Sunday papers

The highlight for me was at hand. Phil Plait kicked off the morning papers with a discussion on the 7 ways you can be killed by a black hole. Please, please, please, let me not be spaghettified! He wrapped with a brief clip from Ren and Stimpy. I could not believe it! What a hoot.



(Now I must pull all my old video tapes and re-watch the original episodes!)

I popped over to registration to pay for the closing banquet dinner event thing on Monday evening. I briefly scared myself by putting my credit card in a different pocket. Yikes! That would have mucked up my day... Anyway, I'm in now. I'm all set. Later checked with Tony regarding dress code. And I'm actually looking forward to it.

I returned to Computer Science C lecture hall to catch the fascinating talk on Dr. Phil J.A. McCausland on the Tagish Lake Meteorite. Amazing stuff. Note to self: when collecting carbonaceious chondrites, remember to bring chainsaw, chop sticks, and Aunt Jemima. But leave the police dog at home...

Increasingly, they were running behind schedule so they deferred the One Metre Initiative paper until the afternoon.

I drove Richard to the Ontario Science Centre and we waited for the 3 buses of delegates and spouses to catch us. Denis put me in charge of badge checking (which I was very unhappy about). I think everything got sorted out, I hope. Still, there was a lot of confusion and some anger. And I think there was a lack of leadership from the organisers. All this could have been avoided...

Katrina made the smart move!



The One Metre Initiative (OMI) – A New Premier Telescope in Canada paper was held in the Imperial Oil hall. Incredible telescope; astonishingly poor presentation! Note to self: don't let engineers touch PowerPoint!

We partook of the new Facing Mars exhibit. I went through the "Yes, I would go to Mars" door, thinking it would be kind of like extreme camping. Ah... no. There is much to consider, including how much water do you take, how will you make more food, how do you fix your rocket when it breaks, how will you deal with dust storms, how do you not go crazy, etc? It'll be an awesome exhibit for the little ones.

Richard offered to buy me dinner. I accepted a beer. We popped into Gabby's on Roncesvalles. The place was packed to the gills! Football... Spain won as we sat down. We shared our impressions of the day's presentations. Funny: we were perfectly aligned. He's an interesting character.

Home early.