LETTERS FRIDAY

DD blog gets mail, some of it printable.

They're watching you

Hey:

I thought you might get some amusement from this story: Six months ago, I requested documents about myself from CBP, pertaining to my detention at the US-Canada border a couple years ago. This week, they responded ... with a bunch of ridiculous nonsense on how I need to submit my request on the proper form, and include an explanation of what I want the records for, and more in that vein. In one way, it was refreshingly bureaucratic, the way government ineptitude is supposed to work... but in another more serious way, an aggravating violation of the FOIA and PA laws, department policy, EO 13392, and the Gods only know what else. I related the story (the most recent in a long string of unpleasant dealings with FOIPA officers the government over) online here, and a regular reader blogged about it here. Well, the blogger contacted me last night, and it seems CBP is a bit better at spotting online criticism of themselves than they are at properly processing FOIPA requests. They found his post in less than four hours - see here. I'm not necessarily one to see conspiracies in my Wheaties, but it seems interesting, in a creepy-chill-down-the-spine sort of way.

-M

On The Crackpot

Now Mr. Destiny, please let us be careful to separate the idea from the man who propounds it. Just because brilliant pebbles didn't quite work out, does not mean that any proposal from Lowell Wood should be rejected without giving it a fair examination.

You know and I know that particulate matter in the upper atmosphere would have a global cooling effect. The dinosaurs learned that. People around the world noticed it after the eruption of Krakatoa, as I recall. A friend of mine near Mount St. Helens remembers a chilly season while ash was in the air. And, of course, we all remember the scare about "nuclear winter" ... don't we?

Let us suppose that James Lovelock is correct and "global heating" causes equatorial regions to become uninhabitable, threatening to kill off five-sixths of the world's population. (How can a respected biologist make such predictions? Because he's a biologist, I guess; they are notoriously clueless when speculating outside of biology. But anyway, suppose he turns out to be right.) At the very least, we could detonate a few hydrogen bombs to create just a taste of that nuclear winter; and the side effects, such as radioactivity, would still be less ominous that the global heating that Lovelock predicts.

In the meantime, where is your properly organized refutation of the plan to spread particulate matter from airplanes? Incidentally this was first proposed many years ago in a book which I believe was called "The State of Humanity" edited by the late Julian Simon. It is not a new idea.

Still enjoying your column though.

--Charles Platt