Letters to the Editor
shannonr
Published Letters: 286 Editor's Choice: 80
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Australia - Italy
[Read the article: Showdown in Berlin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're so, so right in your descriptions Andrew, and you're also so, so wrong in your conclusion.
Italy had higher quality chances that night -- but it's not called "chance ball". Which is the better team: one that converts a half-chance; or one that shanks a golden gift of a chance?
Australia played harder and smarter that night -- but it's not called "smart ball". The Australian plan was to bring on two attacking forward-midfielders when the game went to extra time. Great plan, but we all know how it turned out!
It wasn't a foul -- every angle except the one the referee had (and clearly the one you watched) shows that -- but it's also not called "referee ball".
It's called football. It's none of the things above, and all of them.
And while we're on the topic of what it's not called, it's also not called the "beautiful game" -- Nike advertisements notwithstanding.
It's called football, and it's not about winning or losing, which is why Americans will never understand it, it's about the story.
The story of past referee blunders that denied your team. The story of the moment when all the passes connected and the opposition looked like they were standing still. The story you tell of being in the stands when someone started singing and pretty soon the whole place was alive with song.
Italy can celebrate their stolen victory with clean consciences, and all the advances after that, which were likewise stolen, because just four short years ago an equally crucial game was stolen from them.
So it's not theft, you see, it's justice. And so the story goes. Australians will use this event to likewise assuage the guilt in future, when their team inevitably goes through on a gift.
This, you said, "was almost secondary".
Is this you (typically, for an American) trying to graft a Hollywood inevitability -- I believe you Americans call it "closure" -- onto the now historical stolen Italian victory?
Nothing was inevitable about it at all. It was just another cliff-hanger chapter in the football story.
It's florid, it's a soap-opera, it's full of fairy-tale fancies, and legendary themes, pantomime villains and knights in shining armour. In short, it's football.
It's like that because of results like Italy-Australia, not in spite of them! This isn't secondary at all! This is the game itself.
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Lightning striking twice
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]On the subject of airline crashes, I've always liked the lightning analogy.
Imagine you've got two groups of friends with which you regularly play golf.
One Sunday, in a golf game you're not involved with, one of the groups is struck by lightning out of the clear blue sky on the golf course. There are injuries, but no fatal ones. They were "lucky". A month later they call you to take part in a game.
Do you go? Do you even hesitate? Do you call the other group and see what they're doing?
It's another clear day, but, you know, that group's been struck by lightning once already, so that means golfing with the other group will be safer, right?
I'm sure you get the analogy, but I'll spell it out:
Big jets crash very infrequently, and when they do it's almost always some freak confluence of chances (as Patrick has pointed out many times).
So a plane crashes. Does that mean, like making excuses to your golfing friends, that you don't fly the airline?
)
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What, no GPS?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey Patrick, what's the deal with no GPS co-ords for the boneyard in your story?! We've all got access to great sat photos these days.
Took me a while on Google Earth, but I eventually came up with:
35.06N, 118.15W
Which is an airport labelled "Mojave" -- and seems to be the right place from the number of 'plane parts scattered about (and the number of parked jetliners!)
That the one?
Unfortunately, unless you're _really_ gun, you can't quite tell the liveries from a position almost directly above!
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Sorry, no free ride for TSA on this
[Read the article: Is airport security futile?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A respondant wrote: It comes as no surprise that TSA staff don't know the difference between SIDAs, sterile areas and secure areas because it is not their job to maintain the integrity of such.
On the contrary, it comes as a huge, and hugely unwelcome, surprise.
What you've said is the equivalent of saying: "It comes as no surpise that Treasury officials didn't know the difference between margin loans and mortgages, because it's not their job to sell them."
Or better yet: "It comes as no surprise that Defence officials didn't know the difference between a smart bomb and a freefall bomb, becuse it's not their job to drop them."
That the people ultimately in charge of security don't know even the most basic security terms that anyone of medium intelligence could take a pretty good stab at defining from first principles is absolutely terrifying.
And, furthermore, it goes a long way towards explaining the wasteful craziness we're now all party to at every airport in the US.
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Don't paint me with that brush!
[Read the article: I really like gay men, but I'm not gay]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW: They've been interesting to talk to, funny, noncompetitive and just generally good company. Part of me thinks these are the people I should be around.
That describes all of my closest male friends (say 20-30 guys).
None but three of them are gay. But, of course, we're geeks to a man.
We prefer films to football, baristas to bars, and believe a conversation isn't compelte unless it's covered death, religion, and politics.
Perhaps you should just not hang around jocks?