What is "Strasium?"

It's an imaginary composite alloy created in a futuristic story back in the 1990's back when I realized the space ship needed technologies not found on the periodic table. If you knew how amazing this Strasium stuff was, you'd know why I would want to name my company after something so awesome.

How many Documentaries have you produced?

Hundreds of short ones, about about 10 long ones, not to mention 3 movies and every aspect of two seasons of a television show. I also helped out with 4 or 5 TV shows when I lived in California. My "magnum opus" has been in the works since the early 1990's which should finally wrap when the Shuttle program is phased out. I mostly wanted to do that documentary because the normal press assigned to the beat are not really very smart about the space program. For them, it's usually just another assignment, and they'll move on to something else when the next news story breaks - hopefully something about which they know a little something more. I think I had my first up-close experience with just how bad the News Media is when Terri Schiavo was dying. I have and will write a lot about the news business, and plan on doing a documentary soon about them, too. By far most of my work was in the 1990's under the company name SPEX Productions - SPEX standing for Sullivan's Personal Experiment. I am most proud of a documentary I did with a humble and brilliant former Philharmonic Orchestra perfectionist (now a Sister in the Order of St. Clare) who taught me how to work with perfectionists with demands far beyond my skill-set to produce. Although she was understandably never happy with the documentary, it was nominated for a national film-makers award and would have won had I been enrolled somewhere in a film school at the time. It wasn't perfect, but it was still the best. My time working with Sister Kathleen came in handy with dealing with perfectionists since then, if not always coping with them well. I do not take my dealings with perfectionists too seriously. While I do take them seriously, I don't take it personally.

What do you think about the new FCC rules on blogging?

I absolutely hate when people in government - and those are people in government no better and no worse than the rest of us - meddle in someone else's business. But unfortunately, there are bad apples out there - most of them in internet criminal enterprises out of reach of the US Justice Department. Our new Attorney General Eric Holder is literally making my head spin with every story in the news. They go around Congress and say the Feds must issue checks to ACORN prior to a recent legislative ban, while they won't prosecute Union Thugs who committed a hate crime in Philadelphia because they would be prosecuting one of their own. In just about every way imaginable Congress and the Constitution have been made irrelevant, and this will only stop when the Courts become involved - and I hope they do, and quickly. This Administration, therefore, won't go overseas to prosecute the pfishers and scammers who use the internet to defraud people of their life savings and hard-earned cash, but they'll go after the free speech of American bloggers - if the view differs from a Marxist one. But alas, there is one silver lining in the rules which I like very much. If someone is taking money with the left hand and then writing a so-called "objective" blog about the giver of gifts with the right hand, without revealing the motivation behind the glowing review and commentary, (or blowing review and commentary against a competitor to the benefactor), then there should be some transparency in the transaction of cash for positive commentary. After all, the blogger has either become an advertiser or a whore, on sale to the highest bidder. In so many cases, that is exactly what the blogosphere has become, and so I thank the FCC for the rules demanding transparency. Whether the FCC will actually follow through with any of this is another subject altogether - especially when members of their own political cause or party are guilty of questionable blogging practices, and we all know the names of the blogs involved. Sure, a few liberal bloggers may be taken down as symbolic collateral damage, but make no mistake about it the targets here are the so-called "God-fearing, Constitution loving Tea-Baggers" or anyone else like them. For the record, I don't accept money for any commentary, and if anyone ever pays me for anything, it will appear to your left as an advertisement. I do not, by the way, consider it hypocritical to take money for an ad on the left while commenting in a truthful, and even unintentionally hurtful way about the same company or business on the right. So far, that has not happened if only because for the time being I choose the ads based on my own enthusiastic endorsement. The real consistency of journalistic integrity demands nothing less. I will never accept a penny for my opinion from anyone. It is, afterall, MY opinion. So far as being a free-lance journalist - especially in the space business - now that's always open to negotiation. Bottom line, a person's opinion should be formed by the Holy Spirit, wisdom, and truth, but never cash. And yes, prostitution is all over the blogosphere so in principle I agree with the FCC Ruling.

Why do you always put a cross the "J" within your signature?
                                                                                 

I think it started in grade school, when I was Confirmed at St. Ignatius of Neodesha. I didn't even realize until years later I was doing it. But, it has a nice touch. No, it does not mean I think I'm Jesus - other than part of the greater Body of Christ. Easier to draw than a fish, especially since a hand injury last summer. So for all of those who have seen me sign my name weirdly over the years, now you know why.

 

(MORE AS I THINK OF THEM)