Letters

Wheels within circles

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Hunter is learning to drive. So far, we’ve gone “out” twice. The guy has the trained reflexes of a fencer (the only thing that moves faster than the tip of a foil in Olympic athletics is the bullet that comes out of the rifle in shooting sports). I’m not too worried about him killing me, not right off the bat anyway. He’s still got that endless capacity of learning, a less-dense brain with plenty of room for new connections, and he learns really quickly. He’s somewhat less rash than I am, so he’s got to get things down to a ‘T’ before he feels ready for the next step.

My method is simple: We go around the block, first heading east; next time, heading west. Maybe tonight I’ll count the number of times we go around the block. But he gets better every time. I figure we’ll do this for a month or so. Repetition is the key to muscle memory, which is important, as texterswhile-driving types point out, but it’s far less important than simply paying attention to surroundings.

After he graduates from the home block, I have a bigger circle in mind that goes from San Mateo Avenue to Cashill Boulevard to Skyline Boulevard to Gibraltar Drive to Chaparral Drive to Hemlock Way to Cashill Boulevard to San Mateo Ave. If he can do this six or seven times, he can start driving us to the bus stop and back home from his mother’s house.

For highway driving, I’m going to do to him what my dad did to me. We’re going to take a long drive. I think my dad made me drive on a fishing trip or vacation or something. Hunter would enjoy a trip to Austin/BerlinIchthyosaur, and he could listen to my music the whole time. I of course have ulterior motives to go to Berlin. I just want to see if they left those “Intelligent Design” cards up in the exhibition.

—D. Brian Burghart brianb@newsreview.com

I beg to differ

Re “Take a shot” (Editorial, Jan. 17):

Wow. I am really taken aback by the condescending tone of your editorial. I am not willfully ignorant or cowardly. I have instead built up my immune system to the point where I can go years without getting sick. I can’t remember the last time I had the flu. I have accomplished this amazing level of health through a combination of the Metabolic Type Diet, supplements and acupuncture. Western medicine is not a panacea. I do not appreciate being called willfully ignorant or cowardly when I have, in fact, found a much better solution than flu shots.

Further, I also make sure to get eight-to-10 hours of sleep per night. This, in addition to the Metabolic Type Diet, supplements and acupuncture, keeps me from getting the flu. No flu shot required.

Karen Inda Sparks

Madness always

Re “More about guns” (Editor’s Note, Jan. 17):

In your reading of the Second Amendment, do not make little of the word “free” as in “free state.” That word makes the case for the people to be armed in their potential defense from an oppressive government in their midst, not a foreign government. The standing army is in place to protect from outside aggression. The Framers had just waged an action to free themselves from an oppressive government and put the Second Amendment into the Constitution to ensure that future generations would not be at the mercy of a better armed government with designs on oppression. It clearly had nothing to do with hunting. What was the first thing the British wanted to do to the colonists? Disarm them! That was what Lexington and Concord were all about. Areading of history going back as far as you like will show that the first step taken by governments to control a population is to disarm them. From Germany in the ’30s to Britain with the Scots to the Romans with everyone. Same pattern. This great nation of ours forged a grand experiment with that Constitution to make all citizens equal in rights and gave them tools to protect those rights from the right to assemble and have free speech to the right to remain personally armed. There will be madness always. To use the acts of a madman or madmen to foster a political agenda is behavior of a politician with subversive designs. We must always be vigilant. Art Seymour Washoe Valley Editor’s note: No disrespect intended, but this interpretation is hardly supported by historical data. The militias referred to in the Second Amendment specifically were the state militias. The Second Amendment only prohibits the federal government from disarming the state militias and does not guarantee individual rights to own guns without regulation.

Seeing red

Re “Working for the Clamp down” (Arts & Culture, Jan. 17):

Quite a satisfactory article. Greetings from the railroad jungle. We, Traveling Vituscans, the Bindlestiff Brotherhood, would like to say that the boys up in SSTare to be commended for laying out such a fine history for the person writing the story. The article did a good job of telling the general history of ECV. Escritooooo!

Tim Wilcox Los Angeles

Don’t judge

Re “Take a shot” (Editorial, Jan. 17):

As a person who has not and will not ever get the flu vaccine, I must say that I found your editorial absolutely hilarious. I mean, after reading this piece you would think that being condescending and close minded must be side effects of this year’s vaccine. Let’s get real though: The reason I choose to not take the flu shot is because it seems to me that, while injecting a dead virus into your body may educate your immune system on how to deal with those few strains, it would in some way distort its ability to deal with all the other infinite strains or maladies that you could catch. The end result would be an imbalanced and weakened immune system. Now this is just a theory, but considering the Journal of Virology did a recent study where they took blood samples of children, some vaccinated and some not, and found that the unvaccinated group had naturally built up more antibodies over a wider variety of influenza strains than the vaccinated group, I would say that maybe this theory is not so crazy. Look, if you want to inject into your body whatever it is the Centers for Disease Control or media is telling you, that’s your prerogative. Just don’t be so judgmental of people like me who would rather build a strong immune system, naturally, through a healthy lifestyle. David Flynt Reno

Like Syria

Re “More about guns” (Editor’s Note, Jan. 17):

Let me see if I understand this correctly. In order to protect our kids from crazies with guns, we need to put armed guards into the schools. (It’s all about those dangerous gunfree zones, after all.) So, now the schools are safe. Oh wait—the malls. We’ll need armed guards in the malls (NOTE: Since malls are private entities, the guards will have to be “free-market” armed guards.) Oops, our city parks. Gotta protect the kids when they’re playing in the parks, and since we’ve been cutting taxes that used to pay for things like police protection, we’ll need the private sector to step up. Am I getting this right? Hmmm. Seems like we get our Second Amendment wish because we’ll be needing lots and lots of armed militias all over the place to keep us all safe. We’ll probably want to re-read that “well regulated militia” part of the Amendment, however. Where else do they have lots and lots of armed militias patrolling the streets to keep their people safe? There are alternatives. Michel Rottmann Virginia City Highlands

Restrict speech

Re “And in your hand” (Notes from the Neon Babylon, Jan. 17):

Once again I wonder what Bruce van Dyke’s point was with his disgusting vulgar language in his column. I guess it wasn’t enough to use the vulgarity in a newspaper once, but four times in one sentence. Aperfect example of writing an interesting piece and ruining it by his language.

Fred Speckmann Reno

Don’t throw cash

Re “Suffer the children” (Left Foot Forward, Jan. 24):

So, Sheila Leslie laments that elementary schools don’t have physical education or art teachers. I went to school in San Jose, and we didn’t have art teachers or PE until sixth grade (middle school). In elementary school, PE meant running around on the playground at recess, and art happened as part of the normal curriculum. It wasn’t every day, but we did have it, and it was memorable. And what’s this about full-day kindergarten? I went to kindergarten for a half day, and I turned out fine. I had an advantage in that I started reading at the age of 18 months and could read and write very well by the age of 4. This is because my mom read to me slowly every day and pointed to each word as she read it. Nowadays, I know several first graders who can’t read at all. This is the problem. Throwing more money at the schools will not encourage education. It must begin at home well before a child is ready for school. Karen Inda Sparks

Correction

On the cover of the Jan. 24 RN&R, the subhead for our story “Banned in Vegas” incorrectly named UNLVas the institution that banned artist Michael Ogilvie’s art show. The show was banned at the College of Southern Nevada. We regret the error.

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THIS MODERN WORLD BY TOM TOMORROWBIG HE ADERS GIZA 25pt 25k SMALL HE ADERS GIZA 15pt 55k (60% OF BIG HE AD)

BIG HE ADERS GIZA 25pt 25k Will proposed gun SMALL HE laws affect violence? Truckee Meadows Community College, 7000 Dandini Blvd.

Kimberly Kedroski

Student I don’t think the changes will really make any difference because I think it depends on the person. Even if you change the gun laws, you aren’t going to change the person. I think it’s more of a mental health issue, and I believe it would be better to have someone they can talk to rather than access to a gun.

Sonny Diaz-Hernandez

Student I think violence will go up. Honestly, you have to be 21 before you can legally own a handgun, and before that, you can only go out shooting with your parents. I think there will be a lot more smuggling of guns by the wrong people, but I also think there will be more legal possession of guns, too.

The time is now

That fact that a bipartisan group of senators has come upwith a starting point for immigration law reform is nothing short of amazing. The last truly significant immigration reform in this country was the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which gave amnesty to a certain class of immigrants, but seemed to be based on the idea that illegal immigration was over. It was nothing like a sustainable solution.

The so-called “Gang of 8” senators pushing the “Bipartisan Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform” are Republicans John McCain, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake, and Democrats Robert Menendez, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Michael Bennet. While details have yet to be worked out, it seems to bear passing resemblance to the DREAM Act and the immigration bills that came so close to law in 2006. But something happened last year that may have made immigration reform palatable to conservatives: The 2012 election, when minorities flexed their smallest muscles and changed the course of history.

To be honest, none of us nonpartisans give a damn who gets the credit if this reform passes. In the long run, it will be engraved in the history books as another Obama administrative triumph.

Let’s not drag on about it, though. The Republican Party’s changing ulterior motives are irrelevant next to the need for this reform. And before anyone thinks the Democrats were truly working toward this, remember who scuttled the 2006 immigration reform. Anyway, this proposal is easy, short reading, long on principles, short on details, but it is so much better than nothing, it might as well have been handed down on Mount Sinai. Here it is: http://tinyurl.com/baskn96.

Its four main ideas are these: * Create a tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the United States that is contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required; * Reform our legal immigration system to better recognize the importance of characteristics that will help build the American economy and strengthen American families; * Create an effective employment verification system that will prevent identity theft and end the hiring of future unauthorized workers; and, * Establish an improved process for admitting future workers to serve our nation’s workforce needs, while simultaneously protecting all workers.

Each of those “pillars” has further bullet-point details, and some—like English language requirements—are disgusting, but again, a five-page document is not a law. To get this one past the House of Representatives will require a Herculean effort on the part of concerned Americans—all of us. And not to read too much into it, but it seems fairly obvious that there’s a reason this is coming up right now: Representatives who block this reform will be facing the voters in less than two years.

The efforts in favor of and against this legislation will be watched closely by all Americans. It’ll be surprising if the haters can successfully thwart immigration reform and still keep their jobs in Washington, D.C., in 2015.

C’mon people. Get on the right side of history. The time for hatred, ignorance and self-mutilation is over. The time for immigration reform is now. Ω Dustin Clifford

Student I don’t really see that these new laws are going to make any difference with gun violence. The honest citizen won’t be able to protect themselves. You might be able to ban certain weapons, but how are you going to ban a criminal from getting guns? Even though honest people aren’t the cause, everyone is being punished by the criminals.

Joey Davis

Student Doing something is better than nothing. As a veteran, I believe that there should be rules and regulations for owing weapons. I’m trained to shoot an assault rifle, but I don’t own one, and I don’t have a need for one. I don’t know if the laws will stop some of the gun violence, but we have to start somewhere.

Jamie Barton

Finance I think we might actually see a spike in gun violence because the criminals don’t follow the laws. The Congress is affecting our Second Amendment rights by trying to force these new laws. It is our right to bear arms, protect ourselves, and use guns as we see fit especially out here in the West. Out here, we look at guns differently, and we have them for personal use.