Marjorie:
That asteroid shouldn’t be named Eros; it should be named Spud.
I think NASA desperately needs one of the unmanned (“unpiloted”) missions to work well. Dan Goldin (the head of NASA and kind enough to give me many interviews for my book) put so much emphasis on faster, better, cheaper, and we’ve now seen what cheaper can get you–spacecraft debris on Mars. I’m glad they named NEAR after Gene Shoemaker, who died a couple of years ago in a car crash in the Australian outback and was one of the premier planetary scientists in the world. He never was as famous as Carl Sagan, but he was greatly beloved by his colleagues. If I’m not mistaken, he was one of the first people to argue persuasively that the craters on the moon were from impacts, not volcanoes. I always have great admiration for anyone who figures out what the heck we’re looking at when we examine the world (or other worlds).
Marjorie, why did you have to mention the Times again? You know I don’t read that sorry, non-prize-winning paper. But my first thought about today’s story on Microsoft/Reed was that it makes no sense to hire Ralph Reed to lobby George W. Bush since Bush is merely the governor of Texas and is not likely to get a promotion. Gore will win by five to eight percentage points in the fall. I’m on record saying this, and I see no reason to back off, especially since no one cares what I say anyway (more online journalism freedom!). It seems to me that Bush has a fatal flaw as a candidate, in that he loses support the more actively he campaigns. He’s literally repellent. (And incidentally, isn’t it the general wisdom here in town that lobbyists are actually wildly overrated, that they don’t get much accomplished, at least nothing that’s commensurate with what they’re paid?)
Back to Saylor for a moment: Isn’t it true that he wants to wire people up so that they have little voices in their ears giving them stock prices and weather reports and warning them that the Safeway just up ahead is currently occupied by a spree killer who previously had been merely seething? This strikes me as technology no one needs. Of course, I’m still not entirely sold on cell phones. I found a cell phone invaluable when I went on a recent reporting trip and was never in one place–the cell phone was the only way anyone could reliably reach me–but otherwise they seem somewhat virulent in our society at the moment. “Hang Up and Drive” was a bumper sticker I just saw.
What we need, I think, are strategies for getting unwired, not vice versa. I feel as though I spend way too much time plugged into the Matrix. Writing my online column only intensifies the problem, because no matter what I do, I have to bring a laptop, so I can constantly feed the online maw. It’s amazing how New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, and Minneapolis look exactly alike when you’re in a hotel room trying to find the local AOL access number. Sometimes when I get to work and have to write my column and have a blank screen in front of me, the only thing I can think to write is:
“I am a 39-year-old white man and have spent my entire life indoors, typing.”
I’ll just write that over and over, thousands of times. I am Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
Yours,
Joel
