A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

DEFINITELY AN E-TICKET: Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, has died after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. There are, of course, many things to admire about such a woman. First, of course, she was a fucking astronaut. I don't care how routine space flight is or may or some day become. Astronaut = Awesome. Second, of course, the competition simply was too fierce for the initial class of shuttle astronauts to have allowed for anything but inherently well qualified folks. Sure, NASA was going to have women and African-Americans in the class of 1978, but those folks, as a class, probably needed to be better than their peers. But in all the interviews I ever read with her, she didn't much care about any of that, not at least on her on behalf. She got to do something cool and she thought that she might inspire another girl along the way to do something cool as well. And that's a life well lived. (Also, fucking astronaut.) Is her impact any greater than Shannon Lucid or Kathryn Sullivan or any of her peers in that class? Maybe not. But she was the first.