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Letters: Seniors online and designer nail polish

Marketplace Staff Jul 20, 2011
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Letters: Seniors online and designer nail polish

Marketplace Staff Jul 20, 2011
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Kai Ryssdal: We took a moment the other day to talk about Moodys and Standard & Poors, the ratings people, and how they’ve been threatening to to downgrade American debt, should Washington fail to agree on a credible deficit reduction plan.

Andrew Northrop of Ossippee, N.H., says credibility’s the key word there. Not about the debt plan — about the raters themselves.

Andrew Northrop: Moody’s and S&P showed themselves to be at best incompetent and at worst criminally negligent just a few years ago when they reassured us all that these financial instruments we now call toxic assets were just fine. I guess it’s hard to put much stock in their opinion today.

I mentioned a new social network called Proust.com yesterday. It’s for seniors to share their memories digitally, assuming, I said, you can actually get your grandmother online. Some of our more — I’m going to get in trouble again here — distinguished listeners didn’t appreciate my “whippersnapperosity,” as one put it. That includes Nancy Glick, a 63-year-old grandmother in Bend, Ore.

Nancy Glick: Shame on you, Mr. Ryssdal! When I bought my first computer 28 years ago, your comment denigrating seniors as being computer-averse might have been true. But I can assure you that my 60- and 70-year-old friends are all online. In February, my 72-year-old husband and I designed a website for a volunteer organization.

Shame indeed.

Finally, designer nail polish. Last week, Kate Betts explained to me how colors are back on ladies’ fingernails this year. Jake Raderick of St. Paul, Minn., objects.

Jake Raderick: Kai did not mention the use of nail polish by men, which is becoming a trend, and there are companies now that even produce more masculine or earthy colors for men.

Some of those colors, by the way? Bull Fighter, Coal Miner and Blue Steel.

You can send us your thoughts — or your color suggestions.

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