Even my pens are geek

I have two Fisher space pens. I was going to post some pictures of them; except that they are both Telescoping Pens; and they are no longer on the company’s web site. How nice is that; classic geek cool.

The reason I bring up the pens is because of an old joke that’s been running around for sometime: “The U.S. spent a million dollars to invent a pen that could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.”

Very funny. Except that I propose that the reason the U.S. made it to the moon and back (again and again and again) was that the U.S. could afford to spend a million dollars to invent a pen. Space is not cheap; you don’t cut corners when you’re going 250,000 miles without a gas station nearby.

China says they are going to the moon. No they’re not. You don’t get to go to the moon till you can blow a million dollars inventing a pen that can write upside-down.

Only a few countries can do that anymore. And a couple of people; but I don’t think Bill Gates thinks zero-gee makes him look good… Paul Allen does!