Zona Zoo promo phrase ‘offensive’ to long-time fans
Hey Zona Zoo, clearly you do not know the Pac-10 conference at all! For those of us who grew up in Tucson and have followed UA sports since we were children, the phrase “”Pac the Mac,”” which you used as a promotion for the UA vs. ASU volleyball game is not only very uneducated on your part, but offensive to us who have followed UA sports our entire lives! Our sports teams play in McKale Center, not the Mac.

For years the Oregon Ducks basketball team has played in McArthur Court in Oregon and has been dubbed the Mac for as long as I remember. So unless the UA vs. ASU volleyball game is being played in Eugene, Ore., which I highly doubt, please refrain from calling McKale the Mac ever again. Yet another horrible slogan from the Zona Zoo staff who have not been Wildcat fans for their entire lives.

Logan Davis
pre-business senior

Prop 102 promotes prejudice, superstition
I find it sad that for people like Bruce Pixton, who wrote in support of discrimination of same-sex couples in Tuesday’s Mailbag, the concept of two women or two men getting married completely undermines their entire world structure. This superstitious and irrational fear that rights for gays and lesbians is the end of civilization as we know it is absurd. The day that same-sex couples are allowed to get married in this nation (and it is going to happen), the skies are not going to part, there will not be global flooding, in fact no catastrophes of biblical proportion will take place at all. Life will go on normally and things will be fine.

In fact, Pixton, a lot of people actually believe that life will be much better because we will be taking a step toward teaching future generations that they are free to be themselves without fear of being hated, beaten, denied. What do you expect to happen if you are able to pass a law that prevents same-sex marriage? That people will just stop falling in love with members of their own gender? Sorry, but gays and lesbians make up at least 10 percent of the population – and they are not going to just go away if you just pretend like they don’t exist.

Anyone who thinks that members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community do not make a valuable contribution to the diversity of humanity is clearly blinded by their own self-righteous beliefs.

Please vote no on Prop 102, and keep our country on a path where one day the prejudices that we have to unlearn will never be taught at all.

Julianna Bradley
political science senior

Beer snob ought to have a more open mind
For the past four weeks, articles titled “”Beer Snob visits…”” have appeared in the WildLife section of the Wednesday Daily Wildcat. I had anxiously awaited the appearance of a column like this. However, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that aside from the content being drab and directionless, the author communicated a rather disappointingly apathetic tone.

The most jarring moments of my reading were the violations of some of the most basic principles of beer tasting. Starting with the darkest, bitterest or some alternate adjective indicative of powerful taste is an illogical choice at best and near criminal at worst. Yet the author has done this in three of his four outings. I won’t go so far as to say that it affected his enjoyment of the beers as I wasn’t present for these outings, but glaring mistakes like that do not inspire confidence in regards to any sort of tasting superiority.

Cost should be a badge of honor for a truly snobbish consumer. Higher cost would normally indicate any number of things to be lorded over the “”Bud crowd.”” Exoticness of an import, superior ingredients or care (e.g. oak barrel aging) in the brewing process or even something as simple as the Veblen effect are just a few.

And please don’t get me started on the author’s most nefarious transgression. From the most recent article (“”Beer Snob visits Nimbus”” Oct. 1, 2008) I was shocked to find that Guinness was a heavy beer. Has the author ever even seen a black and tan?

In one of the articles, he complains about ambiguous beer signage. First, I have been to the establishment in question and while the details might be ambiguous, the styles of each are not. Second, he fails to notice that the lack of a cue card facilitates two things that, in my humble opinion, are the key to beer tasting: It creates an opportunity for a dialogue with fellow patrons and servers and more importantly it encourages an open mind.

Donald Sheldon
Tucson resident