Letters to the Editor
hnutsworth
Published Letters: 49 Editor's Choice: 9
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Caution! Art!
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I looked at the picture of the sculpture and I'm not sure I "get it." King's interpretation of the "Unknown Unhappy Family" seems to be right on, but what is the rationale for a statue like that? It's Norman Rockwell meets any of the dozens of bad, cookie-cutter family sitcoms. All they need is a crazy neighbor standing behind the boy offering money for the tickets, and a continuously looping laugh track.
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Cheating
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That sounds like an interesting book. I've been intrigued by the psychology of cheating ever since I noticed that my brother-in-law cheats at everything: cards, sports, board games. I used to think this was because he's a slimy Republican who will stop at nothing to win, but I think there's more to it than that. To him, cheating is simply part of the game. My job, as his opponent, is to catch him at it. If I can't catch him cheating, then he has "won" that game within the game.
But the definition of "cheating" is always shifting. There are some people who used to think that check-raising in poker was cheating. Others, like me, consider it an essential part of the game.
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Favorite Vonnegut Passage
[Read the article: Playing chess with Kurt Vonnegut]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's probably been 15 years since I read Vonnegut, but I had a phase in high school/college where I devoured all of his books. I loved his simple prose and how he explained human conventions like an anthropologist from another planet would. That influenced a lot of my thinking. He was also wonderfully irreverent. My favorite book was Breakfast of Champions, with the drawings (the original "asshole" pic) and the familiar, narcissistic idea (that we all secretly have sometimes) that you are the only real person on Earth. He had great whimsical ideas.
As a high school boy, my favorite Vonnegut passage was the entire chapter in Breakfast of Champions where he simply lists the penis sizes of all the male characters in the book.
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The "Real" Drama of Sports
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My sister-in-law objects to sports because she says they're not "real." You watch a game and get all excited or angry or thrilled, but it's an artificial feeling that has nothing to do with your life. To me, watching sports is just as real as seeing a movie, reading a novel, or hearing a concert.
In one sense, sports are even more real than these things, because in a sports contest the conclusion is undetermined. If I'm watching a blockbuster movie, I know everything will work out in the end. Most movies have some sort of "happy" or redemptive ending. That's not the case when I watch a game. The drama is more "real" because the outcome is unknown.
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Racial Bias In the NBA
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those of you who object to the study, how many of you have actually read a peer-reviewed, academic study such as this one before? They're dry and boring, and any popular explanation of it (like this column) is necessarily going to be a crude representation of their methods and details. I'm sure they define "black" and "white" somehow in the study. And if you think 2-4% is nothing, you've never studied statistics before. The key is the phrase "statistically significant." There are ways, using statistics (and I'm not talking about a survey with a "margin of error") to figure out when something is random and when it's not. To understand exactly how this works, you may have to take a graduate course in statistics.
Like King, I think this is not just an NBA-only problem, but a reflection on our society as a whole. Look at law enforcement or bank loans. People who say our society is color-blind are blind themselves. I can understand why Stern would be loathe to admit it's a problem in the NBA, though, because I can't imagine someone in his position saying, "Yeah, it's a problem, just like everywhere else." Because if that's the case, there's not really any way for him to fix it.
Great topic, King. I like your preoccupation with race much more than your preoccupation with steroids. :)
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Gender
[Read the article: Should I stay in my marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think it's strange that so many people have assumed that the LW is a female. Where is that coming from?
This sentence makes it pretty clear that the writer is male: "Can he pay nature's debt to his children's well-being, especially with a bunch of money to do it, or are they guaranteed to suffer and resent me -- um, him-- no matter what?" (My emphasis added.)
So why do so many posters assume LW is a woman?
As for his dilemma, it's way too vague to be interesting. Reminds me of Cary's "tortured artist week" or whatever it was called.
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The A-word
[Read the article: Am I an alcoholic?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think you should focus less on whether you're an Alcoholic (with a capital A) and focus more on solving this dilemma. You state outright: "I just want to quit drinking..."
So, then stop drinking. If you're tempted to drink when there's wine in the house, stop buying it. Remove the temptation. If you don't want to have a big AA-type conversation with your husband, just tell him, "I don't want to drink anymore because it's ruining my diet." Don't even use the A-word. If he cares about you, he'll understand and support you.
If that casual approach doesn't work, then you may have to admit that you have a bigger problem than you thought. In general, it's never a good thing to do anything to excess, whether it's eating, or spending money, or surfing the internet for porn. If it makes you feel bad and you can't stop doing it, then you have a problem, and need to own up to it.