"Maybe that's an opportunity, not a problem, Paul (and if I sound like an IBM salesman I say the same thing anyway)."

A newspaper is not the place to go to see people actually earning a living, though journalists like to pretend they never stop sweating over a hot typewriter. It is much more like a brothel - short, rushed bouts of really enjoyable activity interspersed with long lazy stretches of gossip, boasting, flirtation, drinking, telephoning, strolling about the corridors sitting on the corner of desks, planning to start everything tomorrow. Each of the inmates has a little specialty to please the customers. The highest paid ones perform only by appointment; the poorest take on anybody, The editors are like madams - soothing, flattering, disciplining their naughty, temperamental staff, but rarely obliged to satisfy the clients personally between the printed sheets.

I can tell you what it's like to work for a newspaper. Imagine a combine, one of those huge threshing machines that eat up a row of wheat like nothing, bearing right down on you. You're running in front of it, all day long, day in and day out, just inches in front of the maw, where steel blades are whirring and clacking and waiting for you to get tired or make one slip. The only way to keep the combine off you is to throw it something else to rip apart and digest. What you feed it is stories. Words and photos. Ten inches on this, fifteen inches on that, a vertical shot here and a horizontal there, scraps of news and film that go into the maw where they are processed and dumped onto some page to fill the spaces around the ads. Each story buys you a little time, barely enough to slap together the next story, and the next and the next. You never get far ahead, you never take a breather, all you do is live on the hustle. Always in a rush, always on deadline, you keep scrambling to feed the combine. That's what it's like. The only way to break free is with a big story, one you can ride for a while and tear off in pieces so big, the combine has to strain to choke them down. That buys you a little time. But sooner or later the combine will come chomping after you again, and you better be read to feed it all over again.

As the smoke from Web journalism's intense burn rate clears, it's becoming easier to see that the job of being journalism's flame keeper still falls to print newspapers, with their solid foundation of local advertising, and to those few remaining national news outlets that are subsidized. Original, quality journalism on the Web simply falls between the cracks: It's too general in content and its audience too dispersed to attract the local or niche advertiser, yet it's too elitist and too complicated for users to access to attract the national advertiser.

Mr. Franklin: Wait a minute, Thomas. I have to reboot here.

Mr. Jefferson: That's all right, Ben. We'll go on without you. Has everyone had a chance to look at the draft I posted yesterday?

Mr. Sherman: Not yet, Thomas, I've been having Notes replication problems.

Mr. Adams: Here, Roger, I brought a hard copy

Mr. Sherman: Thanks, Saaaaay, nice font.

Mr. Adams: Do you like it? I downloaded it off Colonies Online just last week

Mr. Jefferson: Gentlemen! There is work to be done. I fear our document will soon leak out.

Mr. Livingston: Too late, Thomas. There's already a bootleg circulating. I saw it posted on alt.georgeIII.sucks last night.

Mr. Franklin: @#$$%^$# General Protection Fault!

Mr. Adams: Ben, you might try upgrading to Windows 75. It solved that problem for me.

Mr. Sherman: Thomas, the part here about the Acts of Pretended Legislation; have you considered using bullets to air out the text?

Mr. Jefferson: I can fix that easily enough. Drat! I've spilled candle wax on my keyboard again.

Mr. Adams: You know, Thomas, that wouldn't happen if you'd buy an active-matrix screen.

Mr. Franklin: Hard-disk failure?!? Aw, criminy!

Mr. Livingston: Are you sure it's "unalienable rights"? My spell checker recommends "unassailable".

Mr. Jefferson: Can we stick to the substance of the document, please? Shoot. Low battery. Anyone got a spare power cable?

Mr. Sherman: What have you got, a Toshiba? No, mine isn't compatible.

Mr. Franklin: Hello, PCs Philadelphia? What does it mean when the floppy drive buzzes? OK, I'll hold.....

Mr. Livingston: The "In Congress" part here at the top; have you thought about blowing that up really big and maybe centering it in 72 point Helvetica?

Mr. Jefferson: Not a bad idea. Aw, nuts! Word macro virus! I can't save the file.

Mr. Franklin: That's all right, Thomas. We can manage. Here, borrow my quill pen....

Was wondering where the column was. Now that it's arrived, the wonder is how on Monday the 4th the author knew to write on Monday the 4th something like "better late than never he said on Thursday" (the 7th). Given this awesome prognosticating ability, For your next prediction, who's going to win the 2000 U.S. Presidential and Vice Presidential elections; first tiebreaker: Which party conrols the next U.S. House?; second tiebreaker: Which party controls the next U.S. Senate? Looking forward to the answers (as may be a lot of others) next week at the latest.

So this Stealth fighter and the United jumbo jet nearly hit each other over LA. What I want to know is, if this Stealth stuff is so good, why did it trigger the passenger jet's avoidance radar?

When the Air Force flies airplanes in civil airspace, they enable a "blip-enhance" radar transponder identical to that used by airliners (and for that matter, by little guys like me). The transponder transmits a reply message when it's scanned by an air traffic control radar--or by the TCAS collision-avoidance system. The latter's what alerted the United flight.

One a related (if slightly silly) note: I fly in the airspace over Palmdale pretty regularly, to and from trips to Mexico with my wife (she's a doctor who does volunteer work in a clinic at San Blas), and to Las Vegas on business. I don't remember which trip it was; but last summer I was on my way back from one when the following exchange ensued:

It was "clear and a million" as the saying goes. And while an F-117 may be invisible on RADAR, I assure you it sticks out like a sore thumb when you use the Mark-1 eyeball.

"Stealth" technology is a bundle of stuff including active countermeasures. I would presume the active countermeasures were not turned on.