New riders: Keep your brakes on!

Heartfelt thanks to the Wildcat and Jackson Crews for an informative and responsible article on fixed-gear bikes (“”No Brakes, No Problem,”” Wednesday). The article contains some great advice for new riders: keep your brakes on until you learn to stop without them. I’d like to add some of my own advice, based on the frightening trends I’ve seen in campus bikes. If you have no brakes, you need toe clips or clipless pedals and shoes. Unretained feet cannot stop very well. If you have one brake, make it the front brake, which is the most powerful. If you have a freewheel (i.e., you can coast), you need two brakes, no exceptions. Be safe out there, kids!

Josh Martin
neuroscience doctoral student

Immigrants broke the law; death is their own fault

I cannot help but question the reasoning of Tuesday’s “”Death in the desert”” editorial. How are the deaths of migrants a cost of border security rather than of criminal activity? Border security doesn’t “”force”” anyone to “”cross through rougher, deadlier terrain.”” There are plenty of populated areas with water that are easy to travel to when legally traveling between Mexico and the United States. Increased border security merely makes the choice of whether or not to break the law that much more favorable to following the law.

Seriously, it’s not like the Border Patrol is sending special forces into Mexico and booby-trapping nearby towns with land mines and panji pits to decrease the likelihood of illegal immigration. Is the Tucson Police Department at fault if a rapist runs away from the crime scene to avoid arrest, trips, falls and breaks his kneecap over a rock? Perhaps Tucson should accommodate its rapists by requiring the rooms of women and children to be unlocked and open with paved paths between the homes and Tucson’s dimly lit streets so that we can decrease the human cost of this other criminal activity.

Here’s a radical idea: maybe the illegal immigrants died because they willingly attempted to illegally travel into the United States through rough, dry land. Although it may not be as efficient as some would like it to be, I would prefer to be an optimist and notice that the service the Border Patrol provides is not illusory if 177 criminals this year who tried to break the law couldn’t.

Daniel Greenberg
political science sophomore

Late-night TV the place for politics

The Wildcard section of Wednesday’s paper about late-night TV shows and politics is a very important issue facing society today. In the past six months, the main people that have received coverage on the main cable news networks have been Anna Nicole Smith, O.J. Simpson, Britney Spears and K-Fed with only small blips of coverage for presidential hopefuls. The mass media is doing an awful disservice to the nation by parading celebrities around and exposing their personal lives while having almost nothing to say about who may be our next leader. It is very wise of Fred Thompson to shun the debates (which no one watches, anyway) and traditional news (which doesn’t inform the public, either). The late-night shows actually give the contenders some time to tell their platform to the largest audience and respond to criticism. It’s funny how cable news and late-night entertainment have been taking each other’s traditional subjects.

Alex Hoogasian
political science senior