I am thrilled that the Walters Art Museum collaborated with the Space Telescope Science Institute to bring to the public stunning images of deep space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
I was recently at the Walters and caught the mesmerizing exhibit Mapping the Cosmos: Images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
I later read the essay "Seeing stars" (Opinion
Commentary, Feb. 10) by Gary Vikan, the director of the Walters Art Museum.
In his column, Mr. Vikan says that art and science have been following divergent paths for centuries and that Mapping the Cosmos is the museum's small way of helping bridge this divide.
But I would argue that art and science have never really wandered in different directions.
Artists are as painstaking as scientists - making precise mathematical calculations about the many ingredients of their art, such as the size of their canvases or the interplay of light and darkness in their works or the curvatures and proportions of their sculptures.
Although some scientists would insist that science is a logical march of the mind toward rational proofs and conclusions, a lot of great science actually happens in the realm of the imagination.
The most elegant and simple or the most incredible and improbable solutions to scientific problems often occur serendipitously when the scientist is as prepared as the artist to suspend disbelief and surrender to the magic of the eureka moment.
Deep space, inscribed with exploding plumes of dust and gas and colored by the eerie glow of cascading stars, is an ever-expanding work of art.
It is also a grand laboratory where physics, chemistry and mathematics intersect, beckoning us to look all the way back to the Big Bang.
Mapping the Cosmos filled me with the kind of reverence that compels genuflection.
It confirmed my view that science and art need no bridges.
They exist, one within the other, and they are immensely potent together.
Usha Nellore
Bel Air
New surveillance bill undermines rights
Shame on Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski for voting to support the bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("Eavesdropping bill clears Senate," Feb. 13). The bill is a disgrace, and the arguments to support it are a sham.
Those who say that the bill provides new protections against government snooping need only look at the administration's violations of the old law's protections.
If it ignored those protections, it will surely ignore the new ones as well.
To those who say that immunity for phone companies for past violations is necessary to ensure future cooperation, I would say that such cooperation is needed only if the law continues to be ignored.
If the law had been followed, court orders would have authorized appropriate surveillance.
Clearly, there are two reasons for the administration's insistence on immunity: to protect its corporate friends against financial liability, and to cover up the full extent of illegal conduct by members of the administration.
Kudos to Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin for having the courage to stand with other Democrats who saw this bill for what it really is - another assault on the Constitution.
Jack Hirsch
Rockville
Change itself isn't much of a platform
Sen. Barack Obama is a wonderful orator. He is intelligent and has the ability to engage his audience with that ever-amorphous word "change."
My 15-year-old niece is mesmerized by him, as, it would seem, is The Sun's editorial board ("Betting on change, reform," Feb. 10).
But I am not so easily convinced. After a review of Mr. Obama's Web site and his stated positions, I remain unclear about what kind of "change" Mr. Obama envisions.
His stated positions do not appear to be significantly different from those of his competitor and seem out of sync with his stated message of "change."
Sen. Hillary Clinton may not be glamorous or inspirational. However, she is brilliant, substantive and strong and has worked tirelessly over the years for the Democratic Party and for her New York constituents.
Have we become a culture that gets so swept up in the latest fad and chases only change for change's sake?
I still believe that support for a candidate should be based on that candidate being outstanding in his or her field and working tirelessly for those he or she represents and on the good ideas that he or she is able to shepherd to fruition.
Based on those standards, Mrs. Clinton deserves support.
Lisa A. Stern
Stevenson
Police misconduct is all too common
The elephant in the room during any conversation concerning the quality of life in the city is the conduct of the Baltimore Police Department.
One of the few experiences shared by most residents of Baltimore is that of petty bullying by police officers.
While the recent abuse of two young skateboarders, videotaped and disseminated on YouTube.com, by the comically blustering Officer Salvatore Rivieri has temporarily drawn attention to police misconduct, it is unfortunate that public perception of the problem may be colored by this relatively inconsequential incident, when truly grave abuses occur regularly ("Skateboarder calls reaction over the top," Feb. 14).
It is well-documented that black men have often been subject to arbitrary arrest. Young women are likewise subjected to sexual harassment and worse with little or no effective recourse.
The injury of police harassment and violence is compounded by the insult of the impunity with which it is exercised.
Those few officers who are charged with abuse rarely bear the full penalty of law, as a civilian charged with a comparable offense would, and often keep their jobs.
Most horrifyingly, in two cases of alleged rape by on-duty police officers, evidence disappeared from police lockers ("Evidence against city officers to go to state," Aug. 8, and "Items missing in rape case," July 17).
When police abuses do enter the news - because they are particularly egregious or because of a lucky accident such as the skateboarders videotaping the police - there is inevitably commentary from police spokespeople or pundits attributing the incident to a few bad apples on the police force.
However, given the disincentives to reporting police crime, the reluctance of police to arrest or check their own, and the public relations and legal apparatus of the Police Department and police union, one can assume that the actual number of incidents of abuse by police is some multiple of the number of cases prosecuted.
Samuel Dietrich
Baltimore
'Big Poultry' hides critical information
I was pleased to see The Sun support both the principle of public access to public records and the lawsuit that the Waterkeeper Alliance and eight of its member programs has filed to gain access to Maryland farmers' nutrient management plans ("Foul secrets," editorial, Feb. 11).
The Sun is right to point out that farmers are not the enemy of clean water - in fact, I suspect that most of Maryland's farmers are doing all they can to protect the bay, and access to nutrient management plans is a surefire way to prove it.
However, in criticizing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for framing the lawsuit as an unwarranted attack on "Big Poultry," The Sun ignores the role that corporate interests have had in keeping these documents hidden from public view in the first place.
Multinational poultry corporations have fought to keep this information secret to deflect attention from the pollution generated by their industry.
However, this controversy need not be an adversarial situation - as long as state legislators and agricultural officials recognize the importance of transparency and make these waste management plans public.
Jillian Gladstone
Irvington, N.Y.
The writer is advocacy and outreach coordinator for the Waterkeeper Alliance.