Uplink Prepared

A magazine editor once gave me a piece of advice. "Never," he told me, "pass up an opportunity to be on television." Which is probably good advice, if you're the kind of person who looks good on television. Usually, I end up looking awkward and fidgety. At best. Whenever I do make the mistake of watching myself on television later – whenever I appear on a show, it's almost always one of those news channel talk shows where I'm in an isolated booth with a thing in my ear and too much lip color, trying desperately to create meaningful chemistry with the person talking into my earpiece by looking directly into the lens of the camera, which is never more than eighteen inches from my face – so clearly, I do my best to avoid watching the results of that – but sometimes it just happens....