_______________PLAY MONEY BY ANDREW LEONARD (09/30/98)
	Congratulations! Salon blows the lid off another scandal, namely that not every worker with stock options gets rich. The dirty little secret is that the company must actually be successful for it to work. And don't forget the outrageous practice of vesting, that is, requiring employees to invest time and effort in a company before sharing in its success. As someone who ended up with worthless options back during the "class of '86," I would say the real golden age was two years ago, when the speculative bubble in the stock market sent every IPO with "Internet" in its prospectus through the roof, regardless of worth. I too would be angry at receiving Lycos stock, when I was banking on a lucrative WhoWhere IPO. However, most start-ups simply go bankrupt and something is better than nothing. Despite recent market shudders, stock options are still a good idea. Employees must see them for what they are (and always were): risks and not entitlements. -- Fred Maslin Last year, my husband and I moved to Sunnyvale, Calif., from Ashburn, Va., so that I could work for a start-up company, Actra Business Systems. Five weeks after I started on the job, the company was sold to Netscape. Andrew Leonard's article was very accurate. Actra stock options were converted to Netscape options in a 6 to 1 ratio. Very soon after Netscape took over Actra, the bottom dropped out of Netscape's stock price. The whole thing was like an unending boondoggle. Also, his article is dead on in stating that in some start-ups greed gets in the way of developing a quality product. When I moved out here last year I was naive enough to think that a start-up was a small group of people all committed to an idealistic goal of developing the next killer app. The reality was that very few people were committed to making the best product, the majority were focused on justifying the product's deficiencies with the excuse that other products in the same class were even worse. I no longer work for a start-up. I still have an idealistic desire to work with a small group of folks in an environment that evidences "esprit de corps," but not for less pay and some meaningless promises known as stock options. -- Susan Yergovich
_______________HER SIREN THONG BY SHELLEY YOUNGBLUT (09/29/98)
	To paraphrase an old song, "The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on!" -- Jerry Kirkpatrick I'm glad I'm not the only person who cannot believe Monica Lewinsky can simply raise the back of her jacket and show her thong. It simply isn't possible unless the thong waistline is about her ribcage. The alternative to thongs is a seamless, "no show" panty that also prevents panty lines with much more material than a thong. (I believe both Warners, Bali and probably Victoria's Secret makes them.) Large-bottomed women tend to wear thongs simply because they tend to have panty lines. There's nothing too sexy about it; it's about looking as good as possible in clothes built for women shaped like adolescent boys. We do what we can with what we have. And if being sexy is the result, so be it. -- Adrienne Eng
_______________RUSHDIE: FREE AT LAST BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (09/29/98)
	I think Christopher Hitchens is the wittiest man on earth. How about more of his writings? -- Shirley Diederich A small point seems to have slipped past Christopher Hitchens, and most of the rest of us: He makes reference to one stray cruise missile that fell on Pakistani soil during the assault on bin Laden's purported Afghani stronghold. But in late August it was reported that a second missile was found in Pakistan. I don't know if it's true (remember, the Pakistanis also initially claimed that a stray cruise missile killed six civilians, and then retracted the story). But you'd think that news calling into grave question the vaunted pinpoint accuracy of our Tomahawks would have been reported somewhere in the U.S. -- Ralph Bonheim Christopher Hitchens raises the alarming possibility of nuclear war. He surmised that nuclear war between India and Pakistan could have been triggered by U.S. cruise missiles flying over Pakistan on their way to training camp targets in Afghanistan. While the risk of nuclear war is certainly something we should still worry about generally, I believe Defense Secretary Cohen was probably correct in not informing the Pakistanis ahead of time because of some technical points in his favor. 1. Cruise missiles do not fly ballistic trajectories. If detected by Pakistan (and that's even doubtful), they'd more closely resemble low-flying aircraft posing a less serious threat. 2. Their paths wouldn't suggest launch from Indian soil. 3. The cruise missiles were over Pakistani territory for a relatively short period of time, and anyone watching would have seen them exit that territory just as fast as they entered. If public reports are to be believed, we can all thank our preferred deities that India and Pakistan are not both nuclear powers with ballistic missile delivery systems on hair-trigger alert (unlike some major powers). And both countries seem to be taking steps back from the brink. Actually, the author maybe should have pointed out another potential threat perhaps exacerbated by the U.S. cruise missile attack: Third world countries, including Pakistan, might wish to develop and acquire their own cruise missiles for use against their adversaries. Feasible? Well, in one little-noticed experiment this summer, an unmanned aircraft costing about $15,000 managed to cross the Atlantic on two gallons of gasoline. A small private company accomplished this impressive feat. Not a "bad" way to deliver a biological weapon across an ocean on the cheap, is it? -- Timothy F. Sipples Chicago
_______________THE PRESIDENT AS LAB RAT BY GARY WOLF (09/25/98)
	Gary Wolf is right: Clinton's public evisceration is a test -- one that should send chills down the spine of the most dedicated Clinton-hater or "conservative." That's what's so shocking: If this can be done to the (supposedly) most powerful man in the world, who's safe? The release of the tapes and transcripts from the grand jury is a crime (literally), an outrage, a violation of every principle of American jurisprudence. Lawyers I know are stunned. But I've read nary a word about the ramifications of this breathtaking violation of rights, privacy and decency. We've jumped off a cliff into a bold new totalitarian future in which every one of us is essentially defenseless. Suddenly the European Internet privacy law seems very wise. Clinton is indeed a hero for withstanding the lab tests of this "research," a fact lost on all the well-meaning but intellectually limited editors who've called for his resignation. At some point the gamma rays of this inquisition will reflect back and incinerate the persecutors (which diarrhetic council Ginsburg innately knew and the footsteps of which Horowitz hears in his smarmy second thoughts). The era of total surveillance should give everyone a long pause, which of course will be carefully recorded. -- Michael Hammerschlag Maui, Hawaii SALON | Oct. 2, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| RUNNING WITH THE HADZA BY ERIC SEYFARTH

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