Regarding "A woman's intuition"

There comes a time in a child's life when fantasy is abandoned, to be replaced with critical thinking and reality. This is the first step into adulthood, and it happens at different times for different individuals. Some times a child abandons magical thinking at around the age of twelve or thirteen years. Some people take until 18 or 20 years before settling into a healthy non-magical mode of thinking. This step is vastly important if an individual is to make an honest living and contribute to a healthy society.

It is also an unfortunately fact of life that still other people find is extremely difficult to abandon magical, irrational thinking. Such is the case with those who believe they have "psychic" abilities, and those who believe others have "psychic"

abilities. Education can help many of these people come to cast off their infantile way of thinking, and step into adulthood and the real world. It is a matter of tragedy that many others cannot be educated, since by the time they are well into an adult age they have far too great an emotional (and often financial) investment in their fantasies. When this occurs, all evidence that demonstrates their magical beliefs are false tends to activate an irrational self-defense mechanism that blinds the magical believer into an inability to comprehend, let alone integrate, that evidence.

That tragedy became greater when a newspaper publishes someone's fantasies as if they were rational, actual facts. While many people who cling to their fantasies (which comfort them) are often not responsible for that behavior (irrational self-defense mechanisms are not under conscious control), newspapers are responsible for their reporting behavior. Reporting that some people are "psychic" is a gross abuse against your readers; it is insulting to their intellect, and makes your publication a farce.

Your paper, having published such an article, is telling its readers that you do not acknowledge, let alone respect, their intelligence.

David Rice

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Dawn: "I have to pee."
Buffy: "Do you want someone to go with you?"
Dawn: "No. I still remember how to pee."

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