ODYSSEY OF A MAD GENIUS

Your story on Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski [SPECIAL REPORT, April 15] prompts a comparison with the American writer Henry David Thoreau. Both men built cabins in remote areas. Both railed against industrialism, distrusted the government, withdrew from society and rejected progress, materialism, invention and the machine. But Thoreau, while certainly a radical, was also somewhat of a visionary. He communed intensely with nature. The Unabomber suspect, however, like Karl Marx and others who used violence to gain their ends, killed, maimed and fostered civil disorder. Thoreau was a man of learning who gave sage instruction. The Unabomber is a man of cunning who wreaks violent destruction. One seeks to define the meaning of life; the other violates it. LEE G. MESTRES Yardley, Pennsylvania

It sickens me to learn that the Unabomber was so envious of the publicity the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City got that he sent yet another of his bombs to get the media coverage he apparently craved. I cannot begin to understand this mentality. We need to do something to stop this type of behavior. MARCIE SZCZUBELEK Mount Pleasant, Michigan Via E-mail

Folks like Kaczynski give education and brains a bad name. JOANNE HILLER St. Augustine, Florida

With the Unabomber, we have science employed to derail its own use and technology invoked to crumble technological advances. While the desire for a simpler and more pristine life crosses through all of us, the Unabomber sought changes that would best have been accomplished using means like the 1960s demonstrations and protests. Popular opinion can be swayed by example, and acceptance of views can be peacefully promoted by a smart leader. Some of the Unabomber's ideas have merit. Let's educate the people we wish to influence, not kill or maim them. DONALD C. RIFAS Sacramento, California

Now that the Unabomber suspect is in custody, we will hear about his life and his beliefs, and some of us will even download his manifesto. We will learn that, like us, he believes in the power of the individual, just as our transcendentalist fathers taught us. We will learn that, like many of us, he questions whether our society is truly "civilized." And we will learn that he wonders, as do many of us in these overwhelming days, whether technology is really more damaging than useful to the individual. The accused Unabomber is a bad person who happens to be highly intelligent. Let us emphasize the bad, please, for the killer may already be a step ahead. JOSEPH GAZZOLA New York City

Why is the accused Unabomber on the cover of TIME and not the brother, David, who solved the 18-year mystery, agonized over turning in his brother to the authorities, and whose life will never be the same? RENEE B. LONNER Sherman Oaks, California

Kaczynski is alleged to have had a bizarre pastime in high school of assembling bombs in plain view. He supposedly had no social relationships. There is a similarity to accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who gathered bomb materials after serving in the armed forces, and the predatory, murderous pedophile Jeffrey Dahmer, who had a bizarre hobby and no friends in high school. In these three people there is an apparent pattern, a predictor of extreme violence in the future: a preoccupation with murder. But the brainwashing we all receive about violence from both the gun lobby and the media has numbed us to such ominous signs. They do not seem threatening in a society enamored of guns and violent death. DAVID H. HERMAN, Psychologist Elkins Park, Pennsylvania

Walter Kirn's musings on life in his state, "Out Here in Montana," remind me that there is a lot of irony out here in the West. City folks move to the Big Sky country, buy a large house with newly acquired equity wealth, plant a garden--and then lobby city hall because wild horses are eating their imported sod and golf greens. There's lots of space here, all right, and most of it is not friendly to the kind of human habitation urban dwellers are accustomed to. If you don't respect the environment out here, it will simply kill you. I like that. PATRICIA COOPER-SMITH Reno, Nevada

I was raised in Eastern Montana in the '50s and '60s, and over the past 20 years I have more than once resisted the urge to express the frustration, sorrow and, in some cases, contempt I have felt on observing, if only from afar, the very rich, the very clever, the very eccentric and the very stupid descend upon the state in increasing numbers. It makes me think of how the Indians might have felt when my ancestors arrived in the West in increasing numbers.

Living in Montana and being a Montanan are two different things. Most of the people I know from Montana are not very rich or particularly clever; they are individualistic, yes, but not eccentric and not stupid. These past 20 years have most assuredly seen a change in Montana and one that I fear is not all for the better. I saw enough suffering there when I was growing up, caused in part by the economics of such a harsh country. But suffering and poverty can also be virtues, and the land itself has, through generations of hardships, helped create a people of extraordinary values. It is these people I think of when I think of Montana, not those mentioned in Kirn's article. PETER KNUDSVIG Hof, Germany

THE VIEW FROM ELSEWHERE

It is not correct to depict Unabomber suspect Kaczynski [SPECIAL REPORT, April 15] as a "mad genius." The term genius is usually applied to people who have shown great creativity in fields such as art or science. Einstein, Beethoven and Shakespeare are notable examples. Kaczynski is alleged to be the elusive serial killer. Although he may be brilliant in math, what is so genius-like about sending bombs and being elusive? The Montana recluse does not belong in the same class with those who have brought beautiful music, literature and such to our world. Mad? Certainly. Genius? Look somewhere else. ARIEL EDERY Montreal Via E-mail

TIME's habit of putting photos of pathetic killers on its cover is becoming troublesome: Timothy McVeigh a year ago and now Theodore Kaczynski. MARC ARTZROUNI Pau, France Via E-mail

I found the cover on the Unabomber suspect very interesting. What I found even more interesting is that press coverage from magazines like TIME is contributing to prejudging in cases like this. We should be happy about having one less threat in our world. It is one that is full of hazards from technologies, natural sciences, wars and weirdos. But it is dangerous to believe we live in a safer world now. The Unabomber had a point. SONYA KRAUS Brussels

THOSE PESKY MACHINES

Consciousness and a mind are manifested not only in humans but in all other mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, fish and other species [TECHNOLOGY, March 25]. And in the live animal, the function of a complex nervous system goes beyond simple reflex actions; this system is capable of sustaining sensation and memory. By contrast, the computer, with all its extremely complicated circuitry and programming, cannot perform beyond the level of a simple system, capable only of sometimes carrying out extremely complicated reflex actions. The computer has a memory but no sensation, and it cannot manifest consciousness, even though consciousness is just neurons functioning on a grand scale. Still, chips cannot come up to that. JOHN S. HADJIMINAS Athens

Had the computer been developed by any hand other than man's, the debate about computer intelligence would be, well, intelligent. But until two computers spawn a baby one without human intervention, their future development continues to depend on mankind's survival. And if survival rests on adaptability, I would put my money on the ant before the computer or even Homo sapiens. Is it possible that chess champion Garry Kasparov overlooked the simple fact that he needed only to switch off the power to confound an uppity, chess-playing Deep Blue computer? COLIN CAMPION Buhrmannsdrif, South Africa

If we succeed in the quest to produce an intelligent machine, the first and most urgent task for the device will be to stop us from destroying the biosphere. Obsessions with the bottom line endanger us all. To misquote Shakespeare, "To have or to be? That is the question." Would the intelligent machine give a rational answer to this crucial question? BRIAN BURFORD Hatch End, England

Thinking about whether machines can think worries me. When I look around my home, I see all kinds of switches: light switches, radio and TV on-off switches and the like. I find myself surrounded by machines of a sort. And if they can have learning experiences, they have probably learned a lot about me! By virtue of having been flicked on and off for a number of years, my switches now know what my favorite radio and TV programs are and whether I like my toast dark or light. Perhaps one day they will unite and try to control my life. PAUL G. WALKOWSKI Villars-sur-Glane, Switzerland

ASPECTS OF JESUS' LIFE

Who has given the self-appointed Jesus Seminar experts the authority to quantify what is and is not true in the Bible? I found your report deeply disturbing [RELIGION, April 8] and an affront to those of the Christian faith. Were the seminar members witnesses to events, as the Apostles were? Their notions are very presumptive and smack of historical revisionism. Such perversions should not be in the pages of TIME. ROGER C. BRATHWAITE St. George's, Grenada

The essence of Christian belief is based on what is in the Bible, not on what is not in the Bible. Therefore, what isn't there about Christ's life is irrelevant. The New Testament Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, are the most analyzed documents in history, and their authenticity has long been proved from an archaeological, historical and theological perspective. The Jesus Seminar discussions may create interesting, self-indulgent intellectual debate for its handpicked participants, but so what? ROBERT E. WILLIAMSON Vernon, British Columbia

How can men who appoint themselves to hold these seminars decide what is fact and what is fiction? Their decisions are based mainly on what seems right to them. By saying the Gospels are unreliable, the Jesus Seminar members show they are confused. Whether Jesus is God or whether he is not God is irrelevant. The "character" Jesus is detailed in the Bible. Even the Old Testament books foreshadow him. Would not the Bible then be the best evidence of him? To scratch out almost all the Gospels and accept only a fraction of them as possibly true is quite puzzling. BRIAN JANZEN Yarrow, British Columbia

The discussions carried on by the Jesus Seminar are reminiscent of theologian St. Thomas Aquinas' musings about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The seminar members are using the so-called scientific-historical approach, but their findings are just as irrelevant to the true spirit and character of Christianity as were those of their predecessors.

The academics, while concentrating on certain aspects of Jesus' life and ignoring others, are being as subjective as the rest of us. In the process of searching for historical accuracy, they are overlooking the most fundamental aspects of Christianity: the beliefs that we are all created by the same Creator, that the life-and-death cycle is an ongoing one and does not cease when one individual passes away, that good is desirable and must be encouraged and practiced and that evil is undesirable and should be contained and shunned.

Interpretations of Christianity have varied from age to age, but as societies evolved and became more humane, so did their interpretation of religion. We must not lose sight of the spiritual message of all religions, which is aimed at making us better human beings who are more tolerant of one another's differences. We can argue about minute details and claim that our religion is better than someone else's; we can also set out to discredit completely the beliefs of more than a third of the planet's religious population. These attempts are not only contrary to the spirit of religion but also contrary to basic common sense and human decency. HOUDA M. HAYANI Unionville, Ontario

You increasingly reveal your anti-Christian stance through the repeated and extensive coverage you give to the Jesus Seminar. Mankind sits under the judgment of God's Word--not the other way round. These self-proclaimed experts who pass judgment on his Word will surely be judged by it. What are Christians to believe? The Word of God. Certainly not the words of his enemies. JOHN BAXTER Swartbert, South Africa

Gee, aren't we regular folks lucky that the Jesus Seminar pundits have devised their own criteria for determining the reliability of the New Testament? Out of the blue, they assume that shorter, punchier passages are more likely to be accurate, and they prefer parables without explicit applications and impose other arbitrary criteria to the Scriptures. It is not difficult to discredit even the best-attested works of antiquity, given the unscholarly prerogative of choosing the cut according to one's own biases. Liberal theologians since the turn of the century (and before) have attempted to refute parts of the Bible that could not be explained rationally or by empirical observation. These postmodern yahoos, however, have gone way beyond that and have basically dismissed the entire book. Ignoring an enormous body of compelling and historically tested evidence to the contrary, these folks are fulfilling a misguided ethical obligation to jettison all that is essential to real Christianity. KARL NYQUIST Glasgow, Scotland Via E-mail

The viewpoints epitomized by the Jesus Seminar and the conservative Evangelicals are limited by the framework of the Western scientific paradigm. Both are impoverished by their thoroughly literal interpretations of the Bible. Most religious traditions rely on metaphors to enlighten and bring us closer to the source of life, which is generally regarded as unknowable and incomprehensible. Religion and humanity would be better served if academics and religious leaders could provide us with more compelling interpretations of the underlying meaning of Bible stories. LINDA KEYS Madrid

Do you really think anyone is searching for Jesus? If he were found, there would be hell to pay. Theologians would go out of business, and thousands of priceless works of art would have to be redone. I hope whoever finds the "real" Jesus first will be smart enough to forget about the discovery and let the rest of us continue believing in our own private and comfortably familiar version of the man. MICHAEL JANSSEN Melbourne, Australia

There is enough in the new testament to challenge morally each one of us. Servant leadership would not have been advocated by those lusting for power. It is often personally costly to act morally right. Science is no better than the integrity of the scientists; results can be manipulated for money. Favorable results can be emphasized and unfavorable ones omitted. That some scholars are rejecting the Resurrection is nothing new, even if their reasons seem to be. CHARLES LAMB Roscrea, Ireland

If the Jesus Seminar members do not believe Jesus was more than just a man, why do they go to all this trouble to discredit him? Why worry themselves about something they say is of little importance? Could it be that they want to make a name for themselves as being wise or they wish to be free of any responsibility to obey God? The quickest way is to pretend he doesn't exist. What they are saying is nothing new. Many hammers have beaten on the old anvil, but those hammers are gone; the anvil is still around. I am particularly concerned not that they will damage the anvil but that their listeners may naively mistake the hammerers' "foolishness" for wisdom and be deceived. MYRON LOSS Montevideo Via E-mail

SHOULD PHYSICIANS HELP YOU DIE?

After reading Charles Krauthammer's piece [VIEWPOINT, April 15] against allowing doctors to aid people in committing suicide, I was incensed at his cheap shot of inflammatory rhetoric when he derided the Dutch policy on euthanasia. He seems to want to instill fear in an aging American population. Not only did Krauthammer willfully overlook the profound differences in the Dutch and American health systems, he also seemed to misrepresent intentionally the facts of euthanasia in Holland, implying that involuntary euthanasia is a threat there.

Krauthammer's reactionary piece can only complicate the discussion of this very sensitive issue even more. His quotation of the Hippocratic oath was quite out of place: in Hippocrates' time, there were no life-prolonging devices that could reduce a dying person to little more than a houseplant. His quotation of the oath with respect to euthanasia should be compared to a doctor's admonition to use the time-honored method of bloodsucking by leeches to cure high blood pressure. JOHAN ROORYCK Leiden, the Netherlands Via E-mail

What a thoughtful and eloquent piece by Krauthammer. How easily technology is transmitted from generation to generation, and how difficult it is to pass on painfully acquired wisdom. It is said, "Where illegality reigns by law, the rule of reason must withdraw." The current drive for assisted suicide can only be explained by our unwillingness to learn or by our inability to understand the wisdom of the past. HART C. BEZNER Waterloo, Ontario Via E-mail

THE EUTHANASIA DECISION

Let us say for argument's sake that the abuse of a law allowing assisted suicide is a distinct possibility [MEDICINE, April 15]. Would it not be better to tailor the law with stringent conditions and guidelines rather than throw it out altogether? Many of the laws of this country are susceptible to abuse. Consider freedom of speech or the right to bear arms. Should we throw them out? The decision to die should be personal. Only the individual who is suffering can say when bearable pain has become unbearable. If that person wishes to be dead, why are we arguing? Whose life is it anyway? MARION TISCO Round Rock, Texas

Who wants medicine practiced the way it was 2,400 years ago? Ancient doctors didn't drag life into the depths of miserable old age. They had no means of doing so. ELIZABETH LANSING Sandford, North Carolina

We physicians kill off enough patients unintentionally without being allowed or asked to do it intentionally. HERBERT RATNER, M.D., Editor Child and Family Oak Park, Illinois

The right to die is a personal matter that rests with an individual. Technology has long been playing a godlike role in finding ways to extend our human life-span. It has wiped out many diseases that brought early mortality to generations past. Nothing is without a cost, and in this case payment is exacted in lives with more "quantity" but not necessarily better "quality." Reverence for life must find balance with human compassion to ensure the dignity that each of us should be allowed in dying. MELISSA QUADE Paw Paw, Michigan Via E-mail

What begins as an accepted practice sanctioned by law can easily turn into an obligation, as society comes to expect what it at first merely tolerated. The logical next step: the old and seriously ill will feel pressured to request euthanasia rather than burden their families with ever rising medical or nursing-home costs. Unscrupulous heirs could take advantage of a law legalizing euthanasia to accelerate their inheritance. How fitting if the generation that ushered in these changes became the first to succumb to them on a grand scale. Our fragile civilization is grounded on Judeo-Christian ethics, which uphold the sanctity of human life. These we now recklessly abandon at our peril. MARY FRANCES DOUCEDAME Thousand Oaks, California

CRITIQUE OF GOEBBELS BOOK

As a historian and writer, I am bitterly pained to see an entire page devoted to David Irving's biography of Joseph Goebbels and the cancellation of its publication by St. Martin's Press [BOOKS, April 15]. This is a shabby book, yet scores of good works by dedicated authors are going unreviewed. There is nothing Irving can tell us about the malevolent Dr. Goebbels that we are not already painfully aware of. Whitewashing Adolf Hitler has been Irving's thing for years. Rather than enlighten people, as befits a historian, Irving has caused almost irreparable harm by giving the extreme-rightist, renascent Nazi and anti-Semitic movements a splendid tool to bolster their hatreds. HARRY CONWAY Middlebury, Vermont

I am a Jew whose parents lost their families in the Holocaust. I grew up in Israel among Holocaust survivors. Since I was a child, I have read every book I could find on Nazi Germany. I have tried to understand why and how the Germans came to carry out their plan for exterminating the Jews. I have read all of Irving's excellent books. He is no "apologist for Adolf Hitler." His works record the extermination of the Jews and provide evidence of Hitler's direct involvement. Irving is not an anti-Semite, nor is he a supporter of Hitler or Nazi Germany. His books, more than any others I have read, help explain what happened in Germany. If we are to prevent future exterminations, we have to eradicate hate. The process must start with free speech and the ability to discuss openly all aspects of history and express all viewpoints. Irving through his writing has made a large contribution toward preventing future Holocausts. JOSEF HOSE Madison, Wisconsin

HOW SWEET IS IT?

Your report on the farm bill that left in place price supports for the sugar industry needs clarification [NATION, April 8]. The assertion that domestic sugar policy takes a "$1.4 billion yearly bite out of U.S. consumers' pockets" is a false conclusion based on a General Accounting Office report that was soundly criticized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It incorrectly assumes that every pound of the nation's sugar needs could be met with purchases on the thinly traded and highly volatile world market. In reality, the market is made up of highly subsidized sugar that has been dumped on the market for whatever price it will bring, usually well below the cost of a country's production.

The report goes on to assume incorrectly that gigantic purchases could be made by the U.S., one of the world's largest consumers of sweeteners, without the price of sugar in the volatile market going up even a penny. Recent history has twice shown us that the prices skyrocket when there is even an expectation of large U.S. purchases. LUTHER MARKWART, Chairman American Sugar Alliance Washington