Letters

The Most Amazing Inventions of 2004
The fascinating success of Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne [“Coolest Inventions 2004,” Dec. 6] opens a brilliantly lit pathway out of the gloom and disappointment in which man has been stranded since the Challenger and Columbia space-shuttle disasters. SpaceShipOne avoids using brutal force to leave Earth and re-enter the atmosphere, thereby minimizing risks to itself and its crew. SpaceShipOne works its way into space and is the most human-friendly space vehicle man has yet devised.
Ashoka Weerakkody
Colombo, Sri Lanka

With his innovative SpaceShipOne, Burt Rutan hit the ball not just out of the park but right out of the atmosphere. I was disappointed, however, that many of the creations you chose were impractical, half-baked ideas. Consider the Snow Boat, which is supposed to solve the problem of a snowmobile falling through broken ice by welding an aluminum boat around it. That’s like making a safer motorcycle by carrying it in a U-Haul trailer. Admittedly, coolness is hard to define, but I never thought ridiculousness was an essential part of the concept.
Dexter Ford
Manhattan Beach, California, U.S.

It is wonderful to see that global ingenuity is thriving, but within a few years, we will be throwing away 2004’s innovative gizmos and gadgets for the next round of amazing inventions. There was not a word in your report about reuse, recycling, sustainability or even compatibility with existing or future products. Each invention seems to be a stand-alone technology, and some even go so far as to be designed to be disposable. As wonderful as it may be to have plastic tattoos on my iPod or have a portable, cloudlike meeting space, I can’t help wondering how I will explain to my grandchildren that it was this kind of thinking that filled the world’s landfills and depleted our limited resources.
Brian A. Pille
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.

A Tale of Two Indias
Your article on India’s new breed of billionaires [Dec. 6] gave a good account of the country today. The media and the wealthy lite want to believe the real India is affluent and mainly concerned with the good things in life. But the true India consists of millions who are deprived of life’s basic necessities. The country’s rich have shirked their responsibility to the poor. The wealthy still find ways to avoid paying taxes, evidenced by the number of income-tax cases against well-known citizens. The affluent are also failing the country by not contributing directly to the society from which they have derived their wealth. A lot of Indians could assist others by offering a minuscule part of their talentdoctors could treat a few poor patients free; performers could donate their talents to entertain at charity shows. Wealthy businessmen who provide employment for thousands and give to the poor exist in this country, but unfortunately their number is small.
Lalit Singh
Ajmer, India

If you look at Indian history, there has always been a division in our society. The present divide between rich and poor is similar to the caste system. Partly because of the Indian government’s policy of indifference toward population control, the educated rich and the middle class are practicing birth control more than the uneducated poor. As a result we find the poor are growing faster in number than the rich or middle classes. It is unfortunate that the Indian government has yet to develop a policy of one child per family, which would save this country from a disastrous population explosion.
Mohit C. Gupta
Begumpet, India

Your article described the view of traditionalists who believe that India is defined by restraint reflected in Gandhian frugality. A different point of view was provided by journalist Swapan Dasgupta, who said, “Gandhi may still be an icon, but Gandhism is dead as a dodo.” Gandhism can never die. The Mahatma’s sole objective in life was to turn man’s attention to God and teach man how to seek the guidance of this kindly light within his soul in every situation. Gandhism is the very soul of man.
Mukut Behari Lal
New Delhi

Unhealed Wounds
In response to TIME’s cover story on the fractious political relationship between China and Japan [Nov. 29], I would note that the tide of history can sweep away many things, but it can’t whitewash China’s collective memory of the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. It has haunted the Chinese for decades. People were massacred, cities bombed, children orphaned and a country defeated. The invasion was the worst insult to China in the 20th century. As a civilized people, the Chinese practice tolerance and cherish forgiveness, but we cannot tolerate or forgive the revision of history by Japanese war criminals and their descendants. Can wartime executioners be absolved and honored? Can genocide be omitted from history textbooks? In postwar Japan they can. Japan still owes China an apology. How can we leave the past behind?
He Jun
Beijing

The Chinese government has rekindled anti-Japanese sentiment among its youth in order to relegate to the background the harm and damage done by the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre. This a case of selective forgetting.
Elaine Grace Santiano
Hermosa, the Philippines

Pakistan Responds
Your report “Hiding in Plain Sight” [Nov. 29] claimed Pakistani authorities were ignoring Taliban fugitives who have taken refuge in our southern city of Quetta. No Taliban member is welcome in Pakistan. Our country is a key, vital partner of the U.S. in the war on terrorism. President Pervez Musharraf has ordered more than 70,000 troops to police Pakistan’s southwestern border with Afghanistan. The President has repeatedly made it clear that he will spare no effort to rid Pakistan of all inimical foreign elements.
Talat Waseem
Press Counselor
Embassy of Pakistan
Washington

High-Powered Design
“Cosmic Conundrum” [Dec. 6] explored the “anthropic principle,” the proposition that the universe is “uncannily well suited to the existence of life.” Just as physicists are ultimately baffled by the laws of the universe, physicians and surgeons spend their entire lives trying to comprehend the complexities of the body’s systems. The more we understand human physiology, the more we believe that a higher power must be responsible for the body’s creation as well as the varying outcomes (good and bad) we see after treatment of seemingly similar diseases. The longer I practice medicine, the more I believe in the greatness of God. The universe and our existence may be explained by laws of physics, but only up to a point. There will always be a limit to what physicists can explain with a formula. They, too, may become more religious with time.
Talat Chughtai, M.D.
Toronto

I consider it the scientists’ job to find the ultimate truth, even if, as your article reported, “most scientists consider appeals to a supernatural designer to be an intellectual dead end.” If God truly exists, he will be around in spite of all denials and scientific theories.
Eddie M.P. Mak
Hong Kong

Poor Intelligence
“In Your Face at the CIA” [Nov. 29] reported on the resignation of some of the best officials at the Central Intelligence Agency. The loss of those people will only add to the CIA’s ineffectiveness. Though the agency has been quite successful in collecting intelligence data from different parts of the world, it has failed to discover and foil the plans of many criminals and terrorists. Certainly, 9/11 is an example of an attack the CIA did not prevent. In fact, the agency has often been misled.
Syedfahad Akhtar
Karachi

Iran’s Nuclear Plans
As an American of Persian heritage, I fully understand the concern expressed by the U.S. and European countries over Iran’s possible development of weapons-based nuclear technology [Dec. 6]. I can also empathize with Iranians who aspire to move peacefully and democratically toward a strong, independent country that will ultimately secure its place in the family of nations. Paradoxically, the U.S.’s extreme position on the nuclear issue has only complicated the political landscape in Iran, giving an undeserved edge to the hard-liners while forcing the democratic-reform movement to take a backseat. That situation must be resolved soon for Iran to accelerate its movement toward the rule of law and a civil society.
David N. Rahni
Pleasantville, New York, U.S.

Better Than Nothing
In his essay “Do They Know It’s Simplistic?” [Dec. 6], Simon Robinson objects to the remake of the Band Aid song Do They Know It’s Christmas? because it “reinforces the popular impression that all Africans are starving as they wait for heroic Westerners to come and save them.” He notes that most Africans are not starving and that democracy has begun to take hold. I agree with Robinson’s point that the song draws an out-of-date picture of Africa, but in a time when egoism has become a new lifestyle, we should acknowledge every bit of goodwill that is offered. Even though Africa has changed and some countries have got rid of their dictatorships and established democracies, there are still many problematic regions leftSudan, for examplewhere help is desperately needed. Let us appreciate Band Aid and African activists for doing something instead of sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
Simone Unverdorben
Augsburg, Germany

The Final Splintering
The turmoil over Ukraine’s November presidential elections once again put that country in the spotlight [Dec. 6]. It was only 13 years ago that the former founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics declared itself a separate nation, helping guarantee the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union [Dec. 9, 1991]:

“The import of the vote [in favor of Ukrainian independence from the disintegrating U.S.S.R.] went beyond the imminent creation of the fifth most populous country in Europe52 million people, slightly fewer than in France. More broadly, the ballot seems likely to trigger the final dissolution of the Soviet Union … Even now [the Kremlin government] is only a shell that some diplomats assert fails the test for diplomatic recognitionit does not control the territory it claims. Last week the [Soviet] central bank ran out of cash … [and] the government may be unable to pay its employees, including the more than 3 million members of the military. If that does not finish off the flimsy creature, Ukrainian independence may. ‘Russia can do without Ukraine, Ukraine can do without Russia,’ says a State Department official. ‘But the Soviet Union can’t do without Ukraine. It’s over!'”