On Sun, 25 May 2008 22:54:26 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Reunite
Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)" made the
phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Sun, 18 May 2008 09:01:38 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The NASA Watch site has really changed. It used to be an insightful,
and somewhat biting glimpse into space policy. It was quite unique in
doing this, but has now gone somewhat off the rail. There are several
other excellent sites that serve the purpose that NASA Watch used to
serve, and they are forums that actually allow and encourage civil
discourse, rather than just applause. "Yay, Scott!", "Go for it,
Scott!" I really think those folks made their point in dozens of posts
that NASA Watch welcomed, but it may take a hundred such posts for
Keith to see that.

OK, I was a field center engineer who never got downsized, which may
affect my view, but I always thought NASA Watch was nothing but a pack
of HQ weenies who got pushed out (long after the field centers had
taken much deeper hits on complement) and were crying to the world
about how badly they'd been treated.

I always wondered why all of a sudden it was so terrible that NASA had
let people go, when none of those folks had said a word when it was
people at field centers, not themselves at HQ. It was like they
thought they were gods of NASA and shouldn't be expected to be treated
like the rest of the folks. It's not as if most of them ever did that
much to fulfill the NASA mission of doing aerospace research and
exploration. I mean, they were all staff, not line and yes, line
needs staff for support, but staff work isn't the goal of the agency,
line is, despite what NASA Watch said. (Yes, I was line, and yes, I
relied heavily on staff for support, and yes, they did a great job of
it, but they were still staff.)

Mary "Not everyone at HQ was like that, of course."

Actually, it was one guy, at Reston, not HQ.