Air Date: Week of December 16, 2005

Comments from our listeners on recent stories we’ve aired.

Transcript

CURWOOD: Time now from comments from our listeners.

[LETTERS THEME]

CURWOOD: Our story about New Orleans residents returning to homes with elevated mold spore levels netted some impassioned responses from mold-sufferers across the nation.

“I am glad someone is taking this mold seriously,” writes Linda Delp of Delaware. “I am one of many who are ill from mold who have been writing Congress and our representatives since Katrina. There are so many suffering this illness, and we don't want more to suffer.”

Unfortunately, she claims, Congress is looking the other way.

Finally, our talk with Jay Ingram about his new book, "The Velocity of Honey: And More Science of Everyday Life,” garnered this tongue-in-cheek response.

“The story about toast landing buttered-side down reminded me of an apocryphal argument between an empiricist and a pessimistic phenomenologist,” writes John Lloyd who tunes in on WMRY in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“Now the empiricist and phenomenologist disagreed about which side a piece of buttered toast would land on. The phenomenologist contended it was bound to land buttered-side down, that such bad things were simply destined to happen. The empiricist contended it only could be determined by testing. So, they toasted and buttered a slice of bread, tossed it in the air, and - lo and behold - it landed buttered-side up.

"See," said the empiricist, "It just goes to prove to you that you have to test things."

"Not really,” the phenomenologist responded dourly. “It just goes to show that we buttered the wrong side of the toast."

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