Jan14
Pots And Kettles
on January 14, 2009 at 10:45 am…in which Keith Cowing accuses me of being “snarky” (in comments). Guess his irony meter is on the fritz. Oh, well, can’t complain. I’ve been getting steady hittage off it for the last hour or so.
Anyway, with regard to the pick for White House liaison to NASA, I’d just like to see something more to his qualifications than that he raised money for Obama (and of course, his sexual orientation is entirely irrelevant, at least to me).
In Noble’s defense, it sounds to me like this liaison job is mostly communications and networking. Noble’s lobbying and campaign fundraising experience should be useful to this job. It’d be much better, if he had experience in a couple of large bureaucracies (especially NASA) or demonstrated some interest in space activities.
The last part is a bit disturbing to me. He seems to be transitioning from homosexual-based interests lobbying and fund raising to a post in NASA. I’d wonder about his interest over the long term. It seems likely that he’ll move on after a suitable period as liaison. OTOH, the job seems suited to people who aren’t sticking around. I’d be more concerned, if such a person ended up as NASA administrator, for example, since there’s a good chance that they’d bring a short term attitude to an agency that requires some degree of long term planning.
Ironic that the “editor” of a site dedicated to questioning every move NASA makes would get so irate over your questioning the qualifications of someone slated to be working with NASA. Looks like Keith missed his meds this morning.
Cowing certainly was pretty annoying today. I just think it’s rude to insert your own comments directly in another person’s post. I know it’s his sandbox, his rules, but posting replies without cutting up someone else’s post seems good etiquette. They put the effort in and as long as it isn’t completely idiotic, I think you should respect the post. For example, I think the way RealClimate.org does it is much less annoying (although I think even that relatively mild case abuses the authority of the site). Most of their responses don’t break up the post by coming at the end and are clearly labeled as “Response:”.