Back to School A student at Martin Luther King Elementary School, which was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina. It has since reopened as a thriving charter school.

Mattathias Schwartz’s article about Internet trolls (Aug. 3) was quite the eye-opener. The Internet has given an opportunity to legions bent on using it to scam and swindle, but this is the first I’ve learned of an online community whose primary mission is to dispense negativity and pain.

In her fine, whimsical investigation into the narcissism of traffic mergers (Aug. 3), Cynthia Gorney omitted a crucial aspect of the sidezoomer psychology: anonymity. Ask sidezoomers if they would crash a supermarket line of loaded carts or barge in front of 50 patrons waiting to buy tickets, and they vigorously deny ever contemplating such violations. Put them faceless and nameless inside an automobile, however. . . .

In her “On Language” column (Aug. 3), Caroline Winter imagines that our “individualistic, workaholic culture would be more rooted in community and quality and less focused on money and success” if we left the self-aggrandizing “I” in lowercase and started capitalizing the deferential “you” instead. An appealing fantasy, but our culture has, in fact, already tried that graphical gimmick. The result: the iPod and YouTube — hardly the end of consumerism and narcissism.

THE MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS: “Men march from west to east, killing their fellow creatures, and this event is accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, the baseness of England, and so on{hellip}Is there any sort of combined action which could not find justification in political unity, or in patriotism, or in the balance of power, or in civilization.” Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”

Brigitte Gabriel

A sub subprime glossary for the mortgage scandal.