TV of the Day

A danish asthmatic and man with no legs both climb a mountain. One says to the other, "We're gonna die up here." "Great! Let's take a picture!"

I watched the first season of Discovery Channel's Everest: Beyond the Limit. If you are remotely curious about mountaineering, it's worth watching. This first season follows a team of climbers making a summit attempt on Everest in 2006, a notorious year in the mountain's climbing history, when a large number of deaths occurred, one of which was a highly publicized story that brought a fair amount of negative attention to this extreme sport.

While climbing Everest remains at the outer limits of human ability, it is getting increasingly accessible through technology and experienced expedition leaders. I won't be surprised if sherpas open a gift shop in the death zone someday to take advantage of the traffic.

Futurist of the Day

Today, while rummaging around in piles of rubbish looking for something to eat, krasota found an issue of an old trade magazine for which I worked as an editorial intern back in my young, dashing, and altogether sexy past. I traveled a minimum of an hour and fifteen minutes--car, train, and walking--from the suburbs in which I grew up to this job in Center City Philadelphia. Not long into the first real commute of my life, I decided this lifestyle was invented by masochistic idiots. Still, I did end up doing quite a lot of commuting both in and out of Philly and all over the Washington DC area. However, now, as you may know, through a carefully calibrated accidental combination of both fortunate and unfortunate circumstances, I actually no longer have a commute. I telecommute. Over 11 years ago, published in that very periodical krasota pulled from a rubbish pile that may or may not have been edible, was an article I wrote declaring telecommuting to be the way of the future. If you aren't bored yet, you may wish to read the article.

P.S. Here's a shout out to my homey flynnk with whom I shared that first commute. "Memo to myself: do the dumb things I gotta do. Touch the puppet head."