It is often a waste of time, which is why I try not to answer moronic complaints directly. I do try to choose interesting letters, or particularly outrageous or relevant ones, to answer in True or on the various pages on this site. But there's a wider reason. Part of it is a matter of principle, but that's not enough of a reason. Part of it is that when a contentious debate comes up, I get a lot of people passing the issues and page URLs around, which helps increase the subscription numbers. That's nice, but that's not really enough of a reason either.

The main reason is readers love it.

"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 00, I pondered:

Have you gotten used to writing "2000" yet? I wrote a check yesterday, and only then realized that the check's date area was not Y2Kompliant -- the blank says "_______ 19__". Sheesh: I got those checks less than a year ago, and the bozos didn't know that format wouldn't work for very long?! As I go through my web site and update pages, it looks VERY weird to me to see the "Copyright 2000" at the bottom.