Letters for June 30, 2011

We screwed up

Re “Trading places” (Arts & Culture, June 23):

The following paragraph in this story is factually incorrect: “Nationally franchised trade organizations such as ITEX and Western Trade Alliance are present in the Truckee Meadows. Their Reno outposts submit to regulations outside of Nevada. Under these systems, local business growth is supported, but not always assured.”

In fact, Western Trade Alliance is completely locally owned and operated; the corporate office is located in Reno, and the owner resides here. It is not in any way nationally franchised. All of its trading partners are local businesses, and WTA focuses on local trading growth.

This is a very disappointing and shoddy reporting error by the RN&R. It would have been simple to contact WTA to ask a couple of questions and get factual information to provide its readers. In addition, this story portrays WTA in an unflattering light, reading like a testimonial for the other company rather than journalism reporting on the trade industry.

I expect that you will 1) correct the online version of the article with the right information immediately and 2) run a correction in next week’s edition of the RN&R.

Melissa Lance
Reno

Again

Re “Trading places” (Arts & Culture, June 23):

This so-called article reads more like an advertisement than an article on local bartering. I really wish the author would have done a bit more research before publishing quotes like this from Steven Friede: “Nationally-franchised trade organizations such as ITEX and Western Trade Alliance are present in the Truckee Meadows. Their Reno outposts submit to regulations outside of Nevada. Under these systems, local business growth is supported, but not always assured.” But not always assured? What exactly does this mean? Why can’t certain businesses stand on their own character and let their business practices speak for themselves, without having to slander their competition? Not only is this statement unfair, it is also not true. Nice ad, though.

Jeff Bell
Reno

Tarot the book

Re “Tarot show” (Art of the State, June 23):

This article is negligent by not informing the reader that Tarot cards have not only been used for divination. Tarot cards are also used in games which are especially popular in countries such as France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. It is the 21st century and the mystery of Tarot is over. One can easily find online information on the Tarot that reveal it was made for nothing more than a trick-taking card game suitable for both adults and children. The idea that the Tarot is taboo or mysterious is quite dated. It would be good to see a more balanced presentation of Tarot cards in English language media.

James D. Wickson
Las Vegas

On the mark

Re “Lost in Spielberg” (Film, June 16):

Thank you for writing a review that says exactly how I feel about Super 8. I had high hopes, and they were dashed by Abrams’ fetishistic film. He just tried too darned hard to be clever and “Spielbergish” and left us with a cheap reproduction of a lunchpail version of Spielberg films. Ever notice that people who ape Spielberg fall flat on their face? M. Night Shyamalan is a good example.

Shamus P. Riley
Visalia, Calif.

Medical tourism risky

Re “Ordeal” (News, June 16):

This is an interesting distortion of [Clark County Sen. Michael] Schneider’s longstanding campaign to put more money and power into the hands of his friend, Dr. Daniel Royal, a homeopathic physician and lawyer who has been trying for years to get the legislature to legalize a wide array of dubious medical treatments. A few years ago, Schneider and Royal tried to pass legislation that would supposedly make Nevada a mecca of medical tourism by allowing charlatans to offer crazy treatments. Thus Schneider’s goal was and apparently still is not to rein in the medical fringe, but to provide practices such as “bio-oxidative therapy, biofermentics, cell therapy,” and the like with more legitimacy, while also making them more lucrative by getting insurance companies to pay for them. I haven’t had time to keep up with medical antics in Nevada, but people can learn about Schneider’s history by visiting this archive: http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/NIRBArchive.htm.

Susan E. Gallagher
Medford, Ore.

Set them free

Re “A year of making do” (Feature story, June 16):

If the state of Nevada is trying to save money, why don’t officials look at the people who have been on parole five years or more and get them off parole? It would save this state hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, instead of cutting schools

David Fernandez
Sparks

Weird stuff we get

Re “Window to the world” (Green, June 16):

I’m not the only one contacting authorities and law makers and the justice departments to have the leading scientists and news editors charged for this needless panic of a false war called Climate Change.

Name withheld
Toronto

Editor’s note: We don’t always publish letters from cranks, but I thought this one was enlightening. This is the kind of vaguely threatening letter designed to stifle the press from reporting facts the cranks (or financially interested parties) want to suppress. It’s not just here—the letter writer is from Canada—but in some countries, like Australia, the intimidations are death threats against scientists, who are presumably less accustomed to the crazy shit journalists get in their email inboxes: www.indymedia.ie/article/99956.

Pedestrian targets

Any day of the week, any hour of the day or night, any intersection in Reno is a potential pedestrian killing field. Repeated letters to the editor and editorials in both papers have failed to change anything. Sting operations by the Reno Police Department have been effective, but are not frequent enough nor extensive enough to have put a permanent dent in Reno drivers’ bad and illegal driving habits. Why not do a community-based petition? Perhaps the RN&R website could be used for the electronic portion of the petition and volunteers could collect signatures of freshly angered and frightened pedestrians. Of course, for reasons of decorum, we could not permit these victims to add comments with their signatures.

Where to send the petition? Local politicians like the mayor, city councils or the county commission would be likely targets. However, perhaps a better way would be to deliberately insult the local politicians and send the petition to Governor Sandoval and/or the Nevada Department of Public Safety, requesting an inspection team to come to Reno to look at this unsafe situation.

I would willingly donate my time to go out and work on this, as after all, I have a life-stake here.

John D. Daniels
Reno

Correction

In “Trading places” (Arts&Culture, June 23), we reported, “Nationally franchised trade organizations such as ITEX and Western Trade Alliance are present in the Truckee Meadows. Their Reno outposts submit to regulations outside of Nevada.” That was incorrect. Western Trade Alliance is affiliated with Global Trade Alliance Inc., but WTA’s Reno operation is locally owned by Nate Lance. Their organization consists of 100 plus members, all of them based in the Truckee Meadows. We apologize for any confusion caused by our error.