Letters for May 30, 2013

Bum fights and gun overload

Re “A history of Sacramento violence” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Bites, May 16):

Well, there you have it. Any violent act that happened in the days of “yore” is fair game to use to draw tourists.

In fact, let me chip one in of my own, if you will. I, a third-generation Sacramentan, visited Old Sac (then Sacramento's Bowery) with Mrs. Lashbrook's second-grade class from Larchmont Elementary. Yep, a field trip to see the bums.

My entire class witnessed a bum cut another bum's eye out over a cigarette butt. To this day, that might have been the single most educational thing I ever saw or did in my entire school career.

I think we ought to bring stuff back like that—even make it a bit sexier for the tourists. With thinking like that, we might be able to do re-enactments of the shooting in Old Sac in 2012. Yes, gunfights happened there—and they still do. End the culture of violence.

Ben Baity

Citrus Heights

Climate-change deniers

Re “Students and environmentalists pressure CalPERS, CalSTRS, UC to ditch big-oil investments” by Darwin BondGraham (SN&R News, May 23):

While this is a democratic society and everybody gets to say their thing, these people are either delusional or simply ignore the truth about CO2. Per NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies data, the world has not warmed for 15 years. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits the world has not warmed. There is zero correlation between the measured increases in CO2 from the Mauno Loa study and world temperatures. The ice-core studies show changes in CO2 levels come after global temperature changes hundreds of years later. The temperature in 1000 A.D. at the top of the medieval warm period was hotter than today with lower CO2 levels—we finally got back to the temperature of 1225 A.D. in 1990. If CO2 actually warms the planet, how did we get out of the last ice age 11,000 years ago when CO2 was half the level of today?

Michael Fellion

Carmichael

Dark schools

Re “Ransom, kidnaps and cool experiments” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Bites, May 23):

On the Sacramento City Unified School District dragging it’s feet on a public-records request, I can’t say I’m surprised, but I am very disappointed.

The district will not get rid of opposition to these closures by keeping folks in the dark. It just makes clear the complaint that many of us have had about this process from the start; that it was done too quickly, with too little information.

Alice Mercer

Sacramento

Rethink the arena

Re “Bites’ arena agnosticism ‘absurd’” by Steve Mehlman (SN&R Letter of the Week, May 16):

As a city resident of about 35 years, this whole arena spiel has sounded strangely like the line we were given back when the debate was the brand-spanking-new Sacramento Convention Center at the end of the K Street Mall. Then, we were told the city would be the economic beneficiary of hordes of conventioneers. Unfortunately, it didn’t draw the hordes that were promised. Maybe they missed the nice signs?

There is a quarter-of-a-billion dollars of our public money riding on this particular approach to an arena investment. … If the current plan proves to be overblown and underanalyzed, then let’s get it right. And if there’s still no consensus, let’s vote on it.

Bill Reany

Sacramento

Thanks, Joey

Re “Sext education” by Joey Garcia (SN&R Ask Joey, May 16):

You mention that employers are increasingly asking for employee social-media passwords, etc. That is a true statement, and the reason I’m writing is not about the actual topic of your response (teen sexting and protecting yourself from Internet exposure). Still, I decided to write because reading your recommendation about employers and social-media logins nagged at me. To me, the idea of employers asking for your personal login to anything that is not work related is absurd and a volition of privacy. Trends like this concern me a great deal. … I would be glad to see you make the point that we do not need to be complacent to this trend and can stand up for our privacy rights.

Tara Ingram

via email