Send letters to P. O. Box 27087, Tucson, AZ 85726. Or e-mail to mailbag@tucsonweekly.com. Letters must include name, address and daytime phone number. Letters must include signature. We reserve the right to edit letters. Please limit letters to 250 words.
Mankind Is Doomed Because of Overpopulation
Catherine O'Sullivan nailed it (April 30). I have been saying this for 40 years and have been called Hitler or worse for describing what really is friggin' obvious: The Earth is way overpopulated, and a civilization based on growth on a finite planet cannot last.
Do the math. If the Earth had 500 million people instead of the current population, we wouldn't be in the ecological fix we are in, or at least we might have a snowball's chance to turn it around. Every single problem we have is either caused by or profoundly affected by overpopulation. Well, good luck getting people to even consider that idea.
No, I don't have kids, yet I still recycle and don't eat meat. But I don't support any cause that does not have population control and planning as a fundamental tenet. Why knock ourselves out reducing things, like trash per capita by 50 percent, when the population doubles, and we are right back at the same place again?
Here is something you can take to the bank: "Human beings would rather be right than survive." Think about it.
Steven Graeber
There Is Much to Learn From the Wisdom of 'Star Trek'
I enjoyed reading your article on the wisdom of Star Trek (Messina, April 23). I've been talking up the relevance of the show for years and feel that Star Trek is about the inner journey, not the outer one. If I had to write about what I've learned from being a Star Trek fan for the last 40 years, I could summarize it into 10 basic commandments.
1. Thou shalt not consume Class M (Earth-like) planets.
2. Thou shalt not clone thyself or commit eugenics.
3. Thou shalt respect and honor yourself, other humans and other species.
4. Thou shalt not interfere with the cultural development of other civilizations.
5. Thou shalt realize that a technology can cause just as many problems as it solves.
6. Thou shalt develop the psyche, as well as the mind.
7. Thou shalt realize the mind, body and spirit need care, exercise and rest.
8. Thou shalt continuously question what it means to be human.
9. Thou shalt realize the final frontier is the distance between the mind and the heart.
10. Thou shalt read and ponder William Shakespeare.
Long live the franchise, and may it prosper.
Deborah Bird
Tucson Needs to Say Goodbye to Spring Training for Good
I love baseball, but the extortion that Major League Baseball exerts on Tucson and the rest of the spring training towns here and in Florida is disgusting ("But at Least We'll Be Able to Enjoy the Golden Baseball League," The Skinny, March 26). They pit barely solvent municipalities against one another and then stroke the "winner" for a few years until they want more blood.
The threats of leaving are getting old, and we ought to tell them to start packing. Ten years ago, we spent $40 million on Tucson Electric Park in the hopes that if we built it, they would come. Well, they came, but then the teams' biennial demands for upgrades began. Hi Corbett got the same treatment from the Rockies. Our ballparks were never good enough. Either we dump more money into the facilities ... or else.
The commission desperately trying to retain spring training is misguided. Has anybody ever done an objective study to analyze how much nonlocal money really comes in from spring ball? My belief is that the hotels and cafés are busy for the same reason Tucson's always thrived in the winter: good weather and snowbirds.
And let's face it: These games are more meaningless than your son's regular-season Little League games, yet they have the audacity to charge $15 for the privilege of watching them.
It's been fun, MLB, but good riddance.
Scott D. Dreisbach
Pulitzer Prizes, Opinion Journalists Are Worthless!
The invariable proclivity for opinion "journalists" to self-identify and allow themselves to be ordained (Pulitzer pulp) as public protectors is rapidly defrocked with minimal scrutiny ("Comforting the Afflicted," Editor's Note, April 23).
Those in media who advance public safety are the reporters who publish county scores of restaurants' cleanliness, or the reports on where flu shots are available. Bloody hell, a weather babe has more of a public-safety ethos, using hard information by mentioning the pollen count and wind speed, than an opinion "journalist." The corrections officers keeping the riff-raff inside a jail maintain public safety. Dog catchers and poison-control agents advance public safety. Traffic signals are slightly more intelligent and productive in maintaining public safety than opinion "journalists."
Opinion "journalists" lack true spine to be first responders to 911 (verifiable public safety) calls. Fire, police or medical: Those are branches and professions of civil service that increase and maintain public safety. Journalism does not. Journalists ought exercise a regime of self-extraction from their endeavors and become a blanched vehicle of objectivity.
Pulitzers are puke.
Jeff Calabrese
