Letters to the Editor
kevred
Published Letters: 96 Editor's Choice: 8
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There's nothing wrong with feeling concern for animals
[Read the article: Where's the girl horse?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Some of the gentle souls in comments above seem almost apologetic or conflicted about feeling strong emotional reaction to animal suffering, while not feeling the same type of emotional reaction to human victims of, say, hurricanes.
It's okay, there's nothing wrong with this. It's not that you don't care about adult humans, but what you're reacting to is probably what you mention: the innocence and lack of overall comprehension of animals.
We've put animals under our control, and along with that comes responsibility, but a lot of people don't seem to want to deal with the latter. They prefer to sit on the sidelines and spout idiotic nonsense like, "why don't you care about people for a change, huh?"
Because people are us, and we project the same degree of understanding and accountability onto other adult humans that we do ourselves.
It's human nature. To me, children possess that same innocent quality that animals do, and I feel a much more emotional reaction to stories of child or animal abuse than any adult traumas. If you were going into a burning house, who would you try to rescue first: the healthy, capable, mobile adult man and women, or the children and the animals? The former are already capable of helping themselves. The latter two are those we're here to protect and care for. We owe it to them.
So ignore all those people who seem incapable of understanding an emotional connection to the animal world (and the natural world in general). They're the ones with the problem, not you.
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My thought: Use replay if it's a technical error
[Read the article: NBA refs: One Mississippi, two Mississippi ... ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The solution to this particular case seems pretty straightforward to me. If there is a technical or administrative error on a play--such as an erroneous clock stoppage (or a clock left running when it shouldn't), or a procedural mistake by an official (losing track of something, mistaking one player for another, that type of thing--not just a blown call, say, judging a foul incorrectly) - then use replay or whatever else is available to remedy it.
In other words: the game's officials and technical overseers should use whatever technology is available to remedy their own errors, and they can decide when that's the case. King's point is well-made--when all the officials know something went wrong, it's silly to not be able to fix it.
So that's the first part, and it seems easy enough--if there was a technical glitch with a clock, and the clock is what teams base their actions around, then the replay should nullify the play. I'm not as sure about what to do next. It seems fair to redo the play, resetting all clocks to where they were when the Pistons inbounded the ball. Because if the Pistons' offense can be nullified by the replay, then so can the Magic's defense on the play, and it's only fair to start from scratch, with both teams having the same perception about remaining time.
It's hard to say whether this affected the outcome of the game, but watching it, there was a surge of emotion going the Magic's way up to that moment, and Billups' basket really sucked the air out of it. The Magic had plenty of time to win afterward, but is it fair for a purely technical glitch to add points to one team's score? Things like momentum and rhythm and emotion are hard to quantify, but quantifiable things like points can and should be tracked and not left up to silly rules.
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That Celtics-Cavs was truly a hideous game
[Read the article: NBA coach caught coaching]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's the best adjective for it. I can't think of when I've seen such an heroic, herculean effort on the part of two teams to not win a game. I mean, momentum is a powerful force--it takes a lot of work for a team to overcome its own momentum so repeatedly, but both teams managed to. With all that training and practice, turning the ball over--be it through dropping it, lobbing it wildly out of bounds, or otherwise--on about 32 straight possessions as the Celtics did late in the game is a real feat.
I had to chuckle at the comparisons of shot-making percentages that would occasionally flash on the screen, looking at the comparatively high number for the Celts and thinking, "of course it's high, the Celtics haven't even taken a shot in four minutes!"
Of course such humor is cheap--playing pro ball is beyond anything I could do--but it really was pretty amazing to watch these two teams consistently get even the fundamentals wrong. Passing to no one, losing track of the ball while dribbling, loads of horrible shots, and every possible variation on turnovers. Made for an exciting game, in the sense of, "is one of these teams actually going to win?"
But also, as I thought more about it, a rare reminder that this game, like all of them, is played by humans. Sometimes, everyone's just off. In that sense, it was pretty fascinating.