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Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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The friends list

Re Atwal Says He Is Friendly With Trudeau (Feb. 26): I wouldn't put too much stock in a photo of Jaspal Atwal with Justin Trudeau. Over the past 10 years, Mr. Trudeau will have had his picture taken with thousands of people, many of whom he didn't know. It's his trade mark.

I also wouldn't rely on the word of a man who belonged to a terrorist group and was convicted of attempted murder. I expect the truth is that Mr. Trudeau doesn't remember meeting him and had no idea who he was.

However, that doesn't excuse the sloppy security. How on earth could a man convicted of trying to kill someone have been invited to any government function? Who is handling security for the PMO these days, the Keystone Cops?

Garth M. Evans, Vancouver

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Too well heeled?

So the Finance Minister's new budget-day footwear is a pair of shoes designed by Edmonton-based Poppy Barley (Federal Budget, Feb. 26). I checked out the price: $400. I would hazard a guess that is a price that only 1 per cent of the population could afford. Is this really the message Bill Morneau wants to be sending?

Andrew Leith Macrae, Toronto

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Finance Minister Bill Morneau's new shoes retail for $400 and are made in Mexico. Discuss.

Howard Levine, Toronto

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Stopped by the police

Re Driving While Black – In Canada (Feb. 26): I don't think Marci Ien, as a black woman, inhabits quite as different a universe as she thinks she does when it comes to her treatment by traffic police. As a 58-year-old white male who's been stopped his share of times over the years for various driving infractions, my own experience is indistinguishable from hers:

Followed for some distance before being pulled over? Check.

Told by the cop to remain in the vehicle? Check.

Asked if I am the owner of the vehicle? Check.

Asked where I lived and how far I was from home? Check.

Issued a ticket? Yes. That part of the story is different. Ms. Ien was let off with a warning: I've been charged every single time.

Ms. Ien said she was questioned by the officer but had "broken no law." Rolling through a flashing red stop light is breaking the law.

John Bech-Hansen, Toronto

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Global cascade

Re Doomsday Is (Not) Coming (Opinion Section, Feb. 24): Steven Pinker quotes my 2003 book, Our Final Hour, as having "laid out some dozen ways in which we have 'endangered the future of the entire universe.' "

This is misleading. I indeed mentioned two such ideas (one from a physicist, Sidney Coleman, who was, like Mr. Pinker, a Harvard professor) and gave reasons why these could be ruled out. Indeed, no natural catastrophes from beyond the Earth need cause sleepless nights. They're all improbable; more importantly, their probability is no higher now than it was for the Neanderthals.

What we should worry about are threats that are newly emergent this century: changes to climate and the biosphere caused by a larger and more demanding population, and events caused by individuals and small groups so greatly empowered by bio- and cyber technology that they could, by error or terror, cascade globally.

I agree with Prof. Pinker that wallowing in gloom is unhelpful. But so is denial.

Prof. Pinker derides the small groups in some leading universities addressing these threats. But even if they're unlikely, the stakes are so high that these groups surely earn their keep if they can even marginally reduce them.

To quote one of Harvard's most eminent professors, the great ecologist Edward Wilson: "If we cause mass extinctions, it's the sin that future generations will least forgive us for."

Martin Rees, Cambridge, England

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The murder of children

Re How Guns Became Part Of The American Identity (Feb. 26): American society has developed cognitive dissonance when it comes to guns and death.

If gun ownership and purchase is akin to "souping up" a car, and not something to be seen as an escalation in enhancing a means to murder, something is amiss in the human psyche.

It is unnatural to allow the murder of children. It is abhorrent to protect the rights of gun owners at the expense of victims of violence. For a nation that purports to be guided by family values, religion and morality, there is a notable silence from faith groups on the matter of guns and killing.

Members of Congress who are gun owners and under the financial thumb of the NRA need to be outed as enablers in the denial of the relationship between guns and violence.

Diane Sullivan, Toronto

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Games, gains, pains

Re From Milquetoast To Boasts: Success Has Changed Us (front page, Feb. 26): Cathal Kelly wins the gold medal for cynicism. He epitomizes a glass-half-empty outlook: He cobbles together a few unfortunate events and somehow concludes that Canadian athletes are now the "ugly Americans?" Really?

It's shameful to put this shallow negativity on the front page. It's also insulting to all the athletes and coaches who worked so hard to prepare for the Olympics.

The Globe and Mail's own editorial – Podium, Owned – takes a much more balanced and positive view of the past two wonderful weeks.

Carl Esterhazy, Toronto

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I hate to rain on your Olympic parade, but your editorial is stretching things a bit to claim that Canada's crusade to "own the podium" was successful because we came third in the medal count. In the real world, the podium is "owned" by whoever comes first. Thankfully, the Norwegians, who won the most medals as well as the most gold, have too much class to talk like that.

Lee Eustace, Toronto

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I am glad the Olympics are over. There, I said it. I can hear the gasps. I don't care. I don't care that Canada won 29 medals. I don't care that Russian athletes competed. I don't care that hockey went to shootouts, and that an athlete who won silver petulantly refused to wear the medal.

I do care that countries lavish fortunes on a 16-day spectacle while education, health care and infrastructure go without. The Olympics have become a vulgar show of excess. These are only games. Stop the craziness, please!

Daina Di Veto, Lynden, Ont.

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If there is a gold medal for comical writerly coruscation on the Korean Olympics, it goes to Cathal Kelly (My Moment Of Olympic Stardom, Feb 26).

Alban Goddard Hill, Belleville, Ont.

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Cathal Kelly, commenting on Canada's new Olympic marketing pitch "Virtue and Victory," says "what does virtue have to do with victory"? In Scott and Tessa's case, I would say quite a lot!

Jim Duholke, North Vancouver

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