The Obliviots Are Here

LETTER WRITER Tina May ("Cyclists: The Real Threat," Posts, March 17) says that people should get off their bicycles and walk to get back to nature, and bicycles and electric cars should make noise to be safe. I would add that the above will only work if people turn off their cell phones and iPods and take the damn buds out of their ears. When I am driving, I am tired of trying to figure out whether some plugged-in obliviot on foot or bike has a clue I am coming up behind them. Yesterday I had to weave carefully around one of each at the same time. It is really tempting to warn them with a polite "tap" of my horn. But I doubt it would work. I have heard of people being run over by trains that they never heard coming because ... guess why?

If being fast and silent is dangerous, so is being slow and oblivious. Situational awareness is a survival trait.

Shari Prange, Bonny Doon

The Tyrants Are in Charge

ALLENDE brought about his peaceful government in Chile by ballot, not bullet. But, you see, both Marx and Lenin taught that you'll never get the rich to give up their riches and share their wealth willingly, therefore you cannot legislate it. You cannot just pass laws to get them to do it, because they won't stand for it.

But the rich will nearly always fight and die for their riches. The rich would rather die than lose their wealth. That's why they fight their wars and send their own sons to die for them! So anyone trying to bring about a peaceful, nonviolent communist or socialist revolution is just wishfully thinking! They allow the socialists to merely pass laws and vote their riches out of existence! They will use their power and wealth to buy the military and pay them to defend them. This is why so many Fascist takeovers happen. This is why Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and many others came to power.

Ted Rudow III, Menlo Park

The Idiocracy Is Now

WHY DON'T they just put a microchip in all our brains that make us vote Republican and have done with it?  Most people are already so brainwashed that if the slobber from Pavlov's dog hit them in the face they wouldn't even know it. Times are so bad I had to trade in my Hummer for a Lincoln Navigator. But hey! Don't ride my butt, OK? It's a hybrid and it's still big enough for me to pack in the pit bulls and get them to the fight. It's too bad about Miley Cyrus, y'know, that she had to grow up and there won't be any more Hannah Montana's. I was worried, but the kids haven't even noticed. They can't stay focused long enough to twitter.

David Madgalene, Windsor, Calif.

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