I Really Do Get It For The Articles…

Last year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, I hosted a panel with Ray Bradbury, Forrest Ackerman and Julius Schwartz. If you were in the room, you heard Mr. Bradbury talk about an article he had just completed for Playboy on why we must renew our commitment to manned space travel. It's in the current issue, oddly coinciding with G.W. Bush stating similar intentions. Bradbury is more eloquent on the topic but neither seems to have much of a reason. (I think space exploration, if and when we can afford it, makes a lot of sense. I think manned space travel is just showing off.)

Also in the current Playboy is an article on how detectives built the case against Robert Blake. If one assumes the facts are as stated in the piece, Blake is undeniably guilty. But I wonder if it's that cut-and-dried, especially given that we're hearing the trial could run six months or longer. I also wonder about the propriety of giving a reporter so much access, and allowing him to lay out the evidence as he does, at a stage when Blake is still entitled to some presumption of innocence.