Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

Good Morning Andrew,

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In this morning's New York Times headlines, ''Astronomers Say a Disk of Dust Holds a Clue to Birth of Planets.'' Three years ago, scientists learned that other suns also have planets. Now they think they are actually able to understand how planets are formed from stellar debris. According to the paper, it's looking more and more likely that there is life on other planets.

Are you with me in adding outer space to our list of boring subjects? Last year I wrote a column in The Nation confessing that I didn't care what kind of rocks Mars had and neither did anyone else I knew. Wrong again-it turned out almost everyone I knew found this sort of information utterly fascinating, and many of them wrote in to say so.

Now, archeology, on the other hand-there's a science. Today's New York Times obituary page carries an article about Linda Schele (only 55, very sad), who as a young studio art teacher paid a visit to Mexico for Christmas in l970 and fell in love with the Mayan ruins. By l973 she knew so much, that in three hours working with an undergraduate, she was able to decipher Mayan inscriptions that had baffled scholars for decades. It turns out that the Mayans were not, as previously thought, a nation of dreamy stargazers but (the old story!) violent enthusiasts of war, torture, human sacrifice and painful blood-letting rituals, ''whose king was required to stick a rod through the shaft of his own penis on ceremonial occasions.'' Sounds like Performance Art Night at the Mineshaft.

Cheers,
Katha

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