REM@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Elton Maas) (02/07/86)
M> Date: Sat, 1 Feb 86 17:23:37 PST M> From: mcgeer%ji@berkeley.edu (Rick McGeer) M> Subject: Re: replacement orbiter = 2 weeks of California lottery M> Good idea; of course, there are statutory problems... I was going to inquire about the problems (I have an idea but want more info), but it turns out it's moot, see below... R> This past week the California lottery earned 1 billion dollars. T> From: trwrb!trwspp!spp3!brahms@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Bradley S. Brahms) T> Date: Mon, 3 Feb 86 18:08:04 pst T> Subject: Re: replacement orbiter = 2 weeks of California lottery T> Wrong! The 1B figure is for all California lottery sales from T> inception of the first lottery to the current date. That's what I get for believing the sloppy newscasts on TV. Thanks for correcting me. I'm glad we all have this forum for bouncing our ideas before we take the embarassing step of writing a letter to an editor of a newspaper that thousands will read. I stand corrected. I misunderstood the news report. So, back to the drawing board... how do we get funding for three more STS orbiters to replace Challanger and augment the fleet to where it can handle the demand, for design of a new better shuttle or orbit launch system, for in-space testing of the ion rocket, for all the planetary and astronomical missions we want, etc. By the way, a few days after otherwise-excellent newspaper columnist Leonard Koppett referred to the "Viking 2" passing by Uranus, many times in one article, he issued a correction: LK> ... I must acknowledge a ... mistake ... made. Letter writers have LK> noted that when I wrote a starry-eyed (sorry about that) column last LK> week about the space probe glomming Uranus, I called it Viking II LK> instead of Voyager II. Somehow, this error slipped through all 427 LK> copy readers we use to protect our thousands of writers from such blunders. LK> My mistake was, of course, due to carelessness, inattention, the LK> aging process and the mind's trick of dredging up an inappropriate LK> similarity without being aware of the substitution. (Awareness would LK> make you correct it.) But it was not, this time, the product of LK> ignorance, as so many of my other mistakes are. My fingers (who do LK> have minds of their own) simply typed the wrong word and the reading LK> process didn't catch it. LK> But I dwell on this only to point out how it confirms my column of LK> Jan. 14, "The persistence of human fallibility," about our tendency to LK> mess thing up sooner or later. If I claimed, vehemently enough, that LK> it was our computer that changed Voyager to Viking for dark reasons of LK> its own, I could probably persuade some of you of my innocence; but I LK> am too honest a person to try. Now I ask, have you ever heard so verbose an apology for an error in a newspaper?? My respect for Leonard Koppett is renewed. He makes utterly stupid mistakes once in a while, but admists them, unlike Reagan and most other people in the public light. (Ann Landers comes close sometimes.) Disclamer: I'm not perfect, but if I had a big staff and circulation of thousands I wouldn't make such blunders as Leonard Koppett made the other day, referring several times to the 'Viking 2' which passed by Uranus this week.