"As a female liberal feminist lawyer who cares about civil rights I have to say. I understand the impulse but No. Just no."

"Universities are not institutions designed or trained in the investigation or adjudication of serious crimes. Anyone who truly cares about civil rights would reject the star chambers that are university disciplinary bodies with no right to the turn over of exculpatory evidence or the right to confront your accuser. Rape victims need to go to police. Universities need to cooperate with the police or face charges of their own. End of story."

Top-rated comment on the NYT op-ed "Don’t Weaken Title IX Campus Sex Assault Policies" by Jon Krakauer and Laura L. Dunn.

I haven't read all 185 comments over there, but going in the order they're ranked by readers, I'm seeing only firm opposition to the authors' position. People are standing strong for due process and the importance of treating rape as the serious crime it is by reporting it to the police and using the criminal law system with the attendant rights of the accused.

"Montana quarterback receives $245K settlement for university’s ‘unfair and biased’ rape investigation."

This is the Missoula case that Jon Krakauer wrote a book about.

Missoula was labeled the “rape capital” of the country. Investigative reporter Jon Krakauer turned the town, and Johnson’s trial, into the centerpiece of a book on America’s college campus rape epidemic....

After a tear-filled [criminal] trial, during which Johnson decided to take the stand to defend himself, a jury took less than two hours to find him not guilty.

On Tuesday, the former quarterback’s comeback was complete when a court approved his $245,000 settlement agreement with the state. The agreement listed 11 claims made by Johnson, including violations of due process and his civil rights, along with sexual discrimination, negligence and destroying evidence, according to the AP.

Jon Krakauer semi-exposes himself to criticism in Missoula, the target of his new book "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town."

"Krakauer previously said he wasn't planning a tour or any other public appearances to promote the book, but he wanted to give critics in Missoula the chance to confront him."

Instead, he received an enthusiastic welcome and applause throughout his interview with University of Montana Journalism School Dean Larry Abramson before a standing-room only crowd of more than 550 people.

That warmth was shattered when a man who identified himself as Missoula attorney Thomas Dove made his way to the front of the room just as the interview ended, called Krakauer a liar, accused him of bias and of breaking the law by citing confidential documents in his book.

The crowd tried to shout down Dove, while a few others disappointed that Krakauer did not take questions from the audience demanded that Dove have his say. Krakauer started to answer Dove's questions, but eventually became exasperated and walked out of the room as the crowd became more hostile toward Dove.

So Krakauer purported to offer his critics in Missoula a chance to confront him, and he got a comfortable event to be staged somehow, through the auspices of the University of Montana, which has a big interest in shoring up its reputation. (The book is about things that happened to the university's students.) And a Missoula man shows up, prepared to confront Krakauer, but Krakauer takes no questions from the audience. When the man insists on speaking anyway, he seems like a heckler, and the huge Krakauer-friendly crowd tries to shout him down. But there are "a few others" present who, perhaps, felt burned that they showed up for what was purportedly going to be a confrontation with critics but turned out to be a well-cushioned platform for Krakauer. The "few others" and whatever they said were apparently enough to push Krakauer to start to answer, but somehow he "became exasperated." We're told the crowd got "hostile" to Dove, so I guess we're supposed to be satisfied that Dove really was a heckler and that the wisdom in numbers — "the crowd" vs. the "few others" — has determined that Krakauer was justified in walking out.

I want to see the transcript.

ADDED: There's some audio here. I learned that Dove was given a microphone, but then (for some reason) Dean Abrahamson cut things off. After that, Krakauer had some interaction with Dove but then walked out.

FINALLY: The commenter Carter Wood pointed to the video, and it's quite disturbing.



Dove isn't heckling. He has a microphone, and Krakauer endeavors to answer a few questions. Then the crowd takes up yelling and booing, perhaps to help Krakauer. Then Krakauer stomps over and snatches the mike out of Dove's hands. From the audience: a woman laughing, people booing, and a man saying "Get out of here!"

ALSO: To be fair, Dove was being boring. He had a sheaf of papers and took the liberty to read from them. That was after he'd gotten Krakauer to straight out admit he was biased and engaged in confirmation bias. That was a long enough turn for Dove, but he took advantage, like he was going to lead an inquest. That really wasn't going to work, but the way the crowd, the Dean, and the author shut him down made them all look awful. Stupid.

Emily Bazelon is critical of Jon Krakauer's book about campus rape.

A review in the NYT of "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town":

The university had used the standard of “preponderance of the evidence” (or more likely than not) to find Johnson culpable, but the standard for a criminal conviction is higher — beyond a reasonable doubt.... Krakauer presents [the acquittal] not as a reflection of the differing evidentiary standard, and a jury’s best effort to resolve a difficult and confusing set of facts, but as a bitter failure of the adversarial process....

Questioning Jon Krakauer's rape-on-campus book.

Last week, we were talking about Krakauer's book "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town," which comes out on April 21st. My post was: "In the wake of Rolling Stone's 'Rape on Campus' debacle, we're about to get a rape-on-campus book by the best-selling author Jon Krakauer." I said:

... I don't know whether Krakauer and his editors got the chance to do anything to acknowledge Rolling Stone controversy or to prepare for the different kind of scrutiny this book will get, now that skepticism and fact-checking zeal is cranked up far beyond what Krakauer could have envisioned when he was doing his research and writing. He must have been expecting a reception similar to the initial reaction to the Rolling Stone article — high praise for shining a light on the terrible sexual brutality of college men and the inadequate response by college administrators who must start believing women and punishing men.

A reader sent me a link an article in the Montana Kaimin — the University of Montana student newspaper — titled "Krakauer sources a mystery":

In the wake of Rolling Stone's "Rape on Campus" debacle, we're about to get a rape-on-campus book by the best-selling author Jon Krakauer.

Looking up the Amazon page for "Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids" — discussed in the previous post — and seeing that it ranked #4 on the "Gender Studies" list, I clicked through to see what was #1. It's "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town," by Jon Krakauer (the very popular author (I've read "Into the Wild," "Into Thin Air," and "Under the Banner of Heaven")). The book comes out on April 21st, so it's too early to check it out, and I don't know whether Krakauer and his editors got the chance to do anything to acknowledge Rolling Stone controversy or to prepare for the different kind of scrutiny this book will get, now that skepticism and fact-checking zeal is cranked up far beyond what Krakauer could have envisioned when he was doing his research and writing. He must have been expecting a reception similar to the initial reaction to the Rolling Stone article — high praise for shining a light on the terrible sexual brutality of college men and the inadequate response by college administrators who must start believing women and punishing men.

I see that Krakauer has written an op-ed in advance of the book's release: "The bungled Rolling Stone rape article doesn’t change the fact that sexual assault is the most under-reported crime in the US/When someone is raped in this country, the rapist gets away with it more than 97 percent of the time." 

Make no mistake... Women sometimes lie about being raped. According to the most reliable peer-reviewed research, between two percent and 10 percent of rape reports are bogus. As one ponders this discomfiting information, though, it’s important to keep in mind what the flip side of these numbers reveal: Between 90 percent and 98 percent of rape allegations are true. Rape, moreover, is this country’s most underreported serious crime by a wide margin. Rigorous studies consistently indicate that at least 80 percent of rapes are never disclosed to law enforcement agencies or other authorities....

And it's important to keep in mind that statistics sometimes lie. Krakauer says those numbers come from studies that are "most reliable" and "rigorous," but I don't think that will satisfy people whose skepticism has been so recently roused by the Rolling Stone mess. At the Amazon page, Krakauer's book is described as a "dispassionate, carefully documented account" of "the searing experiences of several women in Missoula — the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them." Searing... but dispassionate? Is that even possible?

"I feel that at this point Krakauer has an agenda to prove that McCandless was poisoned."

"In his book ['Into the Wild'] he advances the theory that it was an alkaloid poison in a similar looking plant. Later, tests determine that the plant had no such poison. He then supposes that it was a toxic mold on the seeds, but Wiki says no mold was found his seeds."

From the discussion at Metafilter about this new New Yorker article by Jon Krakauer.

Another Metafilter comment, further down and much favorited:

I've done things a few things woefully underprepared where I drastically overexerted and overextended myself and skirted the edge of disaster before, and had the thought "fuck if I die doing this, it's going to look pretty stupid", but you know on the other hand those were some of the best times in my life....

It's kind of sad to see people here 20 years later on a silly web blog shitting on a young guy for trying to live life the way he wanted, and with a level of adventure and self-reliance few ever experience. He didn't force his story down your throat - go back to watching TV and working in an office and patting yourself on the back for living smarter and longer than he did.

By the way, it's "web log" not "web blog." Just say "blog" like a normal person and you won't need to remember this, but that commenter was going all righteous on Metafilter, which isn't a "silly" blog. It's a grand and awesome enterprise, going back to 1999.

This 99+-comment-long thread on McCandless is a testament to how unsilly it is, including this comment calling it silly.

"Milk" may be the best movie in all of the following categories:

1. Depiction of the political process. (Other example: "The Candidate.")

2. Blending recreated historical scenes with archival footage of historical events.

3. Recreating the look and feel of the 1970s. (Other example: "Boogie Nights.")

4. Making an implicit and effective argument for a political position.

5. Showing a character's emotions through his reaction to opera. (Other examples: "Moonstruck," "Slumdog Millionaire.")

6. Artistic representation of the moment of death.

7. Artistic representation of assassination.

8. A serious drama that creates surprising empathy for a character who doesn't deserve it and is not the hero of the story. (Josh Brolin was painfully brilliant as Dan White.)

9. Depiction of a formal debate in a political campaign. (The debate with Briggs about Prop 6.)

10. A character tells his story into the microphone of a tape recorder. (Other examples: Philip Baker Hall as Nixon in Robert Altman's "Secret Honor," John Hurt in Atom Egoyan's version of "Krapp's Last Tape.")(Not quite in the category: Ralph Fiennes in "The Reader." It's not in the category because — spoiler — he's reading books, not telling his own story.)

11. Scene reflected in a convex mirror. (The fisheye effect.)

12. Scene shot through a window with reflections on the window.

13. Depicting the importance of whistles. (Here's the competition.)

14. Depiction of political apathy. (The first appearance of Cleve Jones, played by Emile Hirsch, who was Chris McCandless in "Into the Wild.")

15. Use of notes stuck all over the wall to create alarm about a character's mental distress. (Other example: "A Beautiful Mind.")

16. Recitation of (part of) "The Declaration of Independence."

17. Actors looking uncannily like the real-life characters they play.

18. Sean Penn movie.

19. Gus Van Sant movie.

20. Movie released in 2008.

What are the new classics?

Entertainment Weekly does a very nice job of ranking the new classics — movies, TV, etc. — from the last 25 years. From the movie list:

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
12. The Matrix (1999)
13. GoodFellas (1990)
14. Crumb (1995)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006)
23. Memento (2001)
24. A Room With a View (1986)
32. Fight Club (1999)
33. The Breakfast Club (1985)
34. Fargo (1996)
44. The Player (1992)
77. Sid and Nancy (1986)
91. Back to the Future (1985)

From the TV list:

1. The Simpsons, Fox, 1989-present
2 The Sopranos, HBO (1999-2007)
3 Seinfeld, NBC (1989-98)
5 Sex and the City, HBO (1998-2004)
6 Survivor, CBS (2000-present)
12 South Park, Comedy Central (1997-present)
14 The Daily Show, Comedy Central (1996-present)
17 The Office (U.K. version), BBC2 (2001-03)
18 American Idol, Fox (2002-present)
21 Roseanne, ABC (1988-97)
22 The Real World, MTV (1992-present)
28 The Larry Sanders Show, HBO (1992-98)
30 Late Show With David Letterman, CBS (1993-present)
38 Beavis and Butt-head, MTV (1993-97)
39 Six Feet Under, HBO (2001-05)
43 Late Night With Conan O'Brien, NBC (1993-present)
45 Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO (2000-present)
49 Twin Peaks, ABC (1990-91)
55. Pee-wee's Playhouse, CBS (1986-90)
63. Mystery Science Theater 3000, Comedy Central (1989-96), Sci Fi (1997-99)
64. The Osbournes, MTV (2002-05)
69. The Colbert Report, Comedy Central (2005-present)
75. Project Runway, Bravo (2004-present)
79. The Comeback, HBO (2005)
83. Absolutely Fabulous, BBC2 (1992), BBC1 (1994-2004)

From the book list:

4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)

(The book list is heavily weighted toward fiction.)

From the style list:

1. Madonna at the MTV Video Music Awards (1984)
2. Sarah Jessica Parker in the opening credits of Sex and the City (1998)
3. Michael Jackson in the ''Thriller'' video (1983)
4. Sharon Stone at the Oscars (1996)
5. Kurt Cobain and grunge style (1991)
7. Amy Winehouse's frocks, bold bras, and sky-high bouffant (2007)
13. Tom Cruise's Ray-Bans and tighty whities in Risky Business (1983)
16. Courtney Love's vintage slip dresses, Mary Janes, and home-grown dye jobs (1995)
17. The leather trenches and Neo-style shades in The Matrix (1999)
48. The goth look of Robert Smith and the Cure (1987)

From the tech list:

3. TiVo (1999)
4. iPod (2001)
5. YouTube (2005)
7. Digital Video Cameras for Consumers (1995)
9. Satellite-Radio Stations (2001)

From the video games:

1. Tetris (1985)

Ha ha. Sorry, I'm old!

From the stage list:

21. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998)

Sorry, I've seen a lot of these — the most expensive of these cultural pleasures — and didn't like them very much.

Romantic gestures (these aren't numbered for some reason):

• John Cusack blasts Peter Gabriel outside Ione Skye's window in 1989's Say Anything...
• Ewan McGregor breaks into ''Your Song'' while wooing Nicole Kidman in 2001's Moulin Rouge (2001).
• After her beloved Pedro (Marco Leonardi) dies making love to her in Like Water for Chocolate, Tita (Lumi Cavazos) eats matches, literally igniting her inner flame and burning her whole ranch to the ground.

Movie posters (pictured here):

The Devil Wears Prada
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Jungle Fever
The Silence of the Lambs

Death scenes:

• Steve Buscemi + a woodchipper + the pure white snow of 1996's Fargo = arguably the most hilarious ooky death on film.
• Mel Gibson, sans intestines, bellows ''Freeeeedommmmmm!'' in Braveheart (1995).
• Warring exes Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner fall to their doom on a chandelier in 1989's The War of the Roses.
• Jack telling Rose not to say her goodbyes before freezing to death in Titanic (1997).
• Lucy Liu losing her head to Uma Thurman's blade in Kill Bill Vol. One (2003).

More lists at the link, but I'll stop here.

"I’m a religious fanatic just like you."

"J.F.K.'s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic. Mitt's was to tell evangelical Christians, 'I’m a religious fanatic just like you.'"

Maureen Dowd phones up Jon Krakauer, author of "Under the Banner of Heaven,” for some opinion about Mitt Romney's religion speech.

Into the movie theater, "Into the Wild."

I saw the movie "Into the Wild" yesterday. This was only the second movie I've seen since arriving in New York in mid-August. (The other was "Across the Universe" — blogged here.)

Why don't I see more movies? 1. I don't like the physical constraint of committing to sitting in a chair for 2 hours. 2. I only go to movies I think I'll like and still don't much like the movies I see. 3. Few movies seem like the sort of thing I'll like. 4. I have no shortage of other things to do (which is the case for anyone who loves to read). 5. I don't find myself in social situations where going to the movies is what people do together (and I don't see why people want to spend their precious time together doing something that involves so little interaction with each other).

Why did "Into the Wild" overcome my resistance? 1. I wanted to take a cab to 27th Street and 11th Avenue to begin a walk that would take me through a bunch of art galleries...



... and then all the way back to Brooklyn Heights, and "Into the Wild" was playing at a theater on 19th Street and Broadway, so what I usually experience as noisome restraint would rest me up for the walk through downtown Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge. 2. Having read the book "Into the Wild," I was interested in seeing a visualization of it. 3. Some of my very favorite movies are about men at the existential edge: "Grizzly Man," "Touching the Void," "The Pianist," "My Dinner With André." (I know André is just sitting at a restaurant table throughout the movie, but he describes a search for his soul through mountains, deep forest, the Sahara, and the inside of a grave.)

How did I like "Into the Wild"?

1. The actor — Emile Hirsch — who played Christopher McCandless, was cute — like the young Leonardo di Caprio — but he did not radiate emotion. Compare him to Adrian Brody in "The Pianist," whose character, like McCandless, is starving. Brody made me feel what was happening to him as he descended into the most desperate human condition. Hirsch couldn't do that, though he was supported by terrific actors (especially Hal Holbrook), profound landscapes, and that squalid little bus. He seemed like a really nice kid with a lot of idealism and enthusiasm who made a few unfortunate choices and so, sadly, never got the chance to grow up. Unlike the character in "The Pianist," McCandless made his own choices. He rejected society, but we can't see much anti-social edge in Hirsch's portrayal.

2. The photography didn't move me. The beach, the canyon, the desert, the mountains — these are all beautiful locations, but this isn't a travelogue. These things should be photographed to convey emotion, but they looked about the way they'd look if you went there and saw them for yourself. There are 2 key scenes where Hirsch climbs up a hill, acts enthused, and gets the old man played by Holbrooke to climb up there too. It reminded me of the scene in "Titanic" when Leo DiCaprio shows Kate Winslet how to live by getting her to stretch out her arms on the prow of the ship. It's a Hollywood cliché. (Too bad Hirsch didn't yell "I'm king of the hill!")

3. I nearly walked out about a third of the way in. Something about Hirsch and Catherine Keener romping on the beach and plunging into the ocean felt stupid and phony. We're told the character is afraid of water, and then Keener — the mother figure he finds to replace his real and too-distant mother — makes it possible for him to go swimming. I forced myself to stay, and I see the story arc this was part of. He leaves his inadequate parents. (They're excited about the idea of him going to Harvard Law School and haven't a clue why he doesn't want them to buy him a new car.) He goes on the road where he finds replacements for his mother and father (Keener and Holbrook). He interacts with water — gets caught in a flash flood, kayaks through rapids, plunges in the ocean, fords a stream — which are probably meant to symbolize birth/mother. And he encounters a rocky terrain and kills and butchers some animals — squirrel and moose — (squirrel and moose???) — which are probably meant to symbolize his struggle with death/father.

4. The movie raises but hardly explores the issue of celibacy. We're shown this attractive young man, who seems to have a feeling for other people, in the presence of sensuous females. Kayaking, he comes upon a bare-breasted woman, but she has a boyfriend and he has to run off. (He's running from park rangers). Later, a beautiful, sensitive girl throws herself at him, but she's 16, and he's upstanding about that. (He burns his money and Social Security card, he kayaks in violation of clearly stated rules, and he steals rides on freight trains, but he's rigorous about the age-of-consent laws.) So the movie shows us the path not taken — love from a woman could replace the inadequate parents — and the character is given pat excuses for not going there. Still, why did he forswear sex? In the end, dying alone, he writes in his notebook: "Real happiness must be shared." This is very affecting, and it is an important idea in the intellectual development of this man who reads a lot of books. But something is left unexplored. Why didn't McCandless want sex?

Did you walk all the way home?

"Explornography."

John Tierney uses that word -- which I can't remember having seen before -- in his NYT op-ed today. Is that just a Tierney word, a coinage he's pushing? I see The Atlantic had a piece back in 1998, in its "Wordwatch" column that tracks new words and usages:

explornography noun,a consuming fascination with famous and, especially, dangerous explorations -- for example, Richard Byrd's expeditions to Antarctica -- that may include a desire to retrace such trips in person: "We had been seduced by an odd modern phenomenon, the glorification of exploration at a time when the entire planet has been mapped. The Age of Exploration has been succeeded by the Age of Explornography" (New York Times Magazine).

BACKGROUND: Soft-core explornographers are content to experience super-dangerous adventure travel vicariously, a thrill easily had through books and films. Hard-core explornographers -- a group whose number has been rising sharply in recent years -- spend vast sums on gear, guides, training, and whatever else is needed to undertake such expeditions themselves. These explornographers are, typically, outdoorsy amateurs, many of whom live and work in urban settings. A good proportion are women, and the average age of hard-core explornographers of both sexes is about fifty.

But a little more reseach shows that quote in The Atlantic was written by John Tierney, back in the July 26, 1998 issue of the NYT Magazine, in an article called "Going Where A Lot of Other Dudes With Really Great Equipment Have Gone Before." That's his quote in The Atlantic definition. In the NYT Magazine, he went on:

Like pornography, explornography provides vicarious thrills -- the titillation of exploring without the risk of actually having to venture into terra incognita. In its classic hard-core form, explornography is the depiction of genuine voyages of discovery, trips to uncharted regions where there was no way to summon help when disaster struck. Today's audiences are going back to the old texts, and there has been a recent rash of books and movies about Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook, Richard Evelyn Byrd, Lewis and Clark, Stanley and Livingstone and Heinrich Harrer (the explorer portrayed by Brad Pitt in "Seven Years in Tibet"). Connoisseurs have been especially gratified by the revival of Ernest Shackleton, the explorer who never reached his goals but always produced splendid stories. Like many explornography addicts, I first got hooked on "Endurance," Alfred Lansing's book about the 1914 Shackleton expedition, which was marooned in the Antarctic. Originally published in 1959, "Endurance" resurfaced this year on best-seller lists; Tristar is about to make a big-budget film of the adventure.

But the old stories are not enough to satisfy demand. The explornography industry needs fresh material to fill magazines like Outside and Men's Journal, to make programs for the Discovery Channel and the Outdoor Life Network, to sell outdoor gear and adventure-travel packages. Today's soft-core explornographers, like pornographers who shoot erotic scenes in which no sex actually takes place, have the skills and technology -- minicams, satellite linkups, Web pages -- to wring drama from voyages of nondiscovery. Mount Everest, which has been climbed hundreds of times, is a bigger media star than ever. The new film about Everest is setting box-office records at IMAX theaters; Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" has spent more than a year on best-seller lists.

Today's Tierney column is about the "Marsonauts" who are engaged in an earth-based simulation of Mars travel:

They live in a round "habitation module" that's 27 feet in diameter, sized to fit atop existing rockets, with a lab on one floor and the crew quarters above it.

The Marsonauts are sticklers for staying "in sim," simulating every inconvenience they can imagine on Mars. No venturing outside the Hab without at least half an hour of preparation: putting on a spacesuit and helmet, wiring a radio, and going through five minutes of decompression in the airlock. No removing a glove to dig for a fossil. No food or bathroom breaks in the field -- ["a huge meteor crater" on "a desolate island in the Canadian high Arctic"].

They have their own jargon ("HabCom, EVA11 is ready to begin its egress de-co") and their own bureaucracy. Reports are filed nightly to Mission Support and the Remote Science Team, a group of researchers on three continents who are referred to as "the scientists back on Earth." There's even a Martian tricolor - a red, green and blue flag flapping above the Hab to symbolize their plans to "terraform" Mars into a green planet with liquid water and a breathable atmosphere.

I know this all sounds silly. I arrived sympathetic to the Marsonauts' cause, but ready to write a wryly detached column on an amusing bunch of zealots. Their fantasy sounded like a futurist version of explornography: the simulation of exploration by people trekking through terra cognita on adventure vacations.

But the Marsonauts are really figuring out how to explore the unknown, how to look for life in a place worth risking lives to reach. By the second day here, I was caught up in the sim, too. As we returned to our home on the edge of the crater, the white Hab up on the rocky brown ridge looked like a spaceship on Mars, and the sight was a bigger thrill than anything that's lifted off from Cape Canaveral in a long time.

Meanwhile, in real life, we're left watching the space shuttle missions, where nothing new is being explored. The current news of the Discovery mission is all about the potential for another accident, the strangely extreme damage that a bit of falling foam debris can cause. And Tierney's point is, if we really are going to risk lives and go into space, we ought to get out where we can find something new. I'm sure I'm not discovering anything new in seeing the irony of calling the shuttle "Discovery."