Yes, it's review time this weekend. First up is the werkz take on the Washington production of Stones in His Pockets. The concept was cool, and the execution good, although one major flaw did persist throughout. Read the review for more! Next, we have a quick look at the latest Jackie Chan movie, Shanghai Knights. A light hearted movie that most people seemed to think was appropriate for ten year old boys. I probably wouldn't bring pre-teens to the movie (it is rated PG-13) but for your average 20-something it's a greay way to burn a couple hours. Hopefully I'm not dating myself too much. So stop reading this and get to the theatre, movie or otherwise!

werkz advice: go see it in the theatre, but it will be still good on dvd.

I admit it. I like Jackie Chan movies. They're all mostly cheesy, yet the stunts are spectacular, the fight choreography hilarious and the whole effort is kind of like a modern day version of the three stooges. In 'Shanghai Knights' the sequel to 'Shanghai Noon', Chan and Owen Wilson provide a great chemistry together and make the film a fairly humorous sequel. It picks up shortly after the former leaves off, though quickly moves to England, where the two main characters must recover an imperial seal, prevent a royal bloodbath and find true love.

As in all in all Chan movies, the plot is secondary to the fight scenes, yet like Noon, Knights manages to weave together fairly funny wordplay in addition to amusing ladder/box/knife altercations. Wilson and Chan are comparable to Hope and Crosby (if Bing's trick was kung-fu, rather than singing!) in the buddy-guy genre, which is a difficult to master type of film. Too often sappy sentiment gets in the way of madcap mayhem in most modern movies of this nature, but director David Dobkin manages to keep things lighthearted and moving along. In the end, as the always amusing movie outtakes roll over the credits, one can't help but laugh along. Another Chan classic has concluded.

werkz advice: good first act, lackluster second.

There aren't too many ways in which I'm pop-culturally illiterate. Network television, unfortunately, seems to be one of those gaps, especially growing up as a kid. So I never saw ABC's "Perfect Strangers"...or Balki, played by Bronson Pinchot. He's now part of a one-two combo of fairly gifted actors starring in a version of "Stones in his Pockets", a fairly succesfull London play about a movie filmed in Ireland, and the adventures of two extras on the set. The rub? A local boy-dreamer commits suicide, and on stage, both main actors play every role (at least a dozen different characters between the two of them).

If this sounds complex, it is. The sheer feat of two guys playing a bunch of different people with no costume or lighting changes was incredible. Sure, it's a gimmick, but it's a good one in the hands of Pinchot and his co-star, Tim Ruddy. Both are able to generate plenty of laughs throughout the performance. The real downer, sad to say, is the actual plot. The mad-cap insanity of the first act is tempered by the death of a local kid who dreamed too large for the small town, who ends his life Woolf style in a river. Each time the mood grew somber, somethings seemed wrong, as one of the characters themselves mouthed "People don't watch movies to be depressed...that's what the theatre is for!" I love self-referential humor, yet the show was quite amusing and the moments of sobriety seemed out of joint.

Pinchot, despite being incredibly funny, also lost focus a bit near the end of the second act, his faux-irish accent becoming increasingly ethereal. Of course, given the sheer number of scenes, characters and voices employed by both men, keeping it up for an entire performance is probably a hit and miss arrangement. (Interestingly, the understudy was billed as being able to play either part...a feat in and of itself.) In the end, Stones falls flat on the drama scale, but still scores well for humor. I'm not sure how the London version managed to keep people amused during the second act, but if it were up to me, I'd probably have kept things lighthearted and the audience rolling in the aisles. It may not be a movie, but some audiences like laughter on the stage as well.

Until recently, I didn't think that there was a large orthodox Jewish community in the district. I still don't. But if you want to see where they could (and do) eat lunch, I just posted a review of Stacks, a kosher deli a few blocks away from my workplace. I'm not that big a fan of the meat and cheese separation bit, or of the lousy service, but they do pile a great deal of meat onto your sandwich, eclipsing the tiny portions to be found at Potbellies. (Which also takes credit-cards, an edward fav for lunch establishments.) Perhaps Stacks will attract a more diverse community to the area. Read the review. Buy the board game.

werkz advice: if you've got time and money, try it.

Imagine you could create the perfect deli. You'd put it right around the corner, have it serve cheap sandwiches that were piled high with meats and cheese, rapid service that always knew your name and made things just the way you liked it, even during the busy lunch hour, plus the ability to pay with a credit card at the end. Now remove three of those items but add one not listed. Confused?

Stacks Deli is only a few blocks away from my workplace, and offers great sandwiches piled high with meat. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your religious preference) it's kosher, which means no mixing meat and cheese. Grr. Despite the lack of cheese, the sheer amount of meat piled onto each sandwich is a great idea. Plus, you can pay with a credit card, which is nice considering that all the sandwiches are quite pricey. If my review ended there, I'd definitely say stacks was worth the extra cash.

Unfortunately, both times I've visted Stacks, around 1:00pm, near the tail of the lunchtime rush, the service has been abysmal. Despite the fact that only a few people were ordering sandwiches to go, and the restaurant side was half-empty, each sandwich took 10-15 minutes. While there, other customers who had ordered such easy-to-hand-over items like a cookie, also had to wait at least ten minutes. Both times, the Stacks employees have mostly been on a lunch break, which begs the questions: why have your employees take lunch at a lunch place? Why not simply have them start their shift later or earlier and have them eat lunch at a time like 2:00pm or 11:00am? Or why not have enough employees to serve lunch at the same speed, regardless of who is on shift? Both times I was second in line, so I didn't have to wait over 15 minutes to get my sandwich (or the aforementioned cookie incident, which left one patrom swearing loudly to all within earshot about the service) but it was still frustrating to have managers walk over evry five minutes, inspect my receipt and say "it should be ready in a minute" when everyone could easily see that the one woman working was in no way capable of preparing ten different orders within a minute.

In the end, if you like kosher food, hit Stacks. If you've got the time to burn and the money to spend, it's probably worth it. But bring your own cheese.

After my earlier disappointment with Toles, I was glad to see him return to fine form. Yes, I know I'm image poaching. But that terry tate movie is taking up too much server space, so I'm conserving what little I have left. If for some reason the graphic doesn't appear, just click this link to see it properly. The snow has picked up again, which makes me in an even better mood than before. Between the cartoon, the snow and the sandwich I made this morning which I'm about to eat, I'm flying high.

Dana Milbank is awesome.

Example one: today's piece in the post pointing out the administration's illogicity. They capped civil servants pay raises, forced the rest of the government to (absurdly) stay below 4.1% growth in spending, all while proposing huge tax cuts. They forgot to mention that the White House itself would be receiving more money than ever. Let's roll the highlight tape:

While demanding that the federal government restrain its spending to a 4.1 percent increase in 2004, the Bush White House has assigned itself a more lenient standard: It has proposed a 9.3 percent increase in funding for the ongoing operations of the White House.

President Bush has proposed holding discretionary spending (excluding programs such as Social Security and Medicare) to $782.2 billion, a 4.1 percent increase.

"I will send you a budget that increases discretionary spending by 4 percent next year -- about as much as the average family's income is expected to grow," the president said in his State of the Union address last month. "And that is a good benchmark for us. Federal spending should not rise any faster than the paychecks of American families."

Among the various White House departments, the Office of Administration -- which includes information technology, procurement and other support functions -- would receive a 10.1 percent increase. The Office of Management and Budget would get a 9.3 percent boost, while funding for the U.S. Trade Representative would rise 14.5 percent.

The only unit scheduled for a cut in funding is the White House Office of Policy Development.

The Bush administration's budget would hold the category covering the expenses and salaries of the president's top aides to a 3.7 percent increase.

The line about the policy development program is priceless. Be sure to read the entire work, but once again Mr. Milbank has cut right to the heart of the matter. Where's example two you ask? Why, it's also in today's Post. Surprise! In this choice article, Dana examines how Bush blantantly lied about his numbers in the State of the Union speech. Onca again, some choice selections from a must-read piece:

Yesterday, Bush burnished his green credentials by promoting an initiative to produce hydrogen-powered cars. "I'm asking Congress to spend $1.2 billion on a new national commitment to take hydrogen fuel cell cars from the laboratory to the showroom," Bush, echoing his State of the Union address, said after examining fuel cell technologies at the National Building Museum.

But a fact sheet distributed yesterday by the White House stated that $720 million of the $1.2 billion is in "new funding." The rest -- 40 percent -- is what the government is already spending on fuel cell development.

In his address, Bush proposed spending $15 billion to combat AIDS overseas over five years. He said $10 billion of that would be in new funds.

But his 2004 budget plan called for spending $1 billion -- of which $450 million would be new funding, OMB said. The increase was partially offset by a reduced commitment to another foreign aid program. The budget proposal fell about $400 million short of the $1.7 billion that Bush had pledged for his Millennium Challenge Fund.

Is his televised address, the president said his budget "will propose almost $6 billion" to build up antidotes to bioterrorism agents. But overall spending for the National Institutes of Health, which handles much of the government's bioterrorism research and which Bush visited Monday to highlight his budget, would receive no increase in funding in 2004 when adjusted for inflation.

There are tons of other great moments from the latter piece, so be sure to check it out. A great one-two combo from Milbank and the Post.

There are few things more compelling than a chilly evening in the district, with snow on the ground and buckets more raining down from the sky. It was a distinct pleasure to find inches of white stuff growing on the ground during my attendance at a theatre performance. Even better, to awake this morning and find it still snowing, with about six inches covering everything. I walked to work to appreciate it, and it was great.

Nicely, only two other people made it into the office.

So I'm going to work today and I couldn't get two songs out of my head: Scheherazade by Rimsky Korsakov and Superunknown off the album of the same name. Needless to say, I'm in a good mood. And I'm even at work! One of these days I'll get my own office and be blasting music 24-7 inside. Just you wait...

To clairfy my earlier statement, it's not that I don't think Powell laid out evidence that was orders of magnitude better than our president, it's just that the evidence seemed a little shallow. Let's ignore HUMINT (all those "reliable sources") and focus on the imagery and SIGINT. The first conversation recorded was clearly the more damning of the two: a clear directive that something inappropriate was going on. But the heart of the discussion? A "modified vehicle", from the evil workshop, you know. Was it just me or did it sound like some sort of weird toy factory? As for the vehicle itself, it sounded like someone had lowered their pick up truck and attached some nitrous and was worried that the cops might catch them drag racing. Still, something was obviously going on that it shouldn't have....begin rant.

This in a country run by a CRAZED MADMAN.

That's what I keep running though my head: the guy murdered thousands of his own people. Yet we're focusing on two army officials talking about modified vehicles? End rant. Back to the evidence. The second signal intercepted was much harder to decipher. Someone was telling someone else to clean out a rubbish yard and then to destroy said message. Not much detail, overall. Something bad, right? Because otherwise they wouldn't want to destroy the message. Of course, North Korea is flaunting the fact that they pulled out of a nuclear non-prof agreement and are now building weapons grade plutonium with no answer from us. No answer? Why the disconnect between NK and Iraq? Sure, we were shown satellite imagery of possible chemical weapons bunkers. Yet the "after" pictures, which should have shown the bunkers without the decontamination vehicle or the security box, mainly showed the UN convoy approaching. What was in those bunkers? Clearly, the Iraqis would have had to say something, right?

Far more damaging, in my mind, were the images of convoys of trucks at different facilities. Let's speculate, for a moment, that any additional evidence the US has actually pinpoint where these munitions are being held. And, assuming that we're going to war shortly, there'd be no reason to tip our hand to the Iraqis, because presumable we'd want to secure these areas as quickly as possible in the ensuing conflict. What does this mean for today? Well, for starters, it means that both the US and Iraq want the inspectors to be merely "frustrated" than to actually find banned munitions. So the inspectors were probably an idiotic solution to begin with.

But, as much as I think the Iraq situatino needs to be dealt with, at the most we're talking about biological or chemical weapons. Meanwhile, those crafy NKs are assembling plutonium bombs courtesy our anti-terror allies, the Pakistan government. Go figure. Maybe we're about to go to war there, too, and we just don't want to tip our hand. Or maybe, just maybe, this administration lacks the courage to fight a fight that might be politically costly, instead of one that can be easily won in a matter of weeks.

Powell's "evidence" was fairly shallow, overall. But he did have at least something to show to the UN, unlike the president during the State of the Union address. And, in the end, I think we will move on Iraq within the next week. Of course, he continued to trot out the idiotic iraq/al qaeda link, which serves no useful purpose, save to convince simpletons that Saddam is behind the World Trade Center bombins. There are so many other, better reasons for taking care of Iraq it's silly to bring up the al qaeda nonsense. With that said, I wanted to go back to Iraq well before September 11th. I also thought we should attempt to solve the North Korea problem. Maybe then we could take on Syria, or terrorist groups like Hamas. It would be the right thing to do: to shoulder the responsibilities of being the world's superpwer to actually encourage democracy abroad.

Alas, it appears the administration is single minded. Surely, if we're a country that can fight multiple regional wars simultaneously, we should be able to handle the variety of threats out there today while still having a sensible fiscal solution. Right? Yeah. Of course, this is the same president who remembered going to Johnson Space Center, even though he hadn't:

Q Have you determined whether the President has visited Johnson before? There is still a dispute.

MR. FLEISCHER: Thank you. The Texas staff all recalls a visit. I was asked to get the date. I am not able to find a date. And so I think right now it's somewhat murky.

Q Because Johnson has no record of it, and we don't have any record of it in the Chronicle files, and things like that.

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm aware of that. And that's why I say this is now somewhat murky.

Q With due respect, how could it be murky? How would you forget going to the -- whether or not you went to the Johnson Space Center?

MR. FLEISCHER: Obviously, the Texas staff that was with the President at the time remembered it, which is why I said it.

Q Has anybody asked the President?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President, or the Governor repeatedly had briefings from NASA officials where they would come to Austin and brief him -- these are the Texas officials from Houston -- traveled to Austin to brief him on the NASA programs.

No wonder our country is in bad shape. Or, "murky" as some people prefer...

The blue skies are back, along with much warmer weather. Score! The wind has picked up a bit (50mph gusts are due later this afternoon) but otherwise, a fairly perfect day. That and I've got plenty of time to post. Time to make hay...

From yesterday's White House press briefing:

Q The President has repeatedly said he wants to bring democracy to Iraq. But here in the District of Columbia, citizens have no elected representatives in Congress. On the license plate, there is a permanent protest. It says "taxation without representation." What is the President doing to bring democracy to the District of Columbia?

MR. FLEISCHER: Per the Constitution, the District of Columbia is a unique entity and the President has expressed no desire to change the representation that the District of Columbia was given by the framers. And I don't really think you can equate the District of Columbia being a democracy with Iraq's failure to be a democracy, and it's, in fact, of course, a totalitarian state.

In Iraq, an undemocratic leader is "elected" every so often...whereas in DC, we're simply held to divining the mindset of a few men from the late 18th century. Imagine if Saddam's son took power and altered the constitution so that although everyone outside Baghdad could vote, people inside the city limits had no representation. He could claim he was being just as democratic as America, only because over 4 million Iraqis live in Baghdad (out of a total population of 24 million), he'd be disenfranchising 1/6 of his entire country.

So where do we draw the line here? Does DC have to become even more populous to deserve attention? Kudos to the reporter with the guts to ask the tough question, and thumbs down to the prez. for hiding behind the framers. Does Bush see fit to question the wisdom of the 3/5 slave rule, as well?

There's a great piece today on Bob Somerby's site about Senator Frist and his faux humility. (I tend to think that Frist is a good person, but calling the press after saving the people in Florida wasn't necessary. I'm sure someone would've tracked him down regardless and given him even more airtime had he not done so.) The piece is well worth reading. Here's a choice excerpt:

How humble is Frist? He's not unlike Christ-if you're listening to Frist's cued biographers. In the second paragraph of his Standard profile, Brooks relates stories from three Frist admirers. Somehow, the scribe managed to track down a Tennessee trio who had been floored by the sanctified sawbones:

BROOKS: Aware that Bill Frist spent some summers on Nantucket, a school principal wrote him a letter asking what he should see on his upcoming visit. Senator Frist wrote back a 40-page letter describing the history and ecology of the island, and the sights that should not be missed. A weary mom was trying to lug some papers on an airplane. Frist noticed her plight and not only carried them on for her, he waited while the plane was unloading so he could carry them off for her as well. On one memorable day during a tour of Israel, Senator Frist stood on the spot where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount and read the sermon to the tour group. He electrified them with his simple faith and devotion.

Did David Brooks find these people in passing? Or was he referred to these people by Frist's staff? His article provides no way of knowing. But would any pol except Bill Frist traffic in tales like that last jaw-dropper-a tale in which the humble Frist is compared to Jesus himself? (On the Mount!) You'd really have to be a kook to spread a story like that around-but it fits right into the standard Frist bio. (By the way, what other solon would even dream of reciting the Sermon to tourists?) But then, weirdo tales pop up with Frist all the time-although scribes like Brooks know not to notice. For example, who writes forty-page letters to total strangers about sights you just simply miss on Nantucket? Nice guys write forty-page letters to strangers, Brooks has agreed to pretend.

A great mid-day diversion, to be sure. And it covers some administration malfeasance as well. I highly recommend it.

Some of us are too young to remember this cartoon. Well, thanks to Tom Tomorrow, there's a new spin in town. Here it is: Much better than Toles today.

In a previous post I mentioned my frustration with a piece by Gregg Easterbrook that recently appeared in TIME. A far better piece by the same author can be found right here and actually echoes many of the thoughts I've had, namely, that the single greatest obstacle to proper space program goals has always been funding. When, in 1980, Easterbrook mentioned that NASA had come up with a list of ideas of where to go after the moon, the shuttle was dead last. The reason? The others, (Mars, a lunar base, the space station) were all too expensive. The solution? Implement the cheapest idea, the shuttle. Unfortunately, even with the cheapest idea the cost ballooned and budget cutters began to reduce the goals of even the cheapest idea. This is the central issue: you can't have a big idea, cut the funding in half, and say that things will be 50% just as good. With the shuttle (which was born of budget cuts to begin with) you had a somewhat decent idea that, as the budgetary axe began to swing, grew less palatable. By the time the military abandone the shuttle as a way to launch satellites, almost all of the original reasons for shuttle construction were gone.

The international space station faces a similar future. Paired with the shuttle, the ISS can actually perform many useful experiments on a day-to-day basis. But cut the costs to 50% and you're once again gutting the program so that it can't even peform up to 10%. Reduce the operational crew from 7 to 3, and you can't do as many experiments to even justify the cost. Yet cost is still the prevailing issue behind all the space program problems. Only with full funding for all of NASA's desires can the space program attempt to rebuild itself. Let's hope that the moment for change is now.

I never thought I'd see the day when I enjoyed a Charles "Al Gore is a Psychopath" Krauthemmer piece more than the Toles cartooon on any particular date. The devils must be dying of hypothermia even as I write. Yet another reality that I was able to peruse early this morning...the 'werkz is now getting the Post every day instead of just on Sundays. Such a novel occurrence has even inspired me to consume breakfast, something that I haven't done in years. The breakfast table we purchased soon after moving to the city is now being used for its intended purpose instead of as a kipple-staging area. But back to the issue at question: yesterday I heard a co-worker loudly decrying the fact that EPA gets any money at all. He's a rapid Republican, and knowing their penchant for reducing government services, I asked what he thought about the space program. I was already prepared to rebut the typical charges of "it doesn't make money" and "it hasn't done anything good for us" but he surprised me by answering simply "I really haven't ever thought about it."

Wow.

That's the most critical assesment of the space program I've ever heard. The fact that some people in our nation don't really care about the program (and probably still wouldn't if Columbia had made it back okay) is a searing indictment of our national priorities. We should be firing people up about space travel, about exploring distant stars and galaxies; about setting up bases on the Moon and Mars. We should, in short, be expanding NASA rather than merely trying to limp along. Instead of worrying about safety first, second and last, we should be worrying about going farther, faster and in new directions. Our nation deserves nothing less.

There's something familiar about seeking out small comforts in the midst of large-scale problems. Like getting a calzone on a really bad day (I have yet to find a good calzone place near my new workplace...but the search continues) or some ice cream on a long road trip. My current small comfort against the inexorable riptide of a bad economy, looming war, the worst administration in recent history and the latest shuttle disaster? Try business cards.

That right: I get to have my new business cards made up this week and as an additional bonus, I think I'll get to choose my title. This stands out as a unique moment in my employment history, mainly because I don't think that this sort of situation often comes around. As long as I work for someone, the chance to choose my own title seems limited. So I better make the best of my good fortune and choose a title that reflects my skillset well, looks good for casual conversation and helps for the next job. (Although, to be honest, as much as I love working for people, it's always nice to get out on your own. Self-employment is definitely the end goal.)

So what title should I choose? I asked my fellow musketeers and, as usual, they disagreed. So I'm putting it out to John Q. Public, in case he has any ideas. Of course, it would help if I described what I did, right? Like most IT jobs, it's fairly amorphous, but I am the sole webmaster for the entire organization, which includes designing our sites, building the code and the databases, and keeping them fresh with content. In addition, I run the entire network over here, and I procure and assemble hardware. Plus, I troubleshoot any problems that come up, set standards for support, and determine future growth patterns. I built and currently maintain our firewall, and am responsible for promoting our site to others to build traffic. So this makes me a web/network/support/procurement person. I just need the right title to fit.

As the post pointed out today, there are many other men and women who risk their lives on a daily basis. Yet, unlike the civilian workers at NASA, no one is threatening to shortchange these worker's paychecks. And the defense budget is being expanded at an untold rate in the FY2004 budget. So the airforce colonel on the shuttle will get a larger raise than the civilian mission specialist all things being equal. And we'll spend more money on bombs and bullets than on research in space. Don't these priorities seem misplaced? When we send people into harm's way, we should reward them. The current budget is a slap in the face to all the government workers who labor, unheralded each day, in the service of their country. They may not grab headlines, but they deserve much better.

As some people have noted, the shuttle project was designed to have almost fifty launches a year. That's one a week. Instead, this year it has been reduced to 4 a year, with no restart point in sight until the Columbia disaster is fully reasearched.

That's why pieces like this get me steamed. The thought that echoes through the piece is simple: the shuttle is simply too costly, whether in terms of dollars or human life, to allow the program to continue. But isn't this the attitude that got us here in the first place? With a much-larger budget, the nation's full support and the prospect of Russian superiority, we were able to get to the moon. Yet three men died during the attempt. Should we have ratcheted back? I think not. Yet months after men landed on the moon, the budget was trimmed for the following fiscal year.

Why the disconnect? In some ways, I think because NASA, unlike every other agency, has a mission that is both inspiring and practical. It's tough to get fired up about diplomatic efforts at the State Department in comparison to seeing a shuttle launch. Yet millions could die from wars due to bad diplomacy, whereas the space program risks relatively little in human life. Likewise, although the economic team at the CBO may institute an economic model revision which attempts to predict the value of tax cuts by adding in future revenue growth (kind of like the argument that if I buy a big-screen tv, and spend money on a lavish super-bowl party, that networking with the people I invite might land me a cushier job one day which will allow me to afford the tv and the party), it's much easier to say that the bottled water the astronauts drink is exorbitantly expensive. Forget that this so-called 'dynamic scoring' could affect the budget by trillions. We've got to cut back on that damned water!

In many ways, the space-program is at it's worst when it attempts to defend costs. Much like the International Space Station, which has been lampooned for cost-overruns, the space agency must constantly justify research money by saying that it earns money in the long run. Yet, overall, the value of space research is immeasurable. Let's take a down-to-earth example: the Washington Metro system. The system is old, uses cars made from one manufacturer in Italy and experienced mechanical problems constantly. Like the space-program, people think the Metro is a good system. No one, for instance, argues that replacing the entire Metro system with a bus-rapid-transit system would be a good idea, even if the costs of maintaining the existing Metro system (let alone expansion) are far greater than constructing an entirely new fleet of rapid-transit buses. And like the shuttle, the initial expectations for the Metro system (8-car long trains, a stop in Georgetown, a line to Dulles) were too high for practicality. But here's where the comparisons diverge: both the Metro system and the shuttle would benefit from greater use. If the shuttle were actually flying once every week and the Metro had 8 car trains located throughout the system, they'd both be able to keep production costs down (more shuttles and metro cars mean less expense for each), to keep maintenance lower (more people trained on how to repair both systems would mean less time spend on each task) and to keep problems from occurring in future use (having a huge pool of experienced technical personnell who have dealt with the system would mean that new problems would be more quickly solved). The New York City subway system can't be shut down by a single subway car problem, yet the Washington Metro can. Why? Because the sheer number of cars and lines in the NYC system lowers the costs for replacing each one, or even shutting down a portion and allowing other cars to route around it. If NASA were to increase the number of flights and the number of shuttles in the fleet, much like NYC, we'd be able to get around problems much easier.

The final rub? Unlike the shuttle, no one expects every city in America to eventually install the Washington Metro system, or for Washington itself to expand the system much beyond the beltway. (The line that runs through Georgetown, for instance, may never arrive...) There are too many cheaper, more reliable alternatives to installing a new transit system from scratch with only one manufacturer. Space, on the other hand, will definitely be explored in the future. The knowledge learned now, on shuttle flights and the International Space Station, will never go out-of-date. So there's a good reason to continue having shuttle flights. Yes, the system might be expensive. Yes, there might be cheaper alternatives out there. Automation is a wonderful thing, and automating more controls is better. But what seems silly to me is the notion that abandoning manned spaceflight would either save lives or money. The cost to ferry humans into orbit is high right now, to be sure. But the landing procedure that resulted in Columbia's disintegration was FULLY AUTOMATED. So if human error isn't a factor, the only consideration is whether it's worth risking human lives to explore space.

And the answer to this question, in my mind, is simple: yes! I think every single person aboard Columbia would agree with me. One day, hopefully not too far in the future, people will look back on these early days of space exploration and think to themselves that it was risky, but worth it. One day space travel will be as easy as boarding an airplane. To think that we can somehow tie our feet to the ground is as defeatist as it is silly. And no matter how many satellites we launch into orbit from unmanned rockets, we still don't gain any knowledge of how to put more humans into space. That's what we should focus on: the pursuit of the future. And the future will have more men and women in space. Now is the time to keep moving forward, not back. If that means designing a better system to move people into space, so be it. But giving up the dream for cost reasons is a silly argument.