work: building the infrastructure for the modern urban farm grid.

SALEEN SHAH
Director of Communications
and Outreach
Citizens Committee for New York City
New York, July 22, 2013


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Letters: Cyberattacks on Universities, and How to Thwart Them

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Re "Campuses Face Rising Threat From Hackers" (front page, July 17):

I read with great dismay your article about the surge of foreign cyberattacks on computer systems in American universities. Who bears the cost of these attacks?

Ostensibly, it is universities, which now have to pay security professionals more to protect their systems. But one unappreciated casualty is big-data scientific research.

The many researchers who share large amounts of data over the Web in fields like astronomy and genomics will have their work dramatically impeded by both the hacking and the ensuing security restrictions created in response, since computer security restrictions often inevitably make it more difficult to share access to computer systems over the Web.

MARK GERSTEIN
New Haven, July 22, 2013

The writer is a professor of biomedical informatics, molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and computer science at Yale.

To the Editor:

As the dean of a college that houses a department of computing security, I want to add an important point to your article. Universities, among the myriad organizations experiencing these potentially devastating attacks, are also in a position to be part of the solution.

We must continue to invest in new degrees and educational programs in computing security, teaching students not just the technologies but also the essential critical thinking skills needed to defend our systems and digital information in this rapidly changing environment while instilling a sense of ethics and morality.

Well-educated, well-grounded computing graduates will be our best defense from the countless, increasingly sophisticated attacks that invade our privacy, cost us money and threaten our national security.

Providing them the best, most relevant education possible is a responsibility we take very seriously.

ANDREW SEARS
Rochester, July 22, 2013

The writer is a professor and dean of the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology.


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Letter: Hydropower and the Dams

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To the Editor:

In "Down Comes Another Dam" (editorial, July 22), you applaud the removal of a dam on the lower Penobscot River in Maine. While celebrating the opening of this and other rivers, do not forget that hydropower is a clean, renewable energy source and, over time, less expensive than solar or wind.

GARY HART
Kittredge, Colo., July 22, 2013

The writer is a former Democratic senator from Colorado.


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Letter: An Ex-Leader in Taiwan

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Re "Taiwan Debates Medical Parole for Ex-Leader" (news article, July 22):

As you note, there have been diverse discussions in Taiwan over medical parole for former President Chen Shui-bian. Taiwan is a democratic country with an independent, impartial and transparent judicial system, and the government must abide by the rule of law.

Mr. Chen was tried and found guilty by an unbiased court and is serving the appropriate sentence for the crimes he committed. He is still being tried for further counts of perjury and corruption.

Given his standing as a former political leader, he has been given all of the special treatment within the confines of the law, including 24-hour medical care by a highly professional team in a comfortable living space.

We appreciate the public's concern for Mr. Chen's health and well-being but would like to assure the international community that he is receiving fair and just treatment under the law.

JAMES YU
Director, Press Division
Taipei Economic and Cultural Office
New York, July 22, 2013


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Opinionator | Draft: Should We Write What We Know?

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 23 Juli 2013 | 13.26

Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing.

One of the three most famous writing mottoes is "Kill your darlings." Commonly attributed to William Faulkner and others, the sentiment seems originally to have been expressed by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in the early 20th century. He said, "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings." No matter the verb, the sentiment is that sometimes a passage can be improved by the removal of a metaphor, turn of phrase or quip to which one has become partial. True enough, but, in my experience, the problem of a well-turned phrase hurting the larger piece doesn't come up all that often.

A second motto is "Show, don't tell." This actually has two meanings, both profound and, in my experience, always correct. The first is that, in describing a scene, you should always try to make the reader feel that he or she is right there in the moment, rather than hearing about it second-hand. More generally, in making any kind of argument, well-chosen and well-deployed facts trump opinions and generalizations; by extension, strong nouns and verbs serve as the main engine of good writing, adjectives and adverbs as the grace notes.

The third is a bit more complicated. I refer to "Write what you know," and problems emerge when it's interpreted to mean that first-grade teachers should (only?) write about being a first-grade teacher, short-story writers living in Brooklyn should write about being a short-story writer living in Brooklyn, and so forth. That notion is rightly scorned as leading to the kind of literary solipsism that, in fact, many short stories, novels, essays and memoirs exhibit.

But the motto is nonetheless true. Writers who are intimately familiar with their subject produce more knowing, more confident and, as a result, stronger results. If Joe is a mediocre writer who knows his stuff to the very depths of his soul (let's say his topic is video games), and Jane is an accomplished writer who is to a certain extent at sea (she's writing about the validity of global warming), Joe's essay is going to be better every time: airtight, direct, precise and more often than not leavened by wit. Jane's will hem and haw and qualify and fudge, use passive voice and abstract nouns; it will circle around the subject to try to cover up all the gaps in her knowledge, and in so doing will just make the reader weary and cross.

"Joe" is Nate Silver on probability, Bill James on baseball, David Thomson on film or The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum on television. These writers grab us by the lapels at the get-go and don't release their grip till the last period. For our part, we're glad to be pulled along, so compelling is the way their minds engage with the material. From their example and hundreds of others, I'm inspired to anagrammatically rearrange motto No. 3 to "Write what you wonk."

But that command is not perfect, implying, as it does, that one's written output should be limited to one's passions. Some people don't feel passionate about one given subject, which is regrettable but shouldn't consign them to the sidelines of the world of prose. Fortunately, this conundrum has an escape clause: you can actually acquire knowledge. In journalism this is called "reporting," and in nonfiction, "research." I don't write fiction, but I'd think that a rigorous combination of observation, reflection and directed imagination would have a similar result. In all cases, the idea is to investigate the subject till you can write about it with complete confidence and authority. Being a serial expert is actually one of the cool things about the very enterprise of writing: You learn 'em and leave 'em.

Thus the next anagram of the motto, complete with text-speak: "Write what you own, K?"

But we're still not all the way home. It's obviously the case that when some people write about what they know, or wonk, or own, the results aren't great. In contrast to the compelling baseball expertise of a Bill James, these folks are guilty of metaphorical "inside baseball," the sort of subject-based minutiae that is interesting only to those steeped in the field, or, in the worst case, only to the writer himself or herself.

What's the difference between them and James? Two things, I would say. Some people are lucky enough to be born with the ability to write clearly and engagingly, or at least with the aptitude to swiftly and naturally develop those skills. For everybody else, the key is learning to understand writing as communication. I use that word to suggest a two-way street; good writers (like good conversationalists) are always conscious of the person or persons on the receiving end of their words.

Robert Graves and Alan Hodge called their guide to writing "The Reader Over Your Shoulder," and it's an apt metaphor, bringing to mind a little guy perched up there, looking over your stuff and reacting the way a hypothetical reader might. I actually prefer to think in terms of an imagined face-to-face encounter, with eye contact the operative metaphor. Bad conversationalists and bad writers look out into the distance or at the floor, and don't notice when their listeners' faces are puzzled, annoyed or bored. Good writers perceive that and respond. And the best writers anticipate these reactions, and consequently are able to avoid them.

Ideally, you'll induce your reader to follow along with you in a way that's akin to how we feel transfixed when listening to accomplished storytellers. We see the look on the storyteller's face, and it adds irony, knowingness, poignancy: all kinds of attitude and affect.

Back to our writing motto, it would be good to have an anagram that reflects the importance of eye contact. The best I can come up is to arrange the letters of the whole thing to come up with: WE THROW A WINK T' YOU.

Hey, I know it's not perfect. In fact, I challenge you to come up with a better one! (If you like, you can use a longer version of the motto, "Write about what you know.") Post your suggestions in the comments below.


Ben Yagoda is a professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of "How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and How to Avoid Them," "About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made" and other books. He blogs for the Chronicle of Higher Education and his own site, Not One-Off Britishisms.


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Letter: Obstetric Fistula

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The comments of Maggie Bangser, a founding director of the Women's Dignity Project (letter, July 18), in response to Nicholas D. Kristof's July 14 column about obstetric fistula, make the valid point that the ultimate solution to these catastrophic complications of childbirth is the creation of effective medical delivery systems that meet women's reproductive health care needs.

That is precisely the reason the Danja Fistula Center, built by the Worldwide Fistula Fund, has incorporated anthropological field research, prenatal care, public health outreach, case identification, and social rehabilitation and job skills programs into its comprehensive program for women with obstetric fistulas in Niger.

In impoverished countries, where governments struggle to provide even minimal public services, private-sector and nonprofit organizations may actually lead the way in developing effective programs that can be models for future development.

L. LEWIS WALL
St.
Louis, July 20, 2013

The writer, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, is the founder of the Worldwide Fistula Fund.


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Letters: President Obama and Trayvon Martin

To the Editor:

Re "President Offers a Personal Take on Race in U.S." (front page, July 20):

In sharing his thoughts on race relations in this country after the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman, President Obama earned a newfound respect from millions of Americans.

Mr. Obama clearly felt strongly enough that he was compelled to speak on a very personal and honest basis about an issue that most of us would rather avoid discussing. I applaud him for courageously stepping forward and in a measured and carefully thought-out way talking about a topic that desperately deserves the nation's attention.

I hope the president's words are a first step in a new era in which Americans start to discuss with one another the issue of race relations.

ALAN SAFRON
Woodcliff Lake, N.J., July 20, 2013

To the Editor:

I'm a 34-year-old black man. I hold a graduate degree, and I've never been incarcerated. I don't engage in any criminal activity. But, like the president, I know what it's like to be followed in stores and to hear car doors lock. I know what it's like to have women nervously clutch their purses or walk at a quickened pace.

I've been followed by the police. I also know what it's like to be "stopped and frisked" by police officers in Harlem.

President Obama acknowledged the fact that young males like Trayvon Martin, statistically speaking, are more likely to be killed as a result of black-on-black crime. If people think that black mothers and fathers hurt more or less because the murderer of their child is a black person or a white Hispanic, they have an awful lot of soul-searching to do.

Black parents want what all parents want — their children to be safe and not viewed with suspicion.

IAN PETERKIN
Bridgeport, Conn., July 21, 2013

To the Editor:

President Obama's remarks on the trial of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin paid lip service to the legitimacy of jury verdicts, but in context marginalized the primacy of American procedural justice. The context of the president's remarks was that something is badly wrong with a system that would acquit Mr. Zimmerman.

As a former lecturer in constitutional law, the president engaged in a stunning diminishment of American judicial process, the jewel in our legal system, which would rather acquit many guilty people than convict one innocent person. Americans who attend to President Obama's remarks will feel vindicated in a belief that the court system is just another fixed game, fueling the cynicism of those who would rather control outcomes than preserve the protections that are the envy of the world.

PETER LUSHING
New York, July 20, 2013

The writer is a professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

To the Editor:

President Obama articulated what has long been a day-to-day experience for many African-American males. One gets up each morning never quite knowing how many assaults on one's dignity as a man will be endured before the day's end. His examples are commonplace, manifesting themselves countless times across the country.

The speech carried the weight of his office, yet was delivered as a black man who identifies with the continuing struggles of every black man. I was deeply moved and am so very proud.

KENNETH WESLEY LIVINGSTON
Woodland Hills, Calif., July 20, 2013

To the Editor:

While African-Americans have a singular relationship to the history evoked by the verdict in Florida, the pain it caused is not restricted to the African-American community. To overlook the anguish of Americans of every racial and ethnic background risks yielding the national conversation to those who would further divide us.

MAIA ETTINGER
Guilford, Conn., July 20, 2013

To the Editor:

Genuine as his words were, President Obama waited until he was forced to talk about race in America, rather than begin a conversation when he first took office. Now his words will fade away with the next news cycle.

BURT RUVENSKY
Portland, Ore., July 20, 2013


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