Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Nate Silver messed up big time.

Congratulations to Mitch Moreland and Adrian Beltre of the Texas Rangers, both of whom were named recipients of Gold Glove awards. I've been a baseball fan for 50 years, and have never seen anyone play third base as well as Beltre.

Here.

Here.

William Kristol calls Donald Trump "a repulsive person." As we used to say when we were kids, "It takes one to know one."

Billion Dollar Babies (1973).

To the Editor:

Re “Leash the Anger, Begin the Healing” (Op-Ed, Nov. 8):

The political pollster and analyst Frank Luntz’s argument reminds me of the famous anecdote often cited to define chutzpah: a person who kills his parents and then pleads to the court for mercy because he is now an orphan.

As much as any other media figure, Mr. Luntz has not simply contributed to the air of partisan rancor that ails us in this election season; he has directly profited from stirring this very pot. He bears responsibility for contributing to the death of civility in our public discourse.

On the day of the most noxious election in my lifetime, for him to suddenly call for “unity, empathy and understanding” rings hollow at best.

Is Mr. Luntz a political figure of significance? Without a doubt. Does that merit granting him a forum on your Op-Ed page? It may well. But for this man, with his history, to make the claim he makes today? It is, to put it most charitably, highly disingenuous.

DENNIS KIM-PRIETO

Newark

Here is yours truly at the Texas Motor Speedway yesterday. Click to enlarge. Neither Katherine nor I had ever been to an automobile race, much less to a NASCAR race. We decided to see what it's all about. We arrived early for the 1:00 start of the Texas 500, but just minutes before 1:00, rain began to fall. This delayed the race while track personnel tried to dry the track. We waited and waited and waited. Finally, at 5:30, we decided to cut our losses and go home. The race was eventually started, though it was shortened when rain returned. (Carl Edwards won.) Katherine and I watched it on television. As you can imagine, it was a frustrating day. I wanted to hear the roar of the engines and see the cars barreling down the track in close formation. As it turned out, we didn't hear a single engine. Oh well, you can't have good weather all the time. Today, Katherine ordered tickets for the Daytona 500 in February. How's that for going full metal redneck?

Moral philosophers, even those belonging to the Critical School [the followers of Kant and Fries], have often represented duties to animals as indirect duties to oneself or to other men. For instance, maltreatment of animals is forbidden on the ground that it encourages cruelty, that is, a disposition that obstructs fulfillment of duty. Now, maltreatment of animals may have just that effect; nevertheless the argument in question takes no account of the whole truth. For according to this argument, maltreatment of animals is reprehensible because of the incidental effects it has on the character of the agent or of other men. Where the effects are not harmful, maltreatment of animals would thus be permitted.

If we examine the arguments on the basis of which the existence of direct duties to animals has been denied, we are compelled to conclude regretfully that most of these arguments are sophistical—indeed, they are so threadbare that we find it surprising that they could be advanced by people who claim to be schooled in scientific method. The treatment this problem has received in ethics would be devastating testimony to the limitations of human understanding, if it were not clear that interest rather than error accounts for it.

(Leonard Nelson, System of Ethics, trans. Norbert Guterman [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956], 137 [footnote inserted into text in brackets])

Here are the latest rankings. The powers that be are trying desperately to get a Big 12 team into the top five.