Strange Friday - Anna Nicole, Jim Gray, Nowak
The last few weeks have had such a bizarre series of news items that I must admit have distracted me. Some of these items involve people I actually know or things I really care about. Others are simply too strange to ignore, especially when they make the front page of the NY Times and every other news organization I read.
Jim Gray, lost at sea! Jim and I have spoken and corresponded about the work I've done at InterProphet with SiliconTCP and no drop routing over the years. He's an old Tandem alum and colleague of William's (see The Google Test). It's so startling that I almost believe if I sent an email to him right now telling him I disagree with one of his observations, I'd get an email right back clearly and succintly debating me point-by-point.
Rumors are flying. Jim's in Mexico swigging tequila. Jim's sailing to Australia. Jim's hiding in a cove. All silly statements. Jim's a family man and almost obsessed with his ideas. Anyone who knew the man knows that. But until this mystery is solved, there will be mean-spirited badmouthing, and the only people it hurts are the ones who meant the most to him - his family.
Then there's the incredible astronaut-spurned story of poor Lisa Nowak, married with three kids to a fellow US Naval Academy colleague and Mission control specialist. Astronaut and US Navy Captain, she crash-landed after she was dumped by fellow astronaut US Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein for a younger Navy colleague, Captain Colleen Shipman, weeks after her marriage broke up (and reportedly also caused Oefelein's divorce the prior year). The 900 mile frantic drive in diapers to Orlando, the absurd attempt at intimidation, and her obvious distress are as plain as the mugshot taken after she was apprehended. Nowak's family is shocked, her kids and husband are probably sad and angry, the astronaut corps is upset, and I'm sure PAO is fielding a lot of unpleasant calls. Lots of "conduct unbecoming an officer". I predict many meetings, interrogations, medical evaluations and examinations -- with Oefelein's conduct meriting very close scrutiny in this affair. An absolutely horrible day for NASA.
Just last week my kids completed months of work on a research paper that outlined how we could begin to colonize Mars by 2027 for the Exploravision science competition -- a competition that asks the students to envision a technology 20 years from now.
Rebecca spent many hours devising and revising the Mission Manifest. Ben spent a great deal of time working on the orbital dynamics. They both researched every project on the NASA drawing board and incorporated modified versions of the NASA CEV, LSAM and EDS to control costs and encourage reuse. Of course, they did come up with a very unique transport vessel. I don't know how they will be judged -- after all, it's not like they're describing an IPOD brain implant or virtual reality "Second Life" that gets the marketers excited -- but space is a big vision. Maybe it's too big for these times and expresses an optimism that jaded adults refuse to acknowledge. But the juxtaposition of these two events underscores the need for compassion, optimism and wonder. Perhaps an emphasis on these elements necessary for creative living might have saved a Nowak from the abyss.
In a way, NASA PAO must be breathing a sigh of relief. Only the death of a sex symbol like Anna Nicole Smith could have pulled Lisa's travails off the front page of the New York Times. If you look at the comments, many people are genuinely affected by her death. Most of them are women. Many men see her as either a tool of others or a slut. Of course, her entire life was dedicated to indulging the slut image some men prefer, but the fact that her death has had such an impact is relevant -- and connected -- to the Nowak story. Both stories describe a woman's fall from grace into infamy. Both are characterized as "love-gone-wrong". And both invite moral judgments on each woman's life as mother and wife, while the men-in-their-lives conduct remains essentially unblemished. It's no surprise that women are more sympathetic than men to both these women -- it appears should a girl decide to live by conventional rules of conduct like a Nowak to climb to the top, a cheating man can still take her down, and if a girl plays by the media's rules of conduct to become a "celebrity", everyone (including the woman herself) will conspire to take her down. Sin and redemption -- without the redemption.
Of course, life is much more complicated then this. We don't know what happened in Nowak's life. We don't know if what we have read about Anna Nicole's life was true or just a fabrication of a publicist or tabloid journalist (I use the term journalist loosely) -- so just like Nowak, we don't know what happened in Anna Nicole's life either. And even with all this Internet babble and analysis and blogging, I doubt we'll ever really know. And that's as it should be. There's a secret part in every soul, and it deserves to remain secret.
On a sideline, I've noticed many fans of Anna Nicole recalling the death of Princess Diana and comparing the two. While I don't feel the same sadness her fans feel at ther death, I do remember how sad I was at Princess Diana's death. I found her admirable. Perhaps some of my personal admiration and interest was due to the fact that she and I were born about the same time (GMT), and I suppose I felt she was a kindred spirit. It was not a logical feeling, but it was an understandable one. So I'm not going to run down those folks who are upset at Anna Nicole's passing. Let them feel the loss. Maybe it will make them act a bit more kindly to one another.