Re: Duke-UNC basketball

Dukies quoting ACC basketball statistics [“Positive hate,” Nov. 21] are always entertaining partly because of the amount of misinformation in Duke’s favor one finds there, apparently aided by a lack of fact checking at the Indy.

The author wrote that the number of ACC championships won is in Duke’s favor, 29-19. The 29-19 figure is not in Duke’s favor, but UNC’s, if we are referring to ACC regular season championships.

The author also wrote that Duke is 37-37 against UNC during the Coach K era. Coach K is 37-37 against UNC. However, the 32 years of the Coach K era also includes 1995 when Duke went 0-2 against UNC. The NCAA declared, after the fact and in contradiction of past practice, that Coach K did not have responsibility for those losses. But Duke does. So during the Coach K era Duke has a losing record against UNC, 37-39.

Joe Cowan
Durham

Re: JFK, Oswald & Raleigh

I’ve never been a Kennedy assassination buff [“JFK, Oswald and the Raleigh connection,” Nov. 14]. Nevertheless, I remember a number of facts that count against the theory that Kennedy and Oswald were assassinated by the CIA.

For example, Marina Oswald said her husband told her he had taken a pot shot at the conservative and racist general Edwin Walker. That doesn’t fit the narrative of a disciplined CIA operative who was a fake defector in the Soviet Union. Of course, one could claim that Marina was pressured or bribed to say this. It is a feature of conspiracy theories that to maintain them, one has to bring more and more people into the conspiracy.

Then there is the Jack Ruby problem. Ruby killed Oswald in a police station in front of witnesses. According to Victor Marchetti, that was the CIA’s way of silencing Oswald. But what could Ruby’s motivation have been? He had no chance of escaping. On the Marchetti theory, his act was utterly sacrificial. On the other hand, in conversation he had been worshipping Jack and Jackie Kennedy for years. And he was an impulsively violent man. He once beat someone into unconsciousness in public and then said, “Did I do this?” Furthermore, Kennedy’s trip to Dallas was a campaign event that didn’t have to happen. Ruby often hung around the station and was well tolerated by the police, which is how he had access to Oswald. It is bizarre to think that the CIA, years in advance, planted a devoted agent, a local businessman, in Dallas and told him to cultivate the police, just in case they someday wanted him to kill someone for them.

Lawrence Stern
Chapel Hill