to describe Boras as "the most evil man in sports," isn't it, farnsworth? Neither he nor Carlos Beltran created the current system. What are they supposed to do, ignore the massive payday that was waiting for a player that good, in favor of the unbelievable kismet of MinuteEnron MaidField? (Say, is Ken Lay buried under that mound in center field? And if not, why not?)

Listen, I'm an A's fan, so I'm well acquainted with the anguish of seeing players you love leave for piles of cheddar heaped up by swankier franchises. I harbored a grudge against Jason Giambi for a while (before realizing that Billy Beane had made the right call on that one). And as good as the A's were this year, the loss of Miguel Tejada still haunts the team. How good might they have been this year with him at short, and in the lineup? (Let's see: Tejada or Marco Scutaro? Tough to pick, isn't it?)

Sure, 'Stros fans loved Beltran and thought he wanted to stay, and it looked like he might, and then he opted to move on to a bigger paycheck and a bigger stage. That's a tough break. But do you honestly think you, or anyone, wouldn't do the same, if you were magically transformed into a young, handsome guy who was also a great centerfielder and a terrific hitter?

That was a moment of high drama: Beltran had a chance to become a postseason legend, and took a wicked-ass strike three instead. He still had a near-MVP year, getting paid a kajillion bucks to play for the best team in the National League, and they'll be in contention next year and the year after that and the year after that. He's probably feeling pretty bad this morning, but I don't think "If only I'd stayed in Houston" is anywhere on the list.

(Not writing as a Salon insider, just a reader & fan.)

Because in writing a somewhat rushed piece, I didn't discuss the film's treatment of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue, one of the "difficult" last pieces you're referring to. Despite the occasional goofiness, and the entirely fictional character of the copyist, "Copying Beethoven" approaches that work (not well understood at the time, or arguably now either) with some humor and sophistication. There's an opening montage, set to the Grosse Fugue, as the copyist rushes to Beethoven's deathbed, which is actually quite extraordinary.

It's such a mixed bag, this movie. The more I think about it the more flawed and intellectually limited it appears. But as a visual, sensory experience, it's quite something.

I'm not totally saying you're wrong, pfinch, but ... well, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I got my quote off the Web site of former UPenn classics professor James O'Donnell, now the provost at Georgetown [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/bg1.html], and I'm disinclined to believe he made such an elementary mistake. I think if you do a comparative Google of your phrase and mine, you'll conclude that both are in wide circulation but "Gallia est omnis divisa ..." is actually correct.

Thanks for the sad note on Fabian Bielinsky, I heard from a few people on this. The story has now been corrected to reflect his untimely death. (For perhaps understandable reasons it's not mentioned in the press materials.)

Re Abbie Cornish, I apologize if my characterization of her career up to now was wrong. In this case the press kit explicitly says she had a long-running role on an Australian TV serial. I'll look into this one a bit more.

Hey, I appreciate all the spirited feedback, sympathetic or not.

One criticism that strikes me as potentially valid is the question of whether Gibson means the title to be considered literally (as "revelation") or in its popular, vernacular meaning, as the end of the world. On reflection, I suspect the first meaning is definitely in the mix, as MG is fairly knowledgeable about such things. There's a creepy scene I didn't mention when a little girl from a devastated village "foretells" the end of the Maya in a sort of Exorcist-voice prophecy. It's more like something from a Greek or Norse myth than Mesoamerican legend, but whatever -- worldwide myths do possess some striking commonalities.

As a couple of people have noted, the Yucatec language (known to its speakers just as "Maya") is hardly ancient or extinct or even all that obscure. It has an estimated 750,000 speakers today.

Also, while it's legitimate to blame the Spanish for all kinds of sins in the Americas, let's notice two things. 1) the devastation they inflicted on the native populations, while significant, was not nearly as total as that inflicted by Anglo-Saxon colonists in North America. (Which country today has a majority population of "Indian" and part-Indian people, Mexico or the United States?)

And 2) the Maya-Toltec-Aztec obsession with human sacrifice really was at or near a high-water mark when the Spanish arrived. The newcomers didn't have to invent or amplify these bloody, troubling spectacles. They occurred. When the Spanish got to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (the future Mexico City) caused by the sheer buildup of rotting corpses from mass sacrifices. And the Spanish would likely never have succeeded in conquering the Aztec empire if the various other subject peoples of central Mexico hadn't feared and hated their Aztec rulers so much, and happily signed up to help overthrow them.

Yes, absolutely, the human-sacrifice question is very complicated. It needs to be considered in a much larger context, the context of these civilizations in totality and of the near-universal history of blood sacrifice in religion. (Read the Old Testament, after all.) But it's no good pretending it wasn't there, and that it doesn't hang over the Mesoamerican civilizations like a big black cloud.

There's a sentence in my letter that should read like this:

When the Spanish got to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (the future Mexico City) there had recently been an epidemic caused by the sheer buildup of rotting corpses from mass sacrifices ...