Jesus’ wife?
Re “Love your neighbor” (Letters to the editor, Nov.
19):
“Since the late 6th century, Mary Magdalene has been
misidentified in Western Christian Tradition as an adulteress and
repentant prostitute; although nowhere does the New Testament identify
her as such. Pope Gregory the Great made a speech in 591 A.D. where he
seemed to combine the actions of three women mentioned in the New
Testament and also identified an unnamed woman as Mary Magdalene. He
wrongly stated that she was a prostitute. This erroneous view was not
corrected until 1969 when the Vatican issued a quiet retraction.”
– Wikipedia
I, too, recently moved here, from Hawaii, where it doesn’t get
much more tolerant of differing cultures. I knew before moving here of
the legalized prostitution and accepted such as part of Nevada. But
please stop promulgating the wrongful association of Mary Magdalene
with prostitution. Maybe your newspaper can help the effort to cleanse the name of this Christian saint.
Martin McDavitt
Reno
Vote the Cal way
Nevada residents, please close the door on Harry Reid. Reid is an
arrogant and vile politician who doesn’t care about what the
people want but promotes his and his cronies’ agenda. If the
health-care bill passes, it will be one of the destructive forces to
America as we know it. If you don’t believe me, save this letter
and when it happens, pull it out and be reminded I told you so. We need
to get rid of politicians like Reid who are doing everything they can
to strangle this country so we can’t breathe or prosper. Please,
I’m begging the voters in Nevada to close the door on Harry
Reid. And lock his office when he comes home for vacation to send
him a message of how the majority of American citizens feel about him
and how he has treated us.
Leanne Pleshek
Big Bear City, Calif.
Age of health
Re “Unified theory of skepticism” (Editor’s Note,
Nov. 12):
I appreciate Brian Burghart’s candidness and boldness in his
editorials. He’s not afraid of controversy or saying unpopular
things, though many of his ideas I find to be closer to the truth of
things than most media I metabolize. As a health care practitioner who
contributed to some of his nine rules listed, I feel compelled to share
more insight around the necessity of exercise as well as the unique
molecular fingerprint each of us maintains in the world. Gone are the
days when we looked for a unified theory that correctly summarizes
every individual through each unique life phase. It’s better
perhaps to get comfortable with the notion that you live through more
than 25 distinctive phases in the life span of 90 years. That way the
19-year-old operating system you committed to doesn’t have to
describe what your 60-year-old body is confronting.
One powerful real-time insight is that you are always recreating
yourself through how you train your physiology. The body adapts
perfectly to every stress, and the longer or more severe the stress is
the more pronounced the adaptation. Like breeds like. Congestion and
inflammation in living systems are always secondary to toxins and lack
of movement. You’d be hard pressed to find a jack rabbit with
obesity. Exercise is like the Ctrl + Alt + Del function on your
computer. It unsticks whatever is stuck in the system allowing for
movement and progress to return. We both train our physiology and
restrain our demise. We are our own groundskeepers and gardeners, and
we create the weather patterns in our internal ecology. Our genetic
inheritance is less than a third of determining our lifetime
health.
The burgeoning fields of epigenetics and nutrigenomics accurately
describe the ways thoughts and nutritional choices affect the vast
genetic blueprint our parents gave us. The crutch of inherited diseases
is no longer able to hold any weight. We inherit our choices for better
or for worse. Recognizing these fields and our unique molecular ecology
requires that biofeedback become the barometer for deciding where on
the illness-wellness spectrum we choose to hang a shingle. This
biofeedback can be through devices or through the subjective interplay
of our energy levels and how we feel. The only challenge in relating to
one’s self through biofeedback is we have to be willing to be our
own parent and resist escaping from difficult times through chemical
alterations or indulging our vices. As I say to many of my patients:
There are few truths that summarize everything, but there is one truth
that befits the present circumstances in one’s life. As a steward
of your body you execute immediate, appropriate responses to current
challenges and envision a long-term vision of self that most supports
the quality of life you yearn for.
Everything else is simply a story based on a distraction. There are
plenty of those. The question is, what kind of story will you choose to
pen?
Taylor Donovan
Reno
Freedom of religion
Re “The Pot Issue” (Feature story, Nov. 19):
The use of force against people who use cannabis can’t be
called a war, although Congress declared it a war, and the police use
deadly force to entrap citizens who respond with peace demonstrations
and flowers. If this was a war, the 100 million Americans who have
admitted using it would kill all politicians who haven’t changed
the laws. If it was a war, both sides would be allowed to kill freely,
not just the police. Oh yes, there are gangs with weapons, but these
people are at war with everything. The average user just hopes he will
not be found out because if he is then he gets discriminated against.
And terrorism is using political power to push an inhuman agenda.
Cannabis is a natural resource with more than 10,000 uses. Our own
government grows it, yet denies its citizens the same rights. If they
were truly concerned, they would arrest themselves and confiscate all
of their own property. Read page one of the Bible for further
instructions on how to treat plants with seeds. Congress has violated
everyone’s First Amendment rights due to these laws.
Mike Hermanski
Stevens Point, Wis.
Nothing to see here
Re “Out of sight” (Letters to the editor, Nov. 12):
I can assuage the fears of Grace Davis that there is a conspiracy in
the Assessor’s office to suppress the information on the house at 2550 Lake Ridge Shores East and the entire neighborhood. The address is
entered, rightly or wrongly, in the Assessor’s data as Lake
Ridges Shores East not Lakeridge. Try that address and go to the Parcel
Summary page, and you will find all the information on the
property.
In the article, it is implied that “Zestimate”
establishes the value of the property at $790,000, and that number is
supported by the Assessor’s appraised value of $798,000. Neither
of these sources is appropriate for establishing current market
value.
At the “Zestimate” website, one of the first things you
find is a disclaimer that says their numbers should not be used for
market appraisals.
The Assessor’s appraised value is a “cost
approach,” for taxation purposes only, and is not intended to be
market value. (In 2005 when the property was purchased for $1.3
million, the probable market value at that time, and the
Assessor’s appraised value, cost approach, was $681,558.)
The reduction in the real estate market has brought these two
numbers together only by happenstance.
The best way to know the true current market value of this property
would be to have it appraised by a local fee appraiser. It would be
difficult to judge the validity of this transaction without that
number.
Ernie McNeill
Reno