Quotes of the Day

Turn Off, Tune In, Log Out
Being (mercifully) untwittered, I had the attention span to read the Twitter article [June 15] in one go. No surprise of course that the U.S. spawned Twitter, being world leader in social dislocation, self-absorption, celebrity infatuation and ADD. What better way to ignore the person in front of you (wife, child, old friend) than to be Twittering Oprah on how to deal with her dog's ticks?
John George Ronaldson McLean,
Wellington

Steven Johnson noted that at the education conference he attended, people were typing and reading tweets. This means that they were not engaged in the discussion at the table and that this new communication tool was actually distracting from, rather than enhancing, the discussions at the forum. It can easily be argued that the ideas lost from the discussion at hand far outweighed the brief ones gained via Twitter. Aside from being a new venue to reinforce our sadly shortened attention spans, Twitter is a narcissist's dream of one-way communication. I, for one, will never care what Shaq is doing or thinking about anything. I don't care what anyone had for breakfast. I don't care what I had for breakfast.
Tom Granger,
Wilmington, Del., U.S.

In today's generation, medium and content are on equal footing. Should I decide to join Twitter, my first tweet would be this: "Nothing can replace face-to-face communication."
Sherwin Diaz Castillo,
Manila

How to Talk to Iran
The picture of U.S. envoy Dennis Ross as presented in "The Final Countdown" is frightening [June 15]. Ross should not have been placed in charge of dealings with Iran. His close connection with the largely anti-Iran organization American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is well known. Despite Obama's seeming change in course on Iran, Ross continues to endanger the U.S. and the Middle East by pursuing the hostile neoconservative agenda on Iran active in the Bush Administration.
William Beeman,
Minneapolis

You say Dennis Ross is not naive. I believe he is if he thinks Iranians can be persuaded to switch focus to the economy — and question why their regime is not spinning money and enriching the country — while their centrifuges are "spinning day and night" enriching uranium. If the North Koreans, who are far poorer, can live with this set of priorities out of a sense of national pride, why can't the Iranians?
Kangayam Rangaswamy,
Waunakee, Wis., U.S.

The Pendulum Swings
The Islamic revival in Bosnia is classic human nature [June 15]. The Bosnian Muslims had a mainly secular sense of identity but were nevertheless brutalized during the Balkan civil war due to their religion, for there is little else to differentiate Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks. In reaction, the generation that grew up during the horror of the war is boldly reclaiming the religious identity for which they were victimized. At the other end of the spectrum is Iran, where religious observance is declining in the generation that came of age under the Islamic Republic. The young there are in turn disillusioned with the state-sponsored religious identity that has failed to resolve their basic problems. It will be interesting to see if Bosnia's Muslims can strike the right balance between personal piety and secular solutions to temporal concerns.
Shehzad Shah,
Karachi

Vacillations in the Verses
Re "Decoding God's Changing Moods" [June 15]: We must put a premium on reviving the harmony among the religions. Bonding with people of different faiths is more important than following our own.
Nurus Sakib,
Dhaka

The more you read and study about God, the more God looks like a creation than a creator — changing in shape and character according to the social and political needs of the people who monopolize the concept.
Kyaw Kyaw,
Butterworth, Malaysia

Food, Direct
Though I do not eat much beef, I love Kate Pickert's article about cow-pooling [June 15]. I grew up on a farm in Arkansas where my sister and I stood on the fence and waved goodbye as the cows were loaded onto the truck to be taken to market, and where my dad once made me and my friends get up at 6 a.m. after a sleepover and dig potatoes. My kids have been growing up in the suburbs, not knowing where food comes from. Now we are growing vegetables in the backyard, and they are helping debone the chicken, even if it seems "gross" at first. I think we will treat our environment better when we have a closer connection to where our food comes from.
Sara Barton,
Rochester Hills, Mich., U.S.