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—H. L., a prisoner

to the viewers and, in fact, it doesn’t do so.  None of that information was useful.  Instead, I believe that the purpose of such reporting is to boost the ratings of the news program.  It might also be reasonably argued that such reporting is intended to perpetuate the ongoing frenzy of nonsensical anti-gun claptrap.

Dear Sam,
Hello.  I hope my letter finds you well.  Your article, “The Bright Side”, in July ’24 Frontiersman.
I recently was doing some research, and trying to figure out why our temperature has been going up so dramatically.  Year after year it seems, every year, we’re breaking new records.
I ran into some satellite photos showing the ground temperature of the United States from the year 2006 to 2020.  Our surface temp is way hotter than it was 20 years ago.  And the only reason I can attribute a reason is because of aquifer depletion.  Every year, farmers have to dig deeper to reach the water levels they need.
Man, pure and simple.  Our population, here and around the world has gone beyond the critical point of safe return.
Remember the movies, “Soylent Green” and “Mad Max, Beyond Thunder Dome.”  That’s our apocalyptic future.
Have a good one,

The concerns that I’ve noticed about global warming all address the biosphere, which is mostly heated from above.  I haven’t seen any mention of concerns about the temperature of the planet itself, the ground below our feet, until you mentioned it in your letter.  If such heating is actually happening, then I can suggest a reason for it.
The widely held belief that our planet began as a molten glob is false.  The planet formed over billions of years of the slow accumulation of space debris, none of which was hot.  Things drifting around in space are cold.  The planet was probably near to absolute zero.  It didn’t start to get hot until the Moon arrived on the scene.  That’s an entirely different mystery but, no matter how the Moon got here, after it was in place, it caused tidal forces within the planet.  Those tidal forces are what has caused the internal heating of the planet.  Here’s the thing to ponder.  Maybe that heating process hasn’t yet gone to completion.  The Moon is still there.  The tidal forces are still at work.  Maybe the planet is still heating internally, slowly melting from the inside toward the surface.

Dear Frontiersman:
Before the arrival of COVID, a shout frequently heard at demonstrations was, “No justice, no peace”.  The chant isn’t used as much these days, and I’m thankful for that, because the saying made me cringe.
For all practical purposes, justice is subjective.  Consider a typical court case.  Most of the time, the winning side considers the verdict just, and the losing side considers the verdict unjust.  Sometimes, the verdict in a case is reversed on appeal.  Does that mean that the original verdict was unjust?  Possibly, but not necessarily.
I urge people who are intrigued by the question of  “true” justice to read “Hamlet”, by William Shakespeare.  The main character of the play is, or may be, duty bound to perform an act of justice that has been demanded by the ghost of Hamlet’s father.  Was the ghost real, or a dream?  If the ghost was real, might it be a demon in disguise?  By performing justice, might Hamlet be committing a terrible sin?
Hamlet eventually decides to take action.  At the end of the play, the stage is cluttered with corpses.  Justice (as the ghost defined it) has been done, but there has been a lot of collateral damage.  It’s as though Shakespeare is saying:  “If this is justice, what use is it?  What does it really accomplish?  Is it really any good?”
Given the ambiguity and uncertainty of justice, I feel that those who chant “No justice, no peace” are unconsciously calling for perpetual strife.

Your closing speculation is probably correct.  To me, “No justice, no peace” sounds like a tacit, albeit unintended, acknowledgment of the way that the world actually works.  For some additional speculations about justice in the courts, see The Pursuit of Justice, in the August 2020 issue.
It seems to me that the pursuit of justice has always relied on the use of force, but failed anyway.  My favorite fictional example is the legend of King Arthur.  All of his efforts to use might for right ended in tragedy.  See The Once and Future King, by T. H. White.
Sam,
Good to see you still in the fight after all these years.

It’s been a long time.

Vector Universe
Sam Aurelius Milam III
The idea of space-time is nonsense.  Also, time isn’t a fourth dimension.  Space and time are two distinct and different things, two separate components of the universe.  Think of the universe as a vector quantity.  Space is the magnitude.  Time is the direction.

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— editor