From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 04:55:29 MST
Spudboy:
>Still there will be new tech developments to enhance things as well as keep
>tranhumanism in business.
Now there's an attitude.
You won't find too many nonU.S. astronomers who enjoy their
workshops and meetings at NASA centers. These astronomers have cut
way back their travels or simply cancelled their trips to the U.S.
in the last year because there was too much time wasted with
'security' and 'safety', and generally it was a pain in the ass. One
colleague of my boss who has built detectors for NASA & ESA
spacecraft for 20 years refused to attend any more meetings at JPL,
because he is only permitted to walk outside of his little room with
a desk if he has an escort. (His instrument is in another part in a
lab.). At JSC, they have airport-like scanners in between the
initial lab checkin and scanning. And the longer-time scientist
interchanges are not going well either. All of the astronomers from
here I know who have had postdocs in the U.S. have returned or are
in the process of returning, and it isn't because of the INS. It was
because the working and living climate was oppressive and they got
very tired of hearing every other word that the U.S. is the 'best'.
It really does get old to hear 95% of the world's population
continually ignored, and these are pretty patient people,
in my opinion.
It's not just European astronomers, it's tourists too. People are
avoiding to go near the U.S. I've met more than a few families from
Australia and New Zealand vacationing in Europe, who specifically
avoided traveling anywhere near the U.S. and chose European
holidays, or, at the very least routed their trips to not have any
stopovers in the U.S.
So the research environment for dealing with anything U.S. is not
exactly inviting, and overall the goodwill from the U.S. has
declined. So now people outside the borders are not motivated to
deal with things U.S.-related and I suspect that will be felt in
people's pocketbooks, and not later, but sooner.
Amara
-- through December 2002: Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Cosmic Dust Group, Heidelberg, Deutschland from January 2003: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario, Roma, Italia
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:22 MST