Letters for October 9, 2014

What about Rob?

I have enjoyed your paper for many years, usually reading it from cover to cover, and over again too. You have more in your paper that relates to my life and area then any TV news I have ever seen. Now my guilty little pleasure, the place I go to first thing, is the horoscope. I smile now just thinking of it. I could write a whole letter just about my enjoyment of the horoscopes you print but the point of this letter would suffer. To get to that point … I have signed up for your newsletter as I find I am house-bound for hopefully just a small amount of time. The same stories and such I have found, but imagine my horror at my horoscope! What has happened to the horoscope that seems to be written just for me? Please give me the same horoscope all the other readers are getting?

Dawn Hillman

Reno

Editor’s note: We don’t publish the horoscope because we want to have things that are exclusive to the print edition, but you can find it elsewhere online if you just do a web search.

Six million jobs

Re “Nevada owned and operated by business” (Left Foot Forward, Sept. 4):

Well, Sheila Leslie forgot one industry to add in Nevada Inc. Although they’re not in business yet in Nevada, Sheila Leslie should add the auto industry to that list, more specifically, Tesla. She should start nagging now how the tax breaks they’re going to get are unfair to Nevadans.

Samuel Thickering

Reno

Show me the money

Re “Shakedown” (Feature story, Sept. 11):

I was informed that Panasonic is the real money behind this move! So, where are our taxes going? Where is the real money coming from?

H. Salinger

Reno

Darn it!

Re “Damn those typos” (Letters to the Editor, Sept. 25):

Actually, Bonanza premiered September 12, 1959.

Chic DiFrancia

Virginia City

Editor’s note: First we claimed it was 1950, then we claimed it was 1960. We’re now saying that IMDB, Wikipedia and our reader, Chic DiFrancia, say it was Sept. 12, 1959. We’re going with that. Sorry about the layers of confusion we’ve caused.

Double action

Re “Return of the Messenger” (Feature story, Oct. 2):

After reading your article on Gary Webb, I was saddened to see his cause of death once again listed as suicide. Really? this man uncovers a drug-running scandal that winds up implicating two former presidents and our intelligence-gathering apparatus and then takes his life by shooting himself twice with a .38 revolver? Again, really? The Mockingbird machinery is obviously still in place and well oiled. I’m sure you’re aware the first shot exited through his lower left jaw. Please show on a diagram an angle how this is possible without it being a ridiculously counter intuitive way to hold a weapon. To the other readers out there, stand in front of a mirror pretending to hold a revolver and try to find a believable way to to make that first shot. It doesn’t work. What more can be said, other than “the mighty Wurlitzer plays on.”

Robert Franklin

Sun Valley

Profanity fails

Re “He probably means ‘Fred’” (Letters to the Editor, Oct. 2):

Your Fox News/Rush Limbaugh-style response to Fred Speckmann’s valid point about your choice to use the F-word in your paper was surprising, since Fred never indicated that he wanted to restrict your right to express yourself the way you choose. Nor did he attempt to tell you how to say anything. He merely and maturely pointed out for your intelligent consideration what many of your readers already agree with, that F-bombs are almost always unnecessary. They usually come off as adolescent and shrill, and most often demean the story. My biggest problem with swear words in newspapers is that they set a bad example for young readers, who should be encouraged by example to seek more graceful and less boorish ways to express themselves in writing.

T. Alan Moore

Reno

Editor’s note: Making the claim that they aren’t concerned about what is said but with how it’s said is nearly as hallowed a tradition among censors as restricting civil rights to “protect the children.” You should know this because both have been used so effectively against reggae music because of its promotion of drugs. You’ll also remember how conservatives tried to undermine women’s arguments after the Hobby Lobby decision by complaining about their “tone.” If Fred Speckmann wants to maturely complain and call us names to support his argument, that’s fine by us, but it certainly can undermine his ability to make his voice heard by the people he hopes will publish his complaints.

Did that work?

If any of your readers feel they were cited unlawfully during the last crosswalk sting here in Fernley, this is their defense. If you were cited because the shill, a sheriff posing as a pedestrian, crossed on the opposite side of the road from where you were traveling, cite this NRS to the judge.

NRS 484B.283 1. Except as otherwise provided in NRS 484B.287, 484B.290 and 484B.350: (a) When official traffic-control devices are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be so to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the highway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the highway upon which the vehicle is traveling, or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the highway as to be in danger. (b) A pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle which is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.

Russ Gronert

Reno

The great and powerful

Re “Running is a capital crime?” (Notes From The Neon Babylon, Sept. 25):

According to NOAA, the concentration of CO2 at Mauna Loa monitoring station passed 350 ppm around 1990: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ Allowing for unequal global distribution, let’s bump that date up to 1997 or so, to be on the safe side, or about 17 years ago. As has been widely (if reluctantly) accepted by even the “experts,” global temperatures have been flat for over 17 years. If the “experts” did not acknowledge this, why are they wringing their hands and running around in circles trying to explain “The Pause”?

Since CO2 has climbed like a homesick angel since 1997, yet global temperatures have not, isn’t it time he started to wonder if those “world’s leading climatologists” might not be wrong. Or (worse) know they’re wrong but cannot now climb down and admit it—and pass up all the “green” research money being showered on them? Bruce Van Dyke is a smart fellow. He should start peeking behind the curtain. He might learn that there’s far more to AGW than pure “science.”

Brian Adams

Reno

Corrections

Re “Swank” (Arts & Culture, Oct. 2):

Red Chair store owner Aaryn Walker’s first name was misspelled in the story. She’s Aaryn, not Arryn.

Re “Melt with you” (Foodfinds, Oct. 2):

We misidentified the author this story. It was written by food reviewer Todd South, not raging narcissist Brad Bynum.