I Miss You!

YOU NEVER CALL, YOU NEVER WRITE

Well, I’m glad you never call – but I really miss your e-mails, and finally realized why they shrank to a trickle a week or two ago. ME-MAIL is broken! It seems to work – I sent one myself yesterday and the confirmation screen said, ‘It worked!’ But it didn’t.

I really apologize to those of you who took the time to write. I would have noticed it sooner if the emails had stopped altogether. I just thought at first I must really be boring you . . . or that you had finally all come over to my point of view on cauliflower, gasoline prices, and Borealis.

But I finally realized that the emails that were coming through were not the ones from ME-MAIL, but rather the ones from those of you who have added my e-address to your address books and write directly. (It’s “myvastfortune” over at AOL – but, please, links only, no attachments.)

How the heck am I supposed to write this column without your estimable contributions? Until we get this fixed, please use the direct e-address. And on the off-chance you have a copy of what you sent in the last 10 days (though I know ME-MAIL makes that unlikely), by all means re-send.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE

Here is an inspiring project that you – or your kids – will certainly want to know about. (Thanks, Nathan.) It’s a sort of cross between SETI (everyone working together to find extraterrestrial life) and wikipedia (everyone working together to drive the poor CEO of Encyclopedia Britannica into an unrecoverable depression). Its aim: to catalog all the world’s species. (That should keep them busy for the summer.)