Sire,
the Technology Is Revolting
Last week, technological
snafus conspired to delay both our daily "prop" of new material on several days
and our weekly e-mail delivery. We apologize to readers of both versions of
Slate. These computer thingamabobs--gosh, they really are confusing and
complicated! Just so you know how it's supposed to work (and usually does):
Each day's edition is supposed to be available on the Web the previous evening
at around 5 p.m. Pacific time (8 p.m. Eastern time). The one exception is the
weekend edition. This is the edition with the most new and updated material. It
is usually available on the Web by 2 p.m. Friday afternoon, Eastern time. The
weekly e-mail delivery should arrive Friday afternoon as well. (You can
also download this same file, which is formatted for easy print-out,
directly from the Web.)
Our No. 1
concern last week was trying to keep Bill Gates from finding out about these
problems we were having, since Microsoft is a company where nothing ever goes
wrong. (Our No. 2 concern, of course, was you, the customer.) At an emergency
staff meeting, we considered our options. Young Plotz had a three-word
suggestion that doesn't bear repeating. Foer and Gore offered to distract Gates
with their vaudeville act while Sobel and Hohlt snuck the pages into his
browser cache. Finally, though, we decided to tell him the truth. He took it
pretty well. "That's OK," he said. "I'm still busy looking at Investor."
Satan or
Sunshine?
In her
dispatches last week from the inauguration, Karenna Gore invited
Slate readers to help her choose a Secret Service code name superior to the one
she regrets having chosen four years ago: Smurfette. It must have two syllables
and begin with S, for some reason. Among reader suggestions (in "The Fray"),
Gore reports, "Sultry, Sexy, and Sassy seem superior to Schoolmarm, Shapeless,
and Schnauzer." Other nominees: Sandstorm, Seraph, Scylla ("Fends off sailors,"
a reader points out). Scrounger, Shameless, Snorer, Slimfast, and Spoiler did
not appeal, and Stripper and Stoner were positively alarming. Bottom line: She
is still looking.
Top
Draft Choice
We're
pleased to announce that Michael Lewis will be joining Slate as a regular
contributor. Michael is the author of Liar's Poker , the best-selling
memoir of life as an investment banker in the 1980s. Losers , an expanded
version of his coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign, will be published
this spring by Knopf. He also writes a monthly column for the New York Times
Sunday Magazine . Look for Michael's regular contributions starting in
April, with occasional appetizers before then.
-- Michael Kinsley
