or, Ponderings on the New Millennium
“I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.” –William F. Buckley, conservative newspaper columnist.
It all started as a bit of musing in my author’s note in the first issue of the year 2000. Then, the more comments from readers I published, the more they streamed in. Let’s recap. In the issue published 7 January 2000, I pondered:
My recent story on preserving a nuclear missile silo brought a fair amount of mail. Let’s start with the story:
This week the Honorary Unsubscribe marks the first time that I know that the “honoree” was indeed a This is True reader (it’s called “honorary” for a reason!) But in this case, Jerry was, in fact, one of my best friends — and a Premium subscriber.
On Friday, we finally caught up with the pre-orders for the reprints of Volume 1 of the True book collection. One recipient complained: “I was bummed that my books came packaged with Styrofoam ‘peanuts’. I can’t believe that any world-conscious business would buy those dang things and pollute our planet! Can’t you use something else? There is a new product out that uses recycled newspapers, for instance.”
After running some reader letters, David in Maryland wrote in reply: “How come you never run any of them that are from people who are not enamoured of you, if it is considered a ‘letters to the editor’ space?”
(Updated: See below.)
One of the first highly controversial stories in True, with some readers loving it, and others hating it. So let’s start with the story that started it all (in the 18 July 1999 issue):
Complaints? Really? Really.
I’m in Southern California, where I’ll again be giving the after-dinner wake-up speech at the Skeptics Society’s annual conference in Pasadena, Calif. I have the delightful job of presenting an “award” for the dumbest thing of 1998 (culled, of course, from True!) to warm up the crowd for the Keynote speaker. The theme this year: “Reinventing Evolution: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory.”
While I’m not always able to reply to email, I love getting comments from readers — I do personally read them all. I even appreciate the bad stuff. I prefer the fun stuff, of course, but even rants can be useful. Here’s one of each type, so you get the idea:
A U.S. doctor who reads True was distressed over the story last week (7 June 1998 issue) on “exploding head syndrome”.
Every once in a while I get a note asking why I use the credit “(Reuter)” instead of “(Reuters)”.
After nearly a year and a half of publication, and commonly getting about 300 emails per day from readers, I finally actually publish a few letters to the editor.