Happy 4th of July!

I celebrated this wonderful day in my own little way, by going to the Dentist. It was only moderately painful, but in return, it cost a small fortune. One thing I noticed during this somewhat untraditional way of celebrating the American independence day, was the awkward silence that inevitably occurs after the dentist is done with orally violating me and repeatedly stabbing me in the mouth, and it's time to collect money. I think the dentist feels a little bad about this: It seems unreasonable that all the pain he inflicted on me is something I should pay for, since the bastard clearly enjoyed it so much. If you're perverse enough to become a dentist, shouldn't you really be the one to pay? Clearly, these people have a sado-oral fixation, and society needs to say stop.

In other news, there's also been other and less dental fireworks today, when NASA engineers for little or no reason sent a washing-machine-sized thingy plunging into a passing comet. I'm sure this caused some irritation on the comet, which was indeed taken completely by surprise. This, however, is an interesting example of how life imitates art in science: This thing - whatever it is - is called Deep Impact; Reagan's futuristic and space-based defence effort was called Star Wars, and .. Well, I can't really think of any others, but it still feels like the main motivation behind an average space researcher's choice of occupation is science fiction movies, and not so much an actual interest in science. In addition, of course, to the promise of those voluptuous space women from Mars. They're hot. And weightless, if you know what I mean.