Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 94 Editor's Choice: 19
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bay area sports moves
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]James Elliott -- the Fremont thing is pretty simple. The A's want to move to Silicon Valley, but MLB has defined San Mateo and Santa Clara counties (where most of Silicon Valley lies) as Giants territory. Fremont could be called part of Silicon Valley under a fairy generous definition, but is in the southwest corner of Alameda County, which is A's territory. I'd bet you that if the A's had their way, they'd put a baseball stadium right next door to the new 49ers stadium in Santa Clara and create a sprawly exurban sports megaplex.
I too would love to hear King's take on the 49ers move, especially because the city of SF had pledged some kind of public support for a new stadium there. I wonder if this is some kind of hardball power play like the Patriots almost-move to Hartford.
jf
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typo
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You've got San Fran capitalized, but your description makes it sound like you're picking Seattle. Or is this your way to fudge things for your Pool O' Experts standings?
I don't know why, but I t hink it's pretty funny that King's got a MySpace page. And that one of his top 8 appears to be a guy covered with blood. Watch out for sexual predators, King!
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pre-come and the withdrawl method
[Read the article: Progress on the male pill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]OK, I am not a sex professional, but my wife, who works as an educator at Planned Parenthood, *is*, so this is stuff that I've gleaned from her:
1) Preorgasmic penile discharge (aka pre-come) is *not* swimming with sperm. Its purpose is to make the pH of uretha (which is normally used for sperm-killing urine) so as to make it a somewhat friendlier environment for the sperm when they do arrive. It comes from an entirely different part of the plumbing than the sperm and thus doesn't actually contain any. If you haven't urinated since you last ejaculated, then it will have some sperm in it that was leftover in your penis since that last orgasm, but otherwise urination will push out and/or kill off those guys.
2) As a result, the withdrawl method is actually a remarkably reliable birth control method so long as you use it reliably every time. The problem with withdrawl is not actually the process of pulling out itself, but rather the fact that every fiber of biological instinct going off at that moment is urging you to do the exact opposite, so accidents do happen more often then they do with barrier and/or hormonal methods. But if you've mastered the art of fighting those urges, then you will probably be OK.
Of course, it goes without saying that, if you aren't using a barrier method, you can catch an STD whether you pull out or not.
jf
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What does this number mean?
[Read the article: Sex and the single septuagenarian]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Tom Liberti says that when the numbers of HIV-infected seniors in Florida climbed up to 11 percent..."
11 percent of what? Does this mean 11 percent of seniors have HIV? Does this mean that 11 percent of HIV cases are seniors?
I mean, I'm guessing based on my common sense that it's the latter, but you need more than just the context of the article to guess that, which is bad bad bad. I don't usually use comments on Salon to bitch about Salon (I do love it and think it's more than worth the subscription) but I do notice sometimes that statistics are presented in incomprehensible ways like this.
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o cruel fix!
[Read the article: The Fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Kevin Federline is apparently mulling a tell-all book about his life with estranged wife Britney Spears -- which would clearly be ghostwritten..."
Slanderer! KFed is a poet and a scholar!
jf
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my personal favorite on he list
[Read the article: When marital advice trumps whale vomit]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Will there be a television in the bedroom?"
Amazingly specific compared to the other ones, but a very important question to settle nonetheless.
(FYI: Couples who don't have TVs in the bedroom have sex more often than those that do!)
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747 almost bankrupted boeing?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Interesting that you mention this fact in passing, Patrick, with the Airbus 380 looking mroe and more like a white elephant. I wonder if 25 years from now it will be a great success as well. Perhaps it is inevitable for such a huge underataking as a new airline to have some bumps to start with.
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applause upon landing
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just last month I was flying Southwest from Tucson to Chicago Midway and we landed in very high winds. I've read enough of this column (and am frankly jaded enough about flying) that I wasn't worried for my safety, but it sure was uncomfortable -- I had one hand on the airsick bag and I noted a lot of others around me did too. The whole cabin burst into applause when we landed, which may be the only time I've experienced that in the U.S. I imagine it was a combination of compliment to the pilot for what seemed like a tricky landing and relief to be on the ground.
Five years ago, I flew Turkish Airways from Berlin to Istanbul, and the passengers applauded when we arrived. They were mostly members of Berlins large immigrant Turkish population, and I noted that there was applause on the return trip -- maybe it was a "welcome home" thing?
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The play-in game, traditionally black colleges, and the #4 #1.
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]OK, this is something I read on Deadspin yesterday and now can't find, so I may be getting this mixed up, but: The play-in game, if populated by the two teams out of the field of 65 with the lowest RPI, is often a match-up between two traditionally black colleges. Apparently this has happened often enough in the last few years that the NCAA specifically rearranged the field this year so that the two lowest RPI teams weren't in the play-in game. To compensate for that, the play-in winner plays the #4 seed in the tourney rather than the overall #1. Anyone who knows more about this, speak up, but that's my understanding.
jf