Letters to the Editor
Mister Marker
Published Letters: 279 Editor's Choice: 8
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You Didn't See Them, huh?
[Read the article: How photos support your own "reality"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, Farhad, get a better pair of glasses.
I consider the whole "9/11 Truth" movement to be full of bunk. So I looked at the photos and footage with no preconceived notions. And I saw the flash every time and from every different angle. At some angles the flash was a bit more difficult to see, but it was there.
My theory? Considering the plane was traveling at nearly 500 miles-per-hour, I think there was some kind of brief oxygen burn from what must have been the almost unbelievable air compression between the nose of the plane and the glass and steel surface of the tower in those final seconds.
But then I'm no scientist either, so what the hell.
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@Biff Pocoroba
[Read the article: How photos support your own "reality"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Congratulations! You win the Booby Prize for First Idiot to Imply That Anyone Who Questions Official Dogma Is Just a Loser Who Can't Get Laid.
Talk about "testicular logic." Go soak your head.
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"Thanks, Arthur" Indeed
[Read the article: The last rendezvous with Arthur C. Clarke]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We largely have Clarke to thank for "2001: A Space Odyssey." It was he who introduced Kubrick to his design and engineering friends at NASA, and who convinced NASA that Kubrick's plans for Clarke's short story "The Sentinel" would be the perfect advertisement for the moon shot.
But I best remember Clarke as the author of a short story entitled "The Star." It is utterly brilliant, his best work really, and has consistently made it into the annual "Norton Anthology of Short Fiction." It is also the most extraordinary rendering of the conflict within people's hearts between science and religion that I have ever read, and I think that anyone is ever likely to read. Here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_%28short_story%29
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I'm Amazed Nobody Has Pointed Out That This Did In Fact Happen...
[Read the article: Guerrillas rise up in Nazi-occupied Britain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...on the Shetland Islands off the far north coast of England. The Shetland Islands were the only British home territory the Germans ever got hold of, but when Operation Sealion was abandoned so was the company of German soldiers occupying the islands. The occupation occurred at the very beginning of the war, so by the end of it all of the German soldiers had integrated with the locals, with whom they peacefully coexisted.
Not so counterfactual a book after all.
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Talk About Flushing Money Down the Toilet!!
[Read the article: The cat whisperer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not to mention time.
I suppose with Thompson you had no choice. But in the future, to create a nice, lovable, people-oriented cat, do the following:
1. Adopt them when their about a week old
2. Bottle feed them and "groom" them by dipping your finger in lukewarm water and gently rubbing kitty's fur.
3. Make a habit, for a time, of carrying the kitty by the scruff of its neck, just like its mother would.
4. LOTS of affection.
5. LOTS of play, but not too rough.
6. Cat box train them.
7. At two weeks introduce hunt/chew toys. The point is for the cat to learn that THAT is what they can bite, not YOU.
8. Gradually ease up all the playing and petting near the end of their second month.
9. Allow the cat to roam more and more widely around your house/apartment. If it's going to be an outdoor cat, start letting go outside.
10. If you're not in the mood to play, ignore them. They'll entertain themselves.
When you do this you are bonding with them as they're mother, and since you will smell like/resemble other humans, the cat will respond positively to ALL people (except cruel ones, obviously). Just let people know to let your cat smell them before petting.
Now you've got an awesome cat, every time. And no need for a "cat whisperer." Such people should be reserved for older cats like Thompson who haven't been properly raised.
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Up the Revolution? Up YOUR'S!
[Read the article: YouTube Awards: "Chocolate Rain," and a happy kid]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For once I agree with Farhad. With one exception - someone I know personally - every individual at YouTube HQ who voted on these winners has their head straight up their ass. Just go and look at the runners up. It'll literally blow your mind.
And I say this as a dedicated YouTuber. That site, and the majority of those who run it, are seriously fucked. There's recently been a mini-scandal over their "Sketchies" contest, where it turned out there were only a handful of judges lording it over the whole contest in direct contradiction to claims that there would be many.
And then there's the hater phenomenon (click my name to see what I'm talking about).
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Briana Waters Innocence Or Guilt...
[Read the article: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...does not change the fact that law enforcement in this country is completely out of control. From street cops to prison guards, from prosecutors to judges, the whole system is rotting. It has become a playground for morally and materially corrupt miscreants who themselves, in too many cases, belong behind bars.
But this is an older story than you might think. William Kunstler said a year a two before his death in '95 that he was gravely concerned about justice in America. "Prosecutors have become arrogant and corrupt," he said. "It's a serious problem, and I know for a fact it's going to get much worse." Both the Philadelphia Enquirer and the Chicago Tribune featured massive, multi-part, front-page series investigating prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in the 90s, not only in their respective regions but in the country as a whole. What their journalists discovered Should raise the hair on the back of any decent person's head, and those reports were published more than a decade ago. Since then almost nothing has been done, so the problem is vastly worse.
A few years back Salon published an essay by a man who taught creative writing to a class of prison inmates in Illinois. When the program was threatened by budget cuts, he told his class he'd fight for them. They warned him not to, matter-of-factly telling him that a couple of kilos of cocaine would suddenly appear in his bedroom closet and he'd end up right alongside them in prison. That is chilling, to put it mildly.
The Augean Stables of law enforcement need to be cleaned, and the sooner the better. If you doubt me, just go to YouTube and run a search on "police abuse." And prepare to be horrified.