Battle
for the Beach
A comment on Jodie T. Allen's
assertion that governments like San Diego's "surely regulate [volleyball net]
placement on beaches" ("Government and Volleyball"): As a devotee of San Diego's
South Mission Beach, I can attest to the growing popularity of beach
volleyball. However, there appear to be no rules for the erection of private
nets. All one needs, it seems, are two 4-inch-by-4-inch posts, a shovel or
post-hole digger, a net, a fluorescent orange plastic rope (to mark court
boundaries), and a ball. The problem is that, quite often, players emerge early
in the day from their seashore abodes, put up a net, and then return to bed,
thus denying large sections of beach to nonplayers. I suppose that as the
courts proliferate, those who come to the beach to bathe in either sun or surf
will be pushed to the water's edge, and that conflict will result. Government
will then rear its ugly head, issue regulations, and the beach will be calmer
but more regimented. Meanwhile, anarchy reigns.
Perhaps
volleyball is an apt metaphor for politics, after all.
--Ed
Newton
Backward
to the Future
Nathan
Myhrvold got it wrong in "Insufficient
Funds." It isn't the content or the lack of advertising that endangers
Internet publishing. It is the old-fashioned thinking that is inbred into print
journalism--and it doesn't work in the new medium (thank goodness it doesn't).
Like the Republicans, you're riding the elephant backward as you try to build a
bridge into the past.
--Peter
Montgomery
Apocalypse Now?
I found
Nathan Myhrvold's "Insufficient Funds" interesting, but I hope the hidden
message wasn't that you guys are planning to bail out. I really find Slate an
interesting publication, informative and thought-provoking. Will you continue,
or is the end near?
--Stan
Kossen
The editors reply:
Slate is here for the duration.
Monumental Mistake
I'm
writing to complain about the Utah National Monument item in "The Week/The
Spin"--specifically about the claim that in Utah, "the schools depend on
mining-industry revenue." The total percentage of Utah's school budget supplied
from School Trust Lands is around 2 percent. The percentage that comes from
mining revenue is somewhat less than that. This hardly counts as dependence.
You have fallen victim to the propaganda of anti-wilderness sagebrush
rebels.
--Kevin
Walker
