Mayor Bloomberg is spot on to support a social-media campaign warning against ear-bud-induced hearing loss (“Mayor a ‘Deaf’ Jammer,” March 6).
This advocacy isn’t like his past positions on super-sized sodas or salty potato chips. Ear-bud links to hearing loss are increasingly documented.
The issue goes beyond impairing users’ hearing. On subway platforms, ear-bud wearers put themselves in danger since they can’t hear announcements or, worse, trains arriving.
If ear-bud advocates don’t want to listen (if you will), that’s fine. There may be some serious profits realized from investing in hearing-aid companies like Phonak and Siemens as more audiophiles go deaf.
Jim Rowbotham, Manhattan
Firefighter fitness
There are multiple inaccuracies in your story “CourtOrdered FDNY Class Flaming Out” (March 3).
Only 21 individuals — not “as many as 30” — have resigned from the current firefighter-trainee class. This is a 6.6 percent attrition rate — essentially the same as the 6.2 percent rate we’ve had for the previous 23 classes in the last decade.
There was no court order for the promotional exam these candidates took and passed. Nor did the department “exclude” applicants from the general population for this class. As current city employees with the FDNY, EMS personnel receive preferential hiring status over open competitive exam candidates, as required under state civil service law.
There has been no change in the required mile-and-a-half run, which must be done in under 13 minutes.
Nearly 300 men and women in this class are working hard every day to get through this difficult 18-week training program.
Most of them will succeed and in several months will be working in firehouses throughout the city, risking their lives to protect life and property.
Frank Gribbon,
Deputy Commissioner, FDNY Manhattan
A grim future
Wednesday’s piece concerning the society-deadening results of single motherhood is indeed daunting (“Not a Pretty Picture,” Michael Goodwin, March 6).
This will have lasting effects on the nation’s future intellectual and productive base.
Children raised solely by their mothers perform worse in school when compared to their peers who are raised in nuclear families.
The stunted intellectual levels and productive capabilities of these children strongly imply that the economy will suffer grievously as they try to replace the cohort charged with the nation’s productive output today.
They will be quite incapable of doing so. Each successive year means that the United States is falling further behind.
Ben Perlmutter, Mendham, NJ
Blame game U
The editorial about Oberlin College and a person going around dressed up as a Klansman caught my attention (“Klansmen on Campus,” Editorial, March 8).
The suggestion that the responses might encourage or discourage this is fairly outrageous.
It cites Oberlin’s responses, such as drum circles and hugs, as some things that could bring these racists out.
I don’t understand why The Post blames the victims, students mostly, and lays possible blame or cause for crime on these perhaps ineffective methods.
Pete Lobl, Lindenhurst