Praise for Turkish Professor
I enjoyed reading the article on the Turkish professor here at the U studying and researching birds [“Tracking Winged Sentinels,” Spring 2012].
I graduated from the U in 1997 with a degree in Turkish language and literature. It is very nice to see a Turkish professor at our University being so successful. Having lived in Turkey for two years with my husband and young son, I know how great the Turkish people and their culture are. The travel opportunities in Turkey are also very interesting and historically significant. Few people in the U.S. know where Turkey is located or of its historical significance in world history.
Keep up the great work.
June N. Marvel BA’97
Academic Advisor
University of Utah Middle East Center
Proud of Grandpa and the Blitz Kids
I’m Vadal Peterson’s granddaughter, and I grew up hearing how proud he was of the team and the circumstances and events leading up to the win [“The Blitz Kids,” Spring 2012]. Thank you for your acknowledgement of this great achievement.
Pam Pannier BS’83
Comment submitted via continuum.utah.edu
I, too, am a granddaughter of Vadal Peterson. Isn’t it amazing how different college sports were back then—the coaches did not receive huge salaries, [and] the players were shorter! All the grandchildren are proud of our grandfather!
Linda Ruiz
Comment submitted via continuum.utah.edu
Becoming a Football Factory?
It saddened me greatly to learn, after reading in the Fall and Winter issues of Continuum, that my alma mater, Utah—of which I was once proud—has decided to become a football factory, following Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska, Alabama, and other schools of similar ilk. Thus the definition of “university” in a Harold Lloyd comedy from 1925 as “a football stadium with a couple of classrooms attached.”
Jacqueline Edwards BFA’55
New York, N.Y.
Evolution Doesn’t Cut It
It is amazing the numerous problems with the theories of evolution that their scientific proponents gloss over and at the same time refuse to give creationism the time of day because of its supernatural nature [“Evolution of a Scientist,” Spring 2012]. Let me mention just a few.
There is life itself. Evolutionists postulate that billions of years ago conditions were perfect when a sunspot or some other natural phenomena accrued providing the chemicals or energy that started life with a single cell in the sea. Yet deprive a newborn (whatever) of a life-required substance (air) for just a few minutes and no chemical or energy will restore life to a perfectly conditioned creature.
Then there is the fact that a single-cell amoeba has a DNA strand that is more complex than a fleet of 747s. There is no scientific explanation for this complexity. To believe that a lightning strike or some other natural phenomena created it is absurd.
What about the problem of reproduction? There is no scientific explanation for the development of reproduction or the requirement for a male and a female in the reproductive process. How does survival of the fittest explain this?
Then there are the problems with the variety of life (why are there mosquitoes, etc.?), the beauty all around us, the intricacy of so much of life (the eyeball), etc.
In an oversimplification, the total scientific evidence consists of some visible evolution within a species and a few fossils that appear to show a migration from one species to another. To accept paltry evidence and totally dismiss intelligent design is not scientific.
Dick Kenney BS’56
Comment submitted via continuum.utah.edu [see reply from Dr. Alan Rogers in Responses]
Dear Editor:
This time you have gone too far. I see exactly what you are doing. Of all the ways to extort money out of alumni, this has to be the worst.
You cannot possibly have so few worthy comments for Contiuum’s Summer 12 “Your Comments” section that you had to include Dick Kenney’s BS’56 “Evolution Doesn’t Cut It” letter, in which he claimed amongst other things that mosquitos are evidence of “Intelligent Design.” More like “sadistic design” if you ask me. Clearly, Mr. Kenney did not contribute enough to the annual fund in years past, and now you are taking advantage of the octogenarian in his dotage, to mock him and destroy his reputation as a student of science.
Please, if you have any decency at all, tell me how much I must contribute so that forty years from now you will not publish a letter from me in which I say that Chopin did not write very well for the piano, or that Beethoven was a great composer of comic operas. I will pay, damn you. I will pay.
Justin Kalm B.Mus.’95, M.Mus’97