Oops

Regarding the article by the Cookes, I would like to make a small correction. Their statement that Mt. Rainier is the highest mountain in the contiguous 48 states is in error. The highest is Mt. Whitney. As an airline captain who flew that route years ago, I pointed out this fact. TOM PRIOR Encino

Clippers point guard Chris Paul grabbed a loose ball during the second quarter of Tuesday's game against Charlotte and tossed it downcourt from the the opposing three-point line. The ball flew 70 feet and landed squarely in the hands of a flying Blake Griffin, who dunked the ball. After the game, Paul described the long-distance alley-oop play with his signature humility. "It was almost an accident," Paul said. "Everyone is going to think I did that on purpose, but I threw the ball just for him to catch it and take a dribble and dunk it, but I guess he saw an opportunity to not take a dribble.

Ollie Oops! CLAYTON W. HOOKER Huntington Beach

Eric Trine , the Oregon artist whose cool technicolor latticed leather chairs won fans at the downtown Los Angeles store Poketo last year, is returning to L.A. this weekend. This time Trine is collaborating with illustrator Will Bryant , and the two Portland-based artists are calling the showing and sale of their work "Alley-Oop. " The designs premiere at an opening reception Saturday at Poketo. The collection includes beach chair versions of Trine's original latticed design, as well as wall hangings, mug cozies and graphic tees ($12 to $30 apiece)

Now that the primaries are over, from now on it'll be just Gush and Bore--oops! I meant Bush and Gore. PAUL SOMMER Studio City

Canada is great and the recent Calgary Stampede is a winner, too. An "oops" reminder for Southland motorists who may be driving in Canada this summer: Be careful as you approach the Trans-Canada Highway from a merging access on-ramp in Calgary. There is no parallel feed-in strip. You go directly into the right-hand lane. When a speeding car is approaching, it's disaster time. That's why I said "oops." Yes, the Good Lord was on my side, fortunately. MIKE WELDS Fullerton

I see where Alex Rodriguez and Eric Gagne have developed serious injuries that will keep them out of action for several months. I know of a drug they can take to facilitate the healing process. Oops, that may not be a good idea. Ralph S. Brax Lancaster

Re: "The Best Way to Do It" (editorial, Sept. 21): You guys are truly the gang that can't think straight. Certainly illegal immigration is best checked at the border. All illegal acts are best checked before they occur, but once they do occur, they should be checked where they can be checked, and if that means rounding up illegals in our cities and towns, then that's just the way it has to be. You guys seem to advocate a safe zone for criminals: Oops, you didn't catch me at the border, so now you can't do anything.

It is difficult for me to understand what Microsoft has done. I have used a computer for 10 years. Never have I had any trouble with Microsoft. I have had trouble getting online; this was because AOL sold too much time, too fast to accommodate customers. Where have the antitrust boys been when my grocery store was gobbled up? Oops, there goes another grocery store! Where were they when my bank was taken over? Oops, there goes another bank branch! Not once or twice but three times.

It was just great watching opening Sunday night baseball, with Derek Lowe pitching for the Braves. He went eight innings, giving up no runs. Yep, we sure wouldn't want him on the Dodgers. We got CC Sabathia . . . oops, no. We got Jake Peavy . . . uh, no. Well, we got Jeff Weaver . . . never mind. Patrick Drohan Monrovia

Jamaal Franklin, a 6-5 guard at San Diego State, did something Wednesday night that you rarely see in an organized game of basketball, be it on the college or pro level: He threw down a dunk by passing it to himself off the backboard. Very impressive stuff considering he was running at full speed in transition and decided to make the pass from the three-point line. Some bloggers are calling it the dunk of the year. ESPN's SportsCenter made it the No. 1 highlight on Wednesday night.

R.C. Owens had an up-and-down career as a receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. The ball went up, and Owens routinely came down with it. Owens, whose leaping catches became his signature and introduced the term "alley oop" into the sports lexicon, died of kidney failure June 17 in Manteca, south of Stockton. He was 77. "There were numerous games when he'd jump up and score the winning touchdown," recalled Bob St. Clair, a tackle and captain on 49ers teams in the 1950s.

WASHINGTON - Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, preparing for the upcoming Supreme Court decision on healthcare reform, covered all of his bases in preparing four videos to respond to various potential verdicts  - but his cover was blown when his campaign accidentally uploaded all four to his YouTube account. Oh, that simple-to-use technology. In what can be described as a contingency plan gone wrong, Mourdock's YouTube channel was meant to host one video depending on next week's ruling: If the court ruled in favor of President Obama's healthcare reform law, if it struck down some provisions but preserved others, if it ruled the entire law unconstitutional, and if the court's ruling is inconclusive.

Orlando Woolridge, the rugged forward and former Laker who carved out a reputation over 13 NBA seasons as a scoring specialist and became one of the original alley-oop artists, has died. He was 52. Woolridge, who was with the Lakers from 1988 to 1990, died Thursday at his parents' home in Mansfield, La. He had been receiving hospice care for a chronic heart condition, according to the local coroner's office. Drafted by the Chicago Bulls in the first round in 1981, Woolridge spent five seasons with the team.

A year ago, soon after the Tunisian uprising, I demonstrated my powers of prediction in a column about the democracy movement in the Arab world. The revolution in Tunisia, I wrote, "arose from local circumstances that don't foretell what will happen anywhere else. " Three weeks later, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak fell, and the Arab Spring was in full bloom. This brings me to the subject of today's column: A confession of my year's errors and omissions (along with a mention of one or two things I got right)

Numbers. They're the darnedest things. Just ask Rick Perry. The GOP presidential contender, whose misfires have become part of the legend of the 2012 race, appears to have made another flub or two Friday in an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, getting wrong the number of justices on the Supreme Court and blanking out on the name of one justice altogether. According to reports by the Register and the Associated Press, Perry was all set to call out Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama nominee, as a "activist judge" -- except he couldn't recall her name.

Tax idea is a clunker Re "Warning issued on business tax," Nov. 9 L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is advocating for an end to city business taxes on new-car dealerships. I have a fundraising consulting business here and pay my business taxes every year at the highest rate. The city picks winners and losers when it decides that one kind of business deserves a break and another does not. Why do new-car dealerships deserve to pay no business taxes? I have raised more than $116 million for nonprofit organizations.

To hear some analysts, GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry's brain freeze during Wednesday's economics debate was a disaster for his campaign. For instance, political commentator Larry J. Sabato said: "To my memory, Perry's forgetfulness is the most devastating moment of any modern primary debate. " But there are other things about Perry's performance, and his candidacy in general, that are more worrisome than a momentary memory lapse, however embarrassing. It was certainly excruciating to watch Perry struggle to name the third government agency he would abolish: "I would do away with the Education, the Commerce and — let's see — I can't.