I’ve always believed that a person’s NAME subtley but significantly affects his development as a human being, however distant and unquantifiable those effects may be. “Arnold Schwarzzeneger” (currently “governor” of California) and “Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr (formerly Commander of the Coalition Forces/Iraq) are appellations that quickly come to mind. The verb “to nix” and the noun “vixen” and what they mean are too close to the surname “Nixon” (and what it came to mean) to be mere coincidence.

I can’t comment on the surname “Alvarez” and I don’t have to comment on the surname “Sontag” other than to say that any written opinion piece that is the product of these two forces should probably be approached with trepidation.

Although everyone knows what “average” is, no one can actually be placed in that specific category of measurement. That is to say, everyone is either above or below average.

This means that whenever you take a portion of the whole, it will always be above or below the national (or whatever) average of whatever you are trying to prove.

As Mr Kimball points out, “…the “121” homicides that the Times cites would actually represents a far lower murder rate than among the general civilian population.” and that those homicides were largely committed by individuals of questionable character, characters nurtured and formed long before they entered military service.

So we could easily “prove” that service in Iraq is actually a character enhancing experience, rather than the other way around.

All this proves nothing except to confirm that old adage: “You can prove anything with statistics. “

It’s too bad that the NY Times is no longer what it once was.

Mr Kimball has often referred to the NY Times as “our former paper of record”. I wonder if sometime he would let us know why he now considers the NYT as our “former” paper of record and if there is currently any paper worth considering “our (current)paper of record”.