The 10.13.13 Issue - NYTimes.com If there's one lesson that comes from Twitter's messy origins and chaotic upbringing, it is that you can do as much damage to an idea by trying to force it into a specific mold as you can by letting it breathe and evolve on its own. It may have been an accident that Twitter was so open and free of constraints in the beginning, but without all of that chaos and confusion, I'm not sure Twitter would exist at all. MATTHEW INGRAM, posted on Gigaom.com When I first learned about Twitter in 2006, I turned to my cubicle mate and said, "I need to tell you about the dumbest idea I've ever heard." I felt a little bad, then, and so I went to Twitter.com, created an account and poked around for a bit. No, I decided, this is definitely the dumbest idea I've ever seen. I blew off Twitter in part because I had just spent a year managing an online community, and I had grown to hate it. People online are cranky, needy and boring. Yet every year or so, a younger colleague comes around to explain with patient condescension that I could expand my reach if I spent more time on Twitter. BRENDAN GREELEY, posted on businessweek.com While I applaud the attempt to make Bush look more thoughtful than he ever appeared to be, this article completely avoids the fact that, at the time that he was so preoccupied with Scooter Libby, the country and the world were spiraling into a recession that looked very much like it may be the next Great Depression. His obsession with how Cheney was going to be upset with him may make him look more human absent the facts, but placed in context, it is actually yet another example of his ridiculous inability to grasp the scale of the problems our country was facing. MEGAN WILSON, Los Angeles, posted on nytimes.com This article reads like an insider channeling the self-serving accounts of insiders. It's not really surprising that it became clear to Bush that Cheney had his own agenda. He wasn't helping Bush make decisions but manipulating him to make the decision Cheney wanted. That is the difference between a "puppeteer" and an "adviser." ROSS WILLIAMS, Grand Rapids, Minn., posted on nytimes.com Bush drew from his moral convictions and finally pushed back against Cheney's influence, which most likely began to suffocate him. Ironically, the confident, more ethically aware and mature Bush would probably make a far better president now than he ever was, and this is reflected in the opinion polls. JEFF BRENNER, New York, posted on nytimes.com Peter Baker quotes Cheney saying to Bush, in reference to Scooter Libby: "You are leaving a good man wounded on the field of battle." I can't think of a less appropriate analogy. JONATHAN P. MICHAUD, Somerville, Mass., posted on nytimes.com The popularity of "Jackass" (and I am a big fan) is the sign of mental and emotional health of Americans, not the lack thereof. I won't let tastemakers and their pretentious prattling about portrayed crassness get in my way of enjoying a carefully curated set of dangerous and dumb pranks. Taking a dump in a showroom for commodes takes guts. KALIDAN, Rochester, posted on nytimes.com In her Oct. 6 article, Eileen Pollack discussed extensively the experience of women in physics at Yale, noting that Meg Urry and Bonnie Fleming were the first and second women to gain tenure in the physics department, after their respective appointments in 2001 and 2009. Actually, the situation for women physicists at Yale is somewhat better than Pollack indicated, since two other women, Karin Rabe (now at Rutgers) and Hui Cao have held the rank of tenured professor of applied physics and physics, with Rabe receiving tenure in applied physics in 1995 and Cao in 2007. ALFRED DOUGLAS STONE, Carl A. Morse Professor and Chair, Applied Physics, Yale University