Eureka! Super relativity
To The Editor:
Re “Art and science” (news brief, May 26):
As an alternative to quantum theory, there is a new theory that describes and explains the mysteries of physical reality, while not disrespecting the value of quantum mechanics as a tool to explain the role of quanta in our universe. This theory states that there is also a classical explanation for the paradoxes such as E.P.R. (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox) and the wave-particle duality; it’s called the theory of super relativity. This theory is a philosophical attempt to reconnect the physical universe to realism and deterministic concepts. It explains the mysterious.
M.M. Fiore
Concerned about arrest
To The Editor:
On the night of May 7 at approximately 8:30, I was walking down Second Ave. between Fifth and Fourth Sts. in the East Village, when I saw two police officers stop an elderly and very frail blind woman with a cane. It was the sort of cane that blind folks use to feel their path before them, not to lean on. The police were questioning her about whether she had hit anyone with the cane. When she became upset and tried to walk on, one officer took her cane away and put her arms in a grip, while calling for backup. The woman continued to complain, saying she lived just around the corner and wanted to go home, demanding her cane back, and trying to reach for it on the wall where the officer had placed it. The officer taunted her, “If you’re blind, how do you know where your cane is?”
A patrol car and an ambulance showed up, as I continued to watch, along with a young woman who had also stopped. When the young woman asked what was going on, the officer asked her, “Do you want to get arrested?”
When the blind woman saw the ambulance, she began to struggle, and the officer responded by putting her in handcuffs. When she was placed in the ambulance, I approached and asked why she had been stopped. The officer replied that they had received a call that she had been hitting pedestrians with her cane.
This struck me as extremely unlikely. Before her hands were placed in a grip, she had repeatedly told the police, “My doctor told me to do this,” while making the motion of feeling the path in front of her with a sweep of her cane. It occurred to me that perhaps she had accidentally hit a pedestrian in the ankle while doing this (being blind, after all), thereby precipitating the complaint.
When I asked where she was being taken, the officer said Bellevue, and the E.M.T. told me, “Mind your own business.” The officer added something to the effect that she needed to be off the street because she hit someone with her cane. When I said that I didn’t see her hit anyone, the officer responded, “You didn’t see Osama bin Laden kill thousands of people, but you believe it, don’t you?”
When I got home, I called Bellevue, but was told that they couldn’t help me if I didn’t have the woman’s name. Not having the name of either the blind woman or the officer in question puts me in a poor position to follow through on this. However, there must be a record that this incident happened.
It is reprehensible that an elderly and disabled woman can be forcibly taken away like this on what appears to be hearsay (unless there were actual charges filed in the putative cane attack). It is also reprehensible that police treat citizens with contempt when they simply try to watch out for their fellow citizens.
I want to know what happened to the blind woman. I have filed a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board regarding this incident.
Bill Weinberg
Kovacs was the real deal
To The Editor:
Re “Ernie Kovacs still amuses, influences, amazes” (arts article, May 26):
Ernie Kovacs was a visionary. He was the first to realize that great art could be created within the 19-inch confines of an ugly box with a glass tube at its center. Unfortunately for humanity, he’s gone and he’s not coming back.
Thank God for Edie Adams. Because she had the foresight to save her husband’s work, we now have these kinescopes and videotapes to gently remind us what once was.
Tom Degan
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