Dear Editor-

The tragic story of Junior Seau was consummately captured early in the 20th Century by Pulitzer Prize-winning Edwin Arlington Robinson (Sports Seau found shot to death; suicied suspected May 3). Unfortunately Robinson's poem Richard Cory will not prove pallitive to either friends and family, or to any others caught up in the shock of the circumstances. But it does speak directly to the unfathomable human condition that envelops and unites us all.

Dear Editor-

The upcoming launch of the new privatized commercial Space X rocket is intended to allow NASA to plan for "deep-space journeys to asteroids, the moon and ultimately Mars" (Launch to mark new frontier for NASA May 2). So billion dollar federal commitments are made to find life beyond Earth while biologists anguish over how little we know about life right here, much of it near extinct. 

Charles Mayo, Director of the Right Whale Habitat Studies program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, notes that "For a species as intensely monitored as right whales, much of their lives- such as where they go in the winter-remains poorly understood" (Scientists worry that warming seas may be harming the endanger right whale May 1). 

That sage of China, Confucious once counseled that "If you don't know how to serve men, why worry about serving the gods", suggesting a parallel question about the costly and unbalanced search for otherworldly life when that of our own planet is so little known.

Dear Editor-

A supporting second here to the recommendation for better synchronized traffic lights for the optimization of our gasoline consumption (Letters Cut idle time, cut emissions April 27). Substituting a signal-controlling motion detector for the ubiquitous "paranoia" cameras now installed at our every traffic signal would undoubtedly have proven a more cost-effective federal strategy post 9/11. 


It is appalling the amount of time we all spend idling needlessly at stop signals on the occasions when there is absolutely no cross-traffic to justify the halt. We taxpayers foot the bill for untold thousands of federal "secureaucrats" to monitor and analyze our harmless daily activities on camera, when just by keeping our lights green that public money might be more dutifully devoted to reducing our reliance on politically entangling Middle-Eastern oil. If only people could rely on government to be more sensible.

Dear Editor-

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev),  when asked for a solution should the recent prostitution scandal by the Secret Service represent a recurring problem, responded plainly: "Hire more females", and that might well be be the simple most effective answer to the problem (New misconduct allegations for Secret Service April 27). Because many want to sweep the issue under the carpet wholesale with the rationalization that boys will be boys, but therein lies the problem. Because despite the applicable aphorism (and whether you are Bill Clinton, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, John Edwards, the Secret Service, and the list goes on)  when it comes to boys, two heads are not always better than one.

Dear Editor-

There is something proportionally pathetic in the front-page image of the paunched balding man investing so much emotion in lament at the sixth game of the recent NHL playoff series (Capitals fall in overtime, forcing Game 7 April 23). Hockey is sport. It is a game. It is play, undertaken by the young (admittedly professional, but young nonetheless) for our diversion. We like to watch, disinclined to participate and play the sport ourselves.

 And so it becomes sad that one as mature and presumably worldly-wise as the gentleman pictured indulges in such evident pain and misery over the outcome of an athletic event. The world is rife with situations of true tragedy and sorrow, but the final score of a sport contest hardly merits all the misery.

Dear Editor-

A hiking study of "Stonewall" Jackson's Valley Campaign of 1862 by the U.S. Naval Academy is a proper and naturally fitting lesson of command for our up-and-coming military leadership (Metro In the footsteps of 'Stonewall' April 16). But the Naval Academy training should include appropriate conditioning for the students of that marching tutorial, as the gratuitous lack of preparation noted demonstrates extremely poor leadership. The conditioning could have readily prevented the painful and unnecessary distraction of the many foot injuries related in the article. Even George S. Patton prided himself on providing clean socks to his troops during the Battle of the Bulge, preventing the debilitation of his force strength from trench foot.

And the photo of the Naval Academy course leader senior Jackson Thornton leading his students while plugged into his I-Pod demonstrates a mental detachment and personal disengagement from his command that hardly reflects strong leadership. The field study of General Thomas J. Jackson's brilliance is remarkably right but the method is radically wrong. We should expect better of our nation's training for new military leaders than this.  

Dear Editor-

The government that commits the public purse to research of an abstract notion like "happiness" is both out-of-bounds for its purpose, and in the case of the U.S. Constitution also operating far beyond the dictates of its charter (Op-Ed The economy of happiness April16). The Declaration of Independence cites "pursuit", and the pursuit of happiness as a right, but says nothing about happiness as a right itself. In other words we are each of us entitled to wend our own way through the wilderness, and that great document cites our freedom and liberty to seek our own independent goals as we deem them most suitable for ourselves. 


But no mandate exists in our Constitution justifying the commitment of public expense to the research of a concept so ill-defined as "happiness". The Founding Fathers would be appalled. Only a dismally distracted leadership unsure of its purpose would venture into such thoroughly vague and unwarranted legislative territory. We deserve better sense than this from our United States government.