How Green Is Green?

Re "Wild in the City" (Cover Story, April 16): Some feedback on the part of this article about Mr. Pat Ferraro as I read parts of this article at lunch today.

• Pat spends $25,000 after tax credit (taxpayer subsidy) and rebates (more taxpayer subsidy) and saves $600 bucks a month on his electric bill. According to my simple math, he'll break even on his investment in about 40 years. Worth the cost to put up solar panels?? I know he's using less electricity, but how many people can afford that financial trade-off?

• He jets around town in his electric car, and plugs it into an extension cord that stretches from his garage. I assume this is plugged into the power grid and not his solar panels, so the electricity to charge up his car comes from where? Probably an inefficient and dirty coal-powered power plant someplace. A better answer would be that the "where" is a clean, green nuclear power plant someplace, but that doesn't fit into the environmental movement these days, and is a different discussion anyway.

• He's against getting stuff out of the earth, using it and throwing it away. I guess I would have expected him to not be standing on the roof of a house, with solar panels, or driving an electric car, and such, since those are all things that are manufactured from material out of the ground. I expected after reading this that he would be living in a tent in his yard.

Randy Breunling

San Jose

Safe for Who?

So, how are the programs referenced in the "Pedaling Safety" article (The Fly, April 16) going to help cyclists in the same situation as Matt Peterson and Kristy Gough? They weren't doing anything illegal. They didn't cross a double yellow line, they didn't space out/fall asleep, whatever, at their handlebars. They didn't cause their own deaths. A member of the law enforcement community, James Council, did.

So again, how are these safety programs going to keep cyclists safe when someone driving a car is careless?

Tracy L. Corral

San Jose

Great Art on The Run

Re "Top Notch Reviewers" (Letters, April 16): Seldom does a true American genius like Cormac McCarthy write an accessible modern-day-thriller novel. Even more seldom does a pair of unique, albeit twisted, geniuses like the Cohn [sic] brothers buy a great book to make a film from. And never do the filmmakers decide to actually use the absolutely brilliant words of the novelist almost exactly like they were written. Reviewers like Richard von Busack, however, are always ready to write a hit piece on anything brilliant and unique. Lets you know that, ummmm, Richard is a rebel and not taken in by anything like "true filmmaking excellence." What both von Busack and letter-writer Corollo are dismayed by is the lack of a good old feel-good Hollywood Ending! Great art is not Hollywood! Great art runs as fast as it can from Hollywood endings and people like von Busack and Corollo who want to feel nice and fuzzy when they leave the theater. If we are fortunate to get another McCarthy/Cohn [sic] collaboration, send your first-class reviewer, the one who might just enjoy a little realism in his/her art.

Ted Gehrke

Los Gatos

Purity Test

Top 5 ways to tell if the city of Sunnyvale government is of questionable integrity: 1. The city of Sunnyvale is in the banking business—offering "loans at 3.5 percent to 5 percent interest" and using city resources to advertise.

2. The city of Sunnyvale tells you the reason they can't fix the roof at Fair Oaks Industrial Complex (a city-owned property) is because it will be torn down to build a park in your neighborhood—then after 15 years, changes agenda and fixes the roof.

3. The City Manager and City Attorney are "let go" and the taxpayers who pay their severance packages and pensions are not allowed to know why they are fired. And why does the City Council have "private" meetings to make the corrupt mistake mentioned previously?

4. The city of Sunnyvale is in the real estate business, advertising on the city website.

5. The city of Sunnyvale installs new technology in the form of water meters and your water bill is often exactly the same for two months in a row. What are the odds that you used exactly the same amount of water for two months in a row? Not likely—the meter readers aren't reading your meters.

'Jack Spratt'

Sunnyvale

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