Letters to the Editor
Al Lewis
Published Letters: 52 Editor's Choice: 5
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Journalistic superheroes and lapdogs
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay, so the Viet Nam War went on for about 15 years (depending how you count), engulfed 3-5 countries, lasted through 2-4 presidents, and cost 58,000 American lives. And there was a draft! And protesters got killed! How hard should it have been to stop that war?
It took Uncle Walter, the most trusted man in journalism, what, six years to actually go there, and see the disaster? Only then did public perception really start to change.
Fast forward 40 years. Granted, journalists weren't that vigilant in the run-up to the war. (Were they that vigilant during the build-up of the Viet Nam War?)
The Iraq War is nearly invisible to most Americans, but not because of lazy journalists. Within six months of the start of the war, there were articles about how badly it was going. Any chimp who picked up a paper in 2004 whould have know who to vote for. It's the administration that made sure that 90% of Americans are entirely unaffected by this war, in blood or treasure (to coin a hackneyed phrase).
Hey, it's not like every American has a hundred different ways to get news every day! It's not like it's delivered to you on your doorstep, or in your car, or on your computer screen. What does a journalist have to do, get himself blown up? Apparently even that's not enough.
And Watergate. Sure, Woodward and Bernstein did some real work there. But this was an actual cops-and-robbers crime, with actual people breaking into actual offices. Of the Democratic Party. And they were paid off by the President. With actual money. And it still took two years to make the guy resign.
So don't give me this crap about the journalistic superheroes of yesteryear. Or the journalistic lapdogs of today. They're the same guys, just as hard-working and just as lazy as 40 years ago.
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What's the RR count?
[Read the article: Where's "W"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Did anybody count references to Ronald Reagan? I know it was more than 1.
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Clinton vs. Bush
[Read the article: Impeachment? It's not just for Kucinich anymore]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd like to see a head-to-head poll asking Americans who they think more deserves/deserved to be impeached, Clinton or Bush? Now that'd be interesting.
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Have you ever seen Dick Cheney and al-Qaida in the same room?
[Read the article: Dick Cheney's surprise]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There always seems to be a bombing whenever Cheney shows up in Iraq. Do they make him go through the "puffer" at the airport? Does his carry-on luggage get wiped down for traces of bomb-making materials? Just wonderin'.
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I heard the questions
[Read the article: When the questions don't matter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I happened to be in Mobile this afternoon, heard the questions put to Gonzales; just replace "(Off mike)" with the following:
Attorney General Gonzales, what did you have for breakfast today?
I'm sorry, but I asked you what you had for breakfast today.
Did you just step in something?
I said, Did you just step in something?
Have you caught any of the NBA playoffs?
I said, Have you caught any of the NBA playoffs?
As you can see, he clearly answered all of the questions put to him.
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Confidence vote
[Read the article: Lott: Gonzales resolution "debases" the U.S. Senate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If the Democrats were smart, instead of a "no-confidence" vote, they would have introduced a "confidence" vote. Let's see if that resolution would get even one vote.
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101 ways to pry off
[Read the article: An inconvenient bottle cap]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Go to YouTube, and you'll find at least 101 ways to pry off your pry-off cap, including your baseball cap or a standard piece of letter/A4 paper. You'll never be without a bottle opener.
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Slant?
[Read the article: Hitting a wall on immigration]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mr. Shapiro describes the citizenship point system as "difficult-to-decipher" and a "Rube Goldberg scheme".
I looked it up online. The table covered less than one page, nicely formatted, and required no more than a fourth-grade reading and math level to understand.
I don't know what I think of this bill, or the point system, but tossing off terms like "Rube Goldberg" (or "amnesty") only serves to stall any possibility of real debate on the issue.
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One obvious disadvantage
[Read the article: Is an airplane iPod charger a green breakthrough?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The obvious disadvantage of this system is that, as long as your your iPod, iPhone, etc. is plugged into the jack, you can't listen to the onboard entertainment. It's on those long flights to Tokyo that you'd want access to both your iPod and unlimited viewings of Evan Almighty. (OK, the movie selections aren't great, but they kill the time better than anything else I know.)
I have a mini-jack splitter, so's me and the missus can both listen to the same MP3 player. Any idea if I could use this splitter to charge my MP3 player and watch the in-flight movie at the same time? Or does the charger corrupt (or decrease to an un-usable level) the incoming signal?
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Ender, not Brother
[Read the article: Play peak oil before you live it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The down-side scenarios sound less like Big Brother to me, and more like "Ender's Game", the science fiction book by Orson Scott Card.
It's been years since I read it, so I don't recall the details, but the basic outline is this: There's a really smart kid (Ender). Some group gets ahold of him, and has him play a bunch of video games with spaceships blasting each other. It turns out that the spaceships on the screen represent real ships; Ender is controlling robotic "good guy" ships and blasting real "bad guy" ships.
I could see the CIA or FBI developing an ARG that looked like a fun role-playing game, but was in fact being used for surveillance. Just one idea: It could be in the form of a "scavenger hunt", asking if you have certain things in your house, or if your neighbor does. It would reward you with some kind of virtual payment for the information, or for a "right" answer. (Of course, your answers are right just often enough to keep you playing.) By making it a mega-multi-player game, it gives them enough information to look for clusters of characteristics, or for outliers.
After awhile, the scavenger hunt becomes more challenging, and you're teaming up with other players to search someone's garage, or figure out which Middle Eastern types are spending too much time at the Radio Shack.
Far-fetched? Beats me.