raison

I've been told that being able to see the connection between seemingly disparate ideas is a sign of superior cognitive abilities, so I tried a little factor analysis experiment of my own. Here are two letters to the editor from today's Star Tribune:

Too much detail

Shame on the Star Tribune for highlighting the gory details of Red Lake High School gunman Jeffrey Weise's suicide. How, by any stretch of the imagination, does this qualify as news?
Natalie Griffith, Minneapolis

Thank you for that, Natalie. I myself was wondering what the hell is wrong with the news media? Why do they have to tell us everything? I mean, can't they just keep some things to themselves? Yeah, so they're in the news business, that doesn't mean we have to have all the news. It's about time somebody put a stop to all the information flow.

Annoying or nonannoying?

Now that restaurants have been forced to go smoke-free, perhaps the old smoking sections can be designated as areas for those annoying and obnoxious cell phone, pager and beeper users.
S.L. Scholz, Mounds View


Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh, people using cell phones in restaurants...hate them, hate them so much!! Bastards. Who do they think they are anyway? Why can't they just turn their cell phones off like they do at work or during meetings? It's not like a restaurant is a less formal setting than work. Morons.

For those of you who are wondering, the connection between the two letters above is their sheer stupidity. My suggestion to both of these people is this: Get a big box, take it to a desert, and live in it. That way, you'll never have to encounter unpleasant stimuli like people or news.