But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

It was a long and, frankly, pedantic talk. The subject had started out on doing literature searches using online library resources. This soon turned into an extremely long demonstration of how to use Google, and how it compared to specialized subject databases. We got finally to this valuable tip:

``When searching by keyword, it is important that you have the correct keyword.''

Glad we got that straightened out.

I'd always viewed web searches as like being in the Winners Circle on The $20,000 Pyramid, with really loose judges that day. ``Gemini, capsule, Michigan, Kansas, Canada'' -- A Field Guide to American Spacecraft. That's the site.

The other talk, trying to explain the Scientific Method, came from a physicist and went as well as most attempts by physicists to teach The Philosophy of Science go, which I suspect the philosophers in the crowd find amusing. My eyebrows perked up when he claimed that, in Science, evidence is everything and human opinion never enters into the matter, which is true in the same way statements like ``hard science fiction writers faithfully respect scientific fact'' are true.

Trivia: Two years and US$639,000 were spent in the early 1930s trying (unsuccessfully) to cast a quartz mirror for the Palomar Mountain observatory. Source: Life Nature Laboratory: The Universe, David Bergamini.

Currently Reading: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981, T A Heppenheimer.