Occasionally, we'll receive an e-mail into the tips line that makes us stop and think. Mailopnik lets us share some of the ones that don't, along with our response. First up: Cylon/Segway-lovers.
FROM: Danielle Maccione
TO: Tips
SUBJECT: Ray WertCan't believe you fell off the Segway…it's the easiest thing to ride. It's self-balancing, so I'm not quite sure how you managed that one. I would say after reading your article, you harbor a lot of ill will toward the Segway(an inanimate object, I might remind you). It's a brilliant cross of physics and engineering that, until you are able to produce a machine as comparable if not better, I would reserve comment/opinion if I were you. You sounded foolish. That's just my 2 cents worth.
Now, the Jalopnik response:
FROM: Jalopnik
TO: Danielle Maccione
SUBJECT: RE: Ray Wert
Actually, I'm not sure we'd pay more than one cent for your e-mail, because for starters you're not giving us any kind of sign-post for what you're writing us about. We write like 30 stories per day and over almost five years of publishing, we've got a lot of stories to weed through. So next time, give us a link or something more to go on than the name of our Editor-in-Chief as a subject line. Nonetheless, we'll assume you're talking about Wert's feature on the seven reasons the Segway still sucks due to your mentioning someone falling off a Segway and your unabashed fan-girl love of one of the silliest methods of transportation science and engineering has yet to invent.Now that we've figured out how to read your mind, let's get down to the root issue you have with the story — you want to sleep with either Dean Kamen or a Segway and be the mother of either Dean's or, in a Cylon-like mecha-human cross-pollination, the Segway's, children. This blind love of Dean/Segway/Cylons obviously caused you to miss that this story was a humorous take on the subject. Therefore, you missed the joke.
We mean really, if it's so brilliant, how come GM wants to make one?
Thank you for your e-mail.
Regards,
Jalopnik