Letters

From the May 2007 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Dad’s comment whenever one of the brood tried to pull off wearing denim to any social event was, “You know, we used to make POWs wear that stuff when I was in the Army.” Mind you, he and my mom saw nothing wrong with wearing jeans when we were playing softball in the back yard, but just try to wear even brand new black jeans to church—even the “folk mass”—and you’d be sent to your room to change. The idea that employees not engaged in physical labor would wear them to work would have flummoxed him.
Kevin Robinson
Milwaukee, WI

A Chilling Tale of Global Warming

Katherine Mangu-Ward’s article on the U.N.-sponsored children’s book (“A Chilling Tale of Global Warming,” February) was a hoot. The climatology contingent from the Planetary Society must be rolling in the aisles even as its past demigod emeritus, Carl Sagan, is spinning in his grave. The planetoid Sedna, named for the goddess featured prominently in the book issuing warnings about global warming, is one of the coldest bodies in the Solar System. Several other Inuit deities have already had their names attached to Kuiper Belt ice balls cold enough to freeze liquid nitrogen.

In the race to be coldest, Sedna’s rival is 2003 UB313, a.k.a. Xena, a charcoal ball whose even dimmer companion moon was naturally christened Gabrielle until the International Astronomical Union Committee on Small-Body Nomenclature and the Working Group on Planetary-System Nomenclature spoiled the fun by formally renaming the dwarf planets Eris and Dysnomia.

The names may reflect the ferocious infighting within the International Astronomical Union, Eris being the Greek Goddess of Strife, Dysnomia the muse of anarchy.
Russell Seitz
Cambridge, MA

Corrections: In “We the Living Dead” (February), Resident Evil was incorrectly described as having inspired four Hollywood movies starring Milla Jovovich. It has inspired three.

Contrary to a statement on the March “Contributors” page, the title of Brian Doherty’s book Radicals for Capitalism was derived from Ayn Rand, not Milton Friedman.