Eponymously Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins

I am very glad that, in the same week, my taxes have paid for stealing a little bit of a comet and for evading the Martian defenses to plonk a robominion onto the surface. But I was away from TV and will now have to play catch-up on the science and tech.

C-SPAN ran the morning MER press conference from JPL, and I have taped it. Let's hope they continue to follow these briefings for a while.

Stardust and Wild 2 seem to have gotten overshadowed by the Mars fuss. (Also, I think I left my aerogel sample in Kalamazoo.) I probably should put together a talk about it.

Beagle 2 is still missing. Stumbled across a vicious column in a UK paper ridiculing the builders: "Yet it is a noble symbol of British incompetence and this glorious bellyflop must be celebrated." It's so dense with pop-culture references that I can't understand half of what is said.