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Re: Don's sig

I see you found the quote, and in fact, I did spend most of today relaxing on a
tropical beach.  :-) After making the disaterous mistake in thinking I was in
good enough shape to be able to bicycle around a mountainous island in 100
degree tropical weather.  At midday.  Stupid.  I don't think I've ever sweat so
much in my life.  But *wow* did that ocean feel good when I finally got in
it!!!  Now I'm going to have some yummy Thai food for dinner.

And if you want scary politics stuff, ask me sometime about the talk I saw in
Maui by some colonel or general or something about the near-future plans of the
US military to declare outer space to be US-controlled jurisdiction.
International collaboration will proceed at our tolerance.  He was quite
gleeful about it.  "We've been talking about it for a long time," he said, "but
we really mean it now."  The part that blew my mind was at the end, he threw a
bone to the scientists by saying that the US would continue to support
international collaborations in the exploration and study of space, "but we
will only endure so much taunting, and then we'll strike!"  That is a direct
quote; I wrote it down at the time.  I must confess I had never thought of the
words "taunting" and "striking" in the context of scientific collaboration in
space exploration before, and I cannot fathom how this guy must be thinking
about it.  But then, earlier in his talk he showed a video clip of a woman in a
tight skirt and heels, repeatedly kicking a prone man in the crotch, and he
seemed to think that was both funny and appropriate.  Either he or I must be an
alien, and maybe it's me, because a lot of people did laugh.  I was baffled
and appalled, myself.

Well, greetings from Down Under, anyway.  Maybe I'll just stay here.
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                 http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"All is strange and void.  Are we dead, or is this Ohio?" - Yakko Warner


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