Letters to the Editor
Lynx
Published Letters: 1589 Editor's Choice: 126
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(Ma)Tilda
[Read the article: Science fiction wins a Nobel ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@~~~~
Why do they think the Future Always Sucks
They don't, but utopian fiction is pretty boring. Ever read What is to be Done by Chernychevsky? Bo-Ring! Everything is wonderful and happy. Bleh.
You need conflict for a good story. Much SF focuses on flaws in human society. For a great future that looks to external forces for conflict you have Star Trek. You also have the Caves of Steel series by Asimov for a future that is pretty damn good, but with some flaws.
And there's plenty of other SF that sees a good future for humanity, you just have to read. Try Old Man's War by John Scalzi for starters.
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Heffalump
[Read the article: An open letter to Karen Hughes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What happened to the Abu Ghraib perpetrators? We punished them. What happened at Haditha? We investigated
Not exactly. It was exposed, thanks to Salon and a few others, no thanks to the mainstream press, the supposed "free press" you laud.
We punished them? Not really, we threw a few scapegoats under the bus. In fact there are some lawsuits going on right now stating exactly that. They were acting on orders from high up and no high level person has been charged.
The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration decided that the Geneva Convention was "quaint" and no-longer applied. Torture is fine, killing is fine, secret rendition is fine, imprisoning people forever in secret is fine. No, that's not blowing one's-self up by the side of the road, but it is still far lower than the standards we're supposed to be living by.
Personally, I feel terrible for the troops put in this position. Told by their commanders to do specific things and then when it comes to the light of day the commanders disavow knowledge. These aren't James Bond Secret Ops stuff, these are normal soldiers being sacrificed to cover up the misdeeds of the powerful.
Republicans don't support the troops, they just use them. If they supported them, they'd do what liberals want them to do: fund veteran care, give them the pay they deserve, give them the equipment they need, give them the rotation time-off they need, etc... Most of all, they wouldn't have sent them into a trumped-up war in the first place. They'd currently be serving in Afghanistan (though with Liberals in power, the cause for that invasion likely wouldn't have happened either) and Afghanistan would be more secure and on the road to peace and stability today. Heck, we'd even likely have the military flexibility left to do something about Burma/Myanmar. Not invade, but at least seem like we could if we wanted to.
If you want the ones that are acting like terrorists on our side, look at Blackwater. Shoot First, never ask questions and if you're caught you just go home with your money, a pat on the back and no prosecution.
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Stolen Tech
[Read the article: America's dirty rotten scoundrel enemies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When we saw that, we mobilized all our industrial and human resources and we outpaced the Soviet space program with our brains and determination.
Yes, our German scientists worked harder than their German scientists. We didn't just steal the technology, we stole the scientists themselves!
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Oscar
[Read the article: Science fiction wins a Nobel ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think you've read much Asimov. His I Robot short stories or his Caves of Steel series were quite fine prose. Beyond that, he wrote countless science books and history books, including The Bible as Literature and Understanding Physics that were wonderfully written works of understanding and exploration.
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Tilda
[Read the article: Science fiction wins a Nobel ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If that's what you're taking away from "most" SF, then either you're reading a very limited selection or I feel pretty sorry for you. SF is about hope and possiblities more than anything else. Sometimes it is set against bleak backgrounds, but if all you're getting out of a book is the background you're not getting much at all.
Try Niven's Ringworld series or pretty much anything written by Hal Clement or Frederic Brown or Robert Forward. You can try Jack Chalker or Vernor Vinge. Better still read the best of them all, Theodore Sturgeon. They've been republishing all of his work in a single series recently.
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What was that?
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I look forward to your one mention of the NFL all week and this is what I get? A lame joke that makes you go "ha" for a second and then is just annoying? Great. I frequently read your column even when you're nattering on about baseball though I don't care about baseball because you manage to find something interesting. And I think to myself, at least he's going to say something interesting about the NFL games on Friday.
I figured you have the 2 sentence rule because you don't have a hell of a lot to say when you're not paying that much attention to the NFL, but baseball had a ton of time off this week and this is the best you can come up with?
Here's something you might not have known, King; you're not being published in a physical newspaper here. This is the internet, there are no physical limitations to how long your column can be. If you want to say more about the Cowboys/Patriots game, go ahead and do it. You don't run out of space to say things about the other games. Or how about this, just post your picks and write a paragraph at the end about the Criminals/Cheaters game. The way you did it makes it seem like you just don't give a shit. Do you do that to cycling? No, you just ignore it and that's how it should be.
Congratulations on writing a column that actually annoyed me.