A red card for your World Cup coverage, NEWSWEEK! This is easily the best football tournament in 20 years, with lots of exciting fresh talent–including Americans. Why concentrate on something as trivial as tickets? Who cares? Your story just shows the Yanks still don’t know anything about football. Thomas Knemeyer Cape Town, South Africa
What a shame that the only reports you filed about the world’s best-loved sport were totally negative: one piece on empty seats, another article on “hooligaphobia” and a third on the madness of those who watch the World Cup. Curiously, too, your pieces were filed in your business section, not under sports. Is this all your reporters see in the World Cup? There are many positive aspects of the sport that you could have mentioned–your own U.S. team miraculously reached the quarterfinals. Were you too busy calculating the empty seats and lost revenues for your business report to notice the momentous events that were taking place on the football pitches? Kenneth Tendo Mdoe Kampala, Uganda
I was disappointed to see your cover story condemning the World Cup as a failure. Yes, there have been problems in organizing ticket sales for the matches. But the World Cup is now primarily a televised event. It has been a fantastic festival of what the world knows as “football,” but which the United States quaintly calls “soccer.” There have been brilliant skills, tension and shocks. This was, arguably, the best World Cup ever. It is time that NEWSWEEK admitted that the World Cup is simply the greatest sports tournament in the world, even though it is not an American sport. Don’t fight it, embrace it. If you do, maybe in four years the U.S. team will be ready to do even better. Lol Ross London, England
“The World Cup Falls Flat”? No, it has not–it’s been wonderful. The greatest show on earth, as always. When will America bring anything but its petty jealousies and inferiority complex to the biggest sporting event on the planet? Frank Coughlan Dublin, Ireland
Sorry, NEWSWEEK. Your cover picture notwithstanding, the football has never been more round, and no one knows which way it will roll this time. And more than this: no hooligans, wonderful hosts, brilliant teams, heroes even in defeat. Who has lost here? As an Englishman, I say the Irish team was a triumph of the human spirit. Alan Docwra Breselenz, Germany
Your “Hooligaphobia” article paints an incomplete picture of English football fans. British and Japanese police have virtually eliminated the presence of hooligans, resulting in what has been described as a “love-in” between the English and the Japanese who see Britain as a sister nation having the same island mentality. You might have mentioned the legions of face-painted Japanese supporters of England, schoolgirls on the street posing for photos alongside their “hooligans” and the pop-star cultlike status of England’s captain Beckham as he signs endless autographs and causes sensations talking in Japanese schools. Kerry Marshall Brighton, England
NEWSWEEK writer Joseph Contreras complains about the ungodly hours the World Cup was aired live in Europe and the Americas, but he should know that the World Cup has never before been held in Asia. All these years, we Asians have been getting up in the “wee hours of the morning” and “watching as many games as humanly possible.” Contreras is lucky he does not have to wake up in the middle of the night to watch the World Cup most of the times that the Cup takes place. Jasmine Sng Singapore
I see nothing but good coming from this World Cup. Not only has it introduced the game to millions, it has also shown that inexperienced but focused and enthusiastic teamwork can beat prima donna superstars and, in a year when nations threaten to destroy each other, the fact that it is possible to compete without killing someone is surely a good message to spread. I think the staging was a brilliant tactical move by FIFA to get football into Japan and South Korea. Now the United States must be brave enough to allow a championship on television. And it must understand that real football is played without shoulder pads. Michael Smith Singapore
Anyone who lost money by backing some of the favored teams in this World Cup would be well advised to recoup at least some of his losses now by putting a few dollars on NEWSWEEK’s cover line–“The World Cup Falls Flat”–which is all set to win the worst-headline-of-the-year award. How can you describe an event that has produced so many surprises, so much drama, so much emotion and nail-biting excitement–an event that has caused hundreds of millions of people around the world to cheer or groan in unison–as being “flat” just because of some early ticketing problems, an empty monastery and a few too many stadiums? Lighten up, NEWSWEEK! There’s a party going on–don’t miss it. If you can spare only seven pages to one of the greatest sporting events in living memory, please don’t fill them with lost production figures, lack of hooliganism and less-than-expected tourism income. Give us the football, the heartache, the agony, the ecstasy, the atmosphere and the sheer excitement of this truly global game. Angus Mackenzie Antalya, Turkey
Editors’ note: Soccer (pardon, football) is “The Beautiful Game,” and we celebrate the sport’s grace and excitement as much as anyone. But when the Japanese prime minister orders an official investigation into the unavailability of tickets, promised World Cup windfalls fail to materialize and local merchants lose out on millions, this is news worth reporting to our readers. We are glad that it is yesterday’s news. Now that the competition is over, the lasting memories are South Korea’s great run, Germany’s gutsy determination and Brazil’s stellar victory.
Alternative Energy Scenarios Your Special Report on energy goes to the depth of the energy crisis and suggests several interesting scenarios (“The Future of Energy,” Special Report, April 8/15). However, I missed an analysis of fusion energy, which appears to offer all the advantages of nuclear energy without the problems of radioactive waste or meltdown. In small, experimental fusion reactors (tokamaks) the energy output is now almost equal to the energy input. A much larger tokamak, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is now being planned within the framework of an international research effort. Yes, the reactors are not ready to operate commercially yet, but they certainly belong to your perspectives “beyond oil.” Herbert Helander, M.D. Goteborg, Sweden
Congratulations on your Special Report on the future of energy. However, Adam Piore’s article, “Hydrogen Economy,” appears to see only the bright side of the problem. It concentrates on Iceland, where the reserves of geothermal power waiting to be tapped are huge, considering the needs of a small population. But you didn’t address the problem of how hydrogen is going to be produced where there are no such huge geothermal power reserves. If hydrogen is obtained through electrolysis it will require 40 kilowatt hours of electricity at 100 percent efficiency to produce a kilo of hydrogen. Since all existing power plants are already fully engaged for present requirements, it will be necessary to build new power plants to generate extra electricity to produce the hydrogen needed to run vehicles. The pollution problem in cities will improve, but the global energy and environmental problems will just shift from the millions of internal-combustion engines powering cars and trucks to new power plants in the countryside. Although a small number of huge power plants will suffice, their total power will have to be equal to the aggregate power of the vehicles’ combustion engines they replace. Such power could come from solar or wind power plants, but their economics are far from being solved, and no one wants to see huge areas of the earth carpeted by windmills, solar cells or mirrors. Mario Baldassarrini Siena, Italy
Thanks for your very enlightening double issue on the future of energy. It illustrates the fact that humans will resort to all sorts of devious means to protect what they believe to be a scarce resource–namely, energy, which until now has been synonymous with oil. It seems that some people are even prepared to start World War III to protect their supplies. What if this was unnecessary? What if there were a practically limitless supply of “free” energy which could transform our future? Solar hydrogen energy can help pave the way toward a peaceful, sustainable future. Mark Halbert Cape Town, South Africa
Using hydrogen as a fuel would be very expensive, and storing the highly explosive hydrogen would also be very costly. But we may already have the technology to mass-produce cheap water-powered cars. Such cars use a water carburetor to split hydrogen from water on demand, making it unnecessary to store explosive hydrogen in expensive storage tanks. Water carburetors are technically electrolytic carburetors installed in a car to split the hydrogen from water, then add oxygen to produce combustion. This device is cheap to manufacture, will work on any new or old internal-combustion engine and will cut costs: to go from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, say, would take only a few dollars. Webin Dy Manzana Manila, Philippines
Speaking of the Koeberg nuclear Power Station near Cape Town, you say, “The landscape is dominated by a pair of aging nuclear cooling towers…” Actually, Koeberg is only 18 years old and has no cooling towers at all. You also mentioned the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 which killed nobody, injured nobody and released an amount of radiation that would have given a maximum radiation dose equivalent to about one small dental X-ray. Strangely enough, you did not mention the explosion at the LUZ solar plant in Barstow, California, in 1990, which released a massive plume of toxic smoke and put two workers in the hospital. In terms of human casualties, this was a worse accident than Three Mile Island. Andrew Kenny Cape Town, South Africa
It’s a pity that you chose to team up with the World Economic Forum in your survey of energy since it led you to accept a piece of fluff on pebble-bed nuclear technology (“The Last Great Hope”). Out of nine paragraphs, only one throws some doubt on the project, quickly refuted by the project’s main champion, Dave Nicholls. The German prototype was not shut down because of fears of a Chernobyl-style disaster, as you say; it was shut down by its own scientists because of its own excessive flaws and its danger to the public. A much bigger problem is what Nicholls fondly calls a “perception problem.” This is nukespeak for massive opposition. The Koeberg Alert Alliance and its sister organization, Nuclear Energy Costs the Earth, number more than 300,000 members who are categorically opposed to nuclear power in South Africa. The national federal union, COSATU, has already passed a resolution condemning nuclear power, while Cape Town (in whose jurisdiction Koeberg falls) has rejected the idea of setting the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor near Cape Town. Mike Kantey Cape Town, South Africa
