02:03:04 Sunday November 16 2003
God I love flying. It is actually worth the fascist screening policies. Indianapolis was beset with that awful post nasal drip from the sky. But, a few minutes after takeoff we burst above the cloud line and into a beautiful white desert. If you were careful you could watch air currents cutting new empty stream beds in the cloud layer below. Later came the approach to Phoenix in the dark. The city is a luminous oasis in the blackness of the desert. It glows a pale orange from the light of a million sodium bulbs.

Does anyone else worry that perhaps aliens looking at the dark side of the Earth would see a tremendous sodium signature from all of the sodium lights and would thus conclude that our planet is a rather nasty little place unsuitable for life? <silence> I guess it is just me.