Letters to the Editor
Ruadh
Published Letters: 4 Editor's Choice: 1
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...and yet you provide him with free publicity.
[Read the article: I was conned by JT Leroy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What about this article prompts front-page coverage in Salon?
If you really are dismayed and embarassed by your association with him, why are you giving him EXACTLY what he wants?
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Don't fall for it
[Read the article: I tried to get rich on stock spam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While in general, this article was truthful and straightforward, I'm disturbed by the title's assertion that "There really is a way to make money," and the author's closing remark, "Next time, I'll know better. I should've bought and sold them within hours..."
Of course the author was being sardonic. Earlier letters have already pointed out that there's a difference between the published closing price, and what you'd get if you actually tried to sell, and this difference is far more severe for penny stocks.
There's at least one more trick that nobody's mentioned yet: for some of these stocks, there are actual barriers to selling. There can be a minimum hold time between the buy and sell dates. Some stocks simply can't be sold at all without approval from a company officer! In these cases, the spammer is either in collusion with the company, or bought the stock long ago and started the spam pump campaign to coincide with the end of his holding period.
Penny stocks are a snake pit. Furthermore, the small-time operators who characterized most spam in the early days -- the equivalent of those seedy novelty ads you used to see in comic books and on matchbook covers -- have been largely supplanted by professional criminals.
There really is a way to make money on these scams -- to be the scammer. Everyone else is just another fish.
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There's only one question
[Read the article: Is it too late to start a band at 45?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you really are an artist, if you really burn to put your own strange little dreams and visions out there, why do you give a rat's ass what other people think?
How are you going to do anything real, something from inside you and nobody else, if you're afraid of being laughed at? Everybody who does that gets laughed at.
You can always do nothing, and then die. You pick. Every damn day, actually.
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Campaign coverage sucks? So make it better!
[Read the article: Why campaign coverage sucks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If there's anything even less relevant than "horse race" political coverage, it's deep, pained analysis of why it's all the coverage we ever get. Amazingly, this article manages to be even more devoid of meaning than its subject.
Salon, here's a challenge: stop pretending you're not part of the media, and hand-wringing over how broken it is. Give us actual reportage and analysis of, say, Obama's positions on the issues vs. Clinton's.
Then maybe, just maybe, some of us would have a shot at being informed voters on Super Tuesday.
Time's running out.