Watched “The Dish” tonight, about the radio telescope in Australia that relayed audio and TV signals of the moon landing. It’s truly amazing to think about how more than 30 years ago, with only a fraction of the technology we have today, people gathered around their televisions to watch a live broadcast from the moon.

A live broadcast from the moon.

It’s also sad that it was a purely political exercise, and once we’d achieved it there was no motivation to continue the exploration. Watching this movie tonight, though, reminded me that there were a lot of people for whom the moon landing meant something more than just a political race with the Russians – for them, it was about exploration, and reaching beyond the bounds of ourselves. Where is that spirit today?

It’s a sad thing to lose a friend. No matter how much hell they put you through, no matter how much you sometimes wish you’d never met, it’s hard not to think about the times when things were good. Everyone you meet changes you, in good ways and bad ways. Being without those changes, even the bad ones, means your life is a little less full. Sometimes it’s hard to let go, but realizing when people are destined to cause you pain is as important as hanging on to the people who mean the most.

We take our friends for granted way too much. And few things are more important than good friends.

Best ‘Star Trek’ captain: James T. Kirk.

I find it incredibly cool that the heretofore pretty much unknown Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont is now the most important person in American politics. Take that, Mr. Pseudo-President.

If you could go back in time and talk to your 14-year-old self, what would you say?

Got my Blogger t-shirt in the mail today. My fragile sense of self-worth received a welcome boost.

I’ve said this before, but why is web hosting so difficult? First the ISP that hosts several of my client sites has a “catastrophic failure” that causes the sites to be down for, at this writing, a day and a half. Then the BlogSpot server, which hosts some of my favorite weblogs (you guys know who you are), is down for more than a day, and even non-BlogSpot blogs that use BlogVoices are slowed to a crawl. If American society can produce Oreos that change the color of milk, we should be able to serve web pages with some regularity.

Kate Capshaw has had so much plastic surgery, her face looks like it was extruded from one of those Play-Doh playsets.

I have a great idea for revolutionizing consumer air travel.
The secret: convert passengers into luggage.

When you arrive at the airport, you get a hypo in the neck that knocks you out until you get the anti-hypo at your destination. You fly in a tube sort of like the ones in Japanese airports that let commuters sleep during long layovers. You don’t get stressed out by delays, and the airline saves money on passenger cabins, food and cabin employees. Also, the unconscious period would be, as Coach on Cheers once said, a nice break in your day. What do you think?

More disturbing pop culture: This time it was Oprah, interviewing Barbara Ehrenreich about her book “Nickel and Dimed,” where Ehrenreich took a series of low-wage jobs to chronicle the lives of the working poor. Oprah also interviewed a series of women working incredibly hard to support families on close to minimum-wage jobs. As she sat interviewing one woman who noted how she would like to buy nail polish, but that $3 could be another meal instead, Oprah had on giant diamond earrings and a fancy pearl necklace, looking much more posh than usual, which is pretty posh. Somehow, seeing Oprah’s concerned face as she bravely brought the plight of the poor into her golden-toned media spotlight was deeply disturbing. Well, at least these women got hair and makeup out of the deal.