the hunt for the ‘roids

I mentioned just a few entries ago the new company founded here that intends to mine asteroids. The press conference announcing the venture happened this morning.

I don’t think I’ll last long enough to become a grizzled old asteroid prospector, traveling from ‘roid to ‘roid with my trusty space mule by my side. On the other hand, I could try to get a job across the lake in Bellevue, where they’re assembling the first generation of earth-orbit telescopes designed to find premium mining targets. Or I could keep my day job.

the internet hall of fame

I read on Wired that the Internet Society announced a Hall of Fame, and the first group of inductees included 33 of the most influential pioneers that helped shape the Internet. Here’s one entry:

Al Gore. As a U.S. senator in the 1980s, Gore was the first politician to grasp the potential of the internet. Gore wrote the High Performance Computing and Communications Act that passed in 1991 which helped spread the net beyond computer science professionals by providing key funding to internet projects, including the groundbreaking Mosaic browser which led to the dot-com boom.

That’s right, whatever else you may think of him, if you use the Web, you owe a debt to Mr. Gore. It could not have been too many years later that “the Internet” was my Halloween costume, but it wasn’t quite good enough to get me into the hall of fame. Maybe in the next round of inductees …