Letters to the Editor

Forget traffic problems and appreciate O'ahu

This is in response to those who have been writing in with traffic and transit concerns.

I just moved to the East Coast four months ago and want to say that traffic on O'ahu is not even half as bad as it is here. Just in the small neighborhoods, it can take up to 30 minutes to go a couple of miles.

There are great rail services here, but the train tracks, the wires they use and the train cars themselves make the city look more cluttered and would take away from O'ahu's natural beauty.

Being across the country, away from home and in the cold, makes me appreciate those of you who are lucky enough to still be able to live in Hawai'i. Even though you may be sitting in traffic, the weather is still 80 degrees, the sky is a pure blue, the sun is shining and you can see the ocean at some point on your way home.

Appreciate what you have. It could be worse.

Melissa Wong
Kearny, N.J.

Increasing P.E. makes better sense

The debate over halving the P.E. requirement illuminates the bigger issue facing our public schools: What is the primary purpose of our public schools?

Standards-based education would have you believe that graduating students who are college-ready is their main purpose. That's ridiculous since the majority of public high school students aren't going to college — that's why we have private schools. Exposing students to a wide variety of disciplines is a good idea, too, but they don't have to become experts in every area.

The most important things for public high schools to do are to produce involved citizens who vote (through social studies and history) and produce citizens who are healthy (through P.E.). What good is knowledge when your quality of life is low due to health problems?

Increasing P.E. and health makes sense not only from an individual student perspective but also from a societal one. We all pay for having an unhealthy population. If our schools can do these two things, our state will be in much better shape down the road.

Bryan Mick
Kailua

Let airport security personnel do their job

I am sick and tired of people complaining about airport security searches. I think these complaints and the two Nov. 20 articles by David Shapiro and Bob Krauss are way off base.

I travel more than most people (over 55,000 miles in 2001) and go through the same procedures as described — maybe more so because I do not look like a white Anglo-Saxon. The airport security people are doing a thankless job in making sure that we passengers are safe. Every single time they search me, I encourage them, thank them and tell them not to back off searching anyone else behind me. I want them to search anyone suspicious, for any reason, and not back off because someone complains.

It seems to me that complainers are sending the wrong message to those airport security workers. We should be encouraging them every chance we get — unless we have something to hide.

M. Kawakami

To Gov. Cayetano: We 'hardly knew ya'

Regarding Robert M. Rees' Counterpoint column of Nov. 18, "Ben, we're gonna miss ya": Most people in town know that Bob Rees is a hard nut to crack. When he pays tribute to our Gov. Cayetano, it's offered just two weeks before his term expires. But, it's better late than never.

I agree that our governor is an honest politician — more so since 1998. He is independent; compassionate, too.

Rees' characterization of our governor as a bull in a china shop seems fitting during that 1998 campaign. He was a hard person to like, but he earned our collective respect.

No one is completely free from fear of the Establishment or "conventional wisdom." It is how one acts despite that fear that marks a true leader. In this time of leadership deficits, I can only add to Rees' closing remarks: Governor, we "hardly knew ya." Mahalo.

Arvid T. Youngquist

Criticism in technology commentary misleading

In his Nov. 12 column, John Duchemin criticized the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism for providing what he believes to be misleading and inflated statistics in a May 2001 report on Hawai'i's technology sector jobs because he thinks the measure counts activity that should not be counted. The soon-to-be-updated report he referred to is available online.

John has every right to hold a different opinion on what should be counted. But it is unfair and incorrect for him to call the measure misleading because of that. More than a quarter of the report was devoted to a detailed explanation of how the measure was constructed and how it should be interpreted in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Technology is very difficult to define and measure. This is because technology activity is on a continuum that starts with technology-"creating" activity done in labs and on engineers' computer screens. It ends with technology-"using" activity like CAT scanners in hospitals and computers on our desktops.

In between, there is a range of technology-"transfer" activities made up of manufacturers, service bureaus, training agencies, hardware distributors, etc., that moves technology from creators to users.

Few researchers would argue that a definition of technology should include only pure technology-creating activity. On the other hand, everyone uses technology, so a meaningful definition would have to exclude most (but not all) technology-"using" activity. Unfortunately, there is no nationally agreed-upon definition that says exactly what should or should not be counted.

DBEDT looked at a host of definitions put forth nationally when constructing this measure for Hawai'i. We chose for the core of our measure a definition developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce that uses federally collected industry data on paid employment by detailed industries. It is a definition that represents a combination of technology-creating and technology-transfer job activities in the economy. Importantly, it does it in a way that is consistent over time and available annually.

The data have some shortcomings. They do not capture entrepreneurial firms where there are no paid employees, nor do they include government technology agencies. They do not provide a value for technology products and services produced.

Our High Technology Development Corp. does a periodic survey of specific companies in software development, biotech, military-related technology and others to get some more detailed information about known technology firms. DBEDT has taken great care to find a consistent and reliable measures based on other national measures.

Seiji Naya
Director, DBEDT