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Failure IS an option -- even for the bright and beautiful. But more than one of them has come back to me later, apologized and sheepishly admitted they were wrong. Tough love can work and most of these students did shape up and move on. For them, failure ultimately ensured success.

We must be willing to fail a student if they refuse to develop their soft skills. Daily we must require our young to speak with respect. We must accept only their best -- and teach them how to reach it. If we don't, if we accept less, we ensure their failure in the "real world."

(Annette Dammer is a GlaxoSmithKline faculty fellow at the Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State University. She is also a developmental English and reading instructor at Fayetteville Technical Community College.)

Today's comfort is yesterday's luxury

In a "Talk Back" letter ("Spoiled by inflation? Pay stubs from the '70s tell the tale," Work&Money, May 4), Robert Harris laments that it is much harder to maintain a comfortable, but not luxurious, standard of living. He says it was easy for his parents to do so on one salary, but today it is difficult for two working parents to do so. He blames this on a high rate of inflation, but I have other thoughts.

Here is a list of things that a household today would have if they were living comfortably, but not luxuriously: Computer with Internet connection, cell phones, microwave oven, DVD player, video game system, two or three TVs (maybe even HDTVs) with cable or satellite connections, and a few iPods. None of these things would have been in a comfortable household 30 or 40 years ago. We also have safer and more fuel-efficient cars, a wider variety of products in the grocery store, and the tendency to fly to vacation destinations rather than drive. The standard of living is much higher now than it was then. Anyone who chooses could go back to those days without these items, but who would? Although increased productivity helps pay for these items, it makes sense that to have them all, you would have to pay a little more.

A note on the claim of greater than 50 percent inflation rate in that letter, too: That $4.50 meal would cost more than $259 just 10 years later if the annual inflation rate were 50 percent. Robert's own assertion that this meal costs just over $40 now disproves his inflation rate claim.

Tom Karnatz

Raleigh

Headline is off base: 900 nuclear jobs are just projection

Why the double-standard with the headline in [the May 1] paper "Nuclear revival bringing 900 jobs" (Business, May 1)?

Upon reading the article, it becomes clear that this is more of a projection than a certainty, especially with the overall uncertainty of the nuclear revival, which the article alluded to.

It was a good article, but the headline created a false impression.

The headline should have read "Nuclear corporation could possibly create 900 jobs."

Mark Marcoplos

Chapel Hill

Nuclear story is just lipstick on a pig

Your Business section headlined a "Nuclear revival" is a total mischaracterization of the current situation. It's not until an inside page, below the fold, that a single paragraph gives even a partial recitation of nuclear's problems.

1) The economics don't add up. Venture capitalists and Wall Street want nothing to do with nukes, the principal reason none have been built in many years. No nuke has ever been built on time or without huge cost overruns. Moreover, at a budgeted $10 billion to $18 billion apiece, the country can't afford the number of plants necessary to start reducing the country's carbon footprint. Japan and France, with sizable nuclear programs, must subsidize their nuclear industry for it to continue.

2) The construction of these plants takes an extraordinarily long time, in one case about 20 years. Before any possible environmental impact could occur, it would take decades just to construct a significant number of plants.

3) The massive costs of debt repayment ("stranded costs") require higher and higher rates consumers must pay. In addition, the costs of decommissioning plants and storage of high-level radioactive waste are never included in the budget for these plants.

4) The safety of current plants remains dubious.

5) We live in a world where terrorists, commandeering a large commercial jet, could smash it into the holding pool of hot radioactive waste, causing many deaths and incalculable losses. Large areas around Chernobyl will remain uninhabitable for many, many years, a nightmare we don't need.

The so-called Clean and Safe Energy Coalition is nothing more than an industry cheerleader for nukes, and "Nuclear Revival" and "Nuclear Renaissance" are nothing more than propaganda slogans, putting some pretty lipstick on a truly ugly pig.

M. David Preston

Hillsborough

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