Tales of the Golem; or, the Modern Epimetheus

Sticks and umbrellas in their mitts

I like the Ritz-Carlton. Say what you will about RAND, but siting its Washington office immediately next door to the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City was a stroke of genius.

I was disturbed to discover yesterday that Marriott owns 99% of Ritz-Carlton, and has for years! Does this undermine my simple world view that "Ritz-Carlton good, Marriott evil"?

(I think at one time Microsoft owned a certain percentage of the stock of Apple. But not 99%.)

Well, I've decided to retain Ritz-Carlton as one of my Defining Lifestyle Brands for now, and call off my fatwa against Marriott.

A couple of weeks ago I was at a Marriott Residence Inn in Albuquerque and it was okay, although the room had a really noisy refrigerator.

posted by Richard Mason @ Monday, March 31, 2008 0 comments

Earth below us, drifting, falling

Radio woke me up this morning with the news that former Thomas Building resident Bob Behnken was doing a spacewalk to complete assembly of the Dextre robot outside the International Space Station.

I thought it was nice that someone I knew had slipped the surly bonds of Earth. Then ten seconds later the radio mentioned that other former Thomas Building resident Garrett Reisman was assisting in the assembly. Hey, it's a grad school reunion up there.

For some reason I find it funny that Garrett's Wikipedia entry has a warning at the top: "This article documents a person who is currently in space."

posted by Richard Mason @ Monday, March 17, 2008 0 comments