… Huffington, by Shawn Otto:

Dear Arianna,

Congratulations on the Huffington Post’s Pulitzer prize. That is an important feather in the paper’s cap.

I want you to know how much I value your publication, and how I think the dust up over the antiscience HuffPost article “NASA Global Warming Stance Blasted By 49 Astronauts, Scientists Who Once Worked At Agency” is an opportunity for a broader discussion, which you could lead. The story has garnered wide attention in both science and journalism circles. Why is an important discussion.

It is a discussion that I think is critical to our democracy….

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I think it is so funny when I get a death threat (or two or three) from some guy, then later, I get invited to join his network on Linked In.

I suppose my email must have been in his gmail account or something and Linked In sent out a bunch of automatic invitations.

And now, it gets funnier: There is a new thing called “WAYN” for “Where are you now,” which must be a little like Linked In. And, once again, Death Threat Guy is inviting me to be part of his network on WAYN.

Which reminds me of a funny thing that happened the other day. Someone sent me an email he had received, asking for my address (never mind why that email was sent to him, if you knew the details it would make sense). So, after getting the forwarded email, I sent the original sender a note that said “why do you want to know my address?” and the response was a breathless rant about how I must think he’s going to do something bad to me if he has my address, and why am I so paranoid about being contacted by an anonymous stranger who wants my address but won’t say why, who indicates he wants to “send me something” but can’t name the “thing” and on and on.

So, just so everyone knows, I’m heavily armed, I collect automatic weapons, I have four trained attack dogs, and I live across the street from the police station. Oh, and the booby traps. I’m not even going to mention them.

Dick Clark’s American Bandstand ran from 1957 to 1987, and Clark hosted ABC’s version of New Years Eve from 1972 until 2003 or 4. Clark died of a heart attack. He was born in 1929.