<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Just back from the dentist and can't possibly spare the time to read all the intervening messages with the attention they deserve, so I'll just recommend (highly!) the book I'm currently reading:<div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The Stuff of Thought", by Steven Pinker<br></div><div><br></div><div>And pass on a lovely quote from Immanuel Kant that gives name, "Cleaving the Air", to chapter 4 from the book:</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space."</div><div><br></div><div>In short, we are better off for the challenges presented us by "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: -webkit-sans-serif; line-height: 19px; ">the surly bonds of Earth". (A familiar phrase quoted during Gemini and Apollo, from the sonnet "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. Magee died at the age of 19 during WWII in a mid-air collision.)</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; ">A kite doesn't fly in spite of its string - it flies because of it.</span></span></font></div><div><br></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Rob Seaman</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">NOAO</span></font></div></body></html>