> Gee - What a surprise... Poor taste on the PIC list.

I didn't see that as poor taste.
More humor with a less than fully correct message.
The people who built it were having fun - whatever it was, and were to
some extent laughing at themselves.

The US has been able to 'buy' big science but Russia and the erstwhile
USSR have always done exceptionally well both with absolute science
and science per $ and in the engineering spinoffs. One example of
many, albeit a more visible one than many - one of the US's most
successful workhorse satellite launchers has gone to orbit for years
now on Russian / Soviet built engines, which proved superior
technically to what "The West" was able to easily build and, for
various reasons, far more cost effective.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V
    http://www.npoenergomash.ru/eng/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPO_Energomash

<HurricaneShieldsUp>
Another example, which peer-ing into globes suggests is liable to
prove increasingly visible over the next lets say two years as the
just starting real-science shakeout/correction gathers momentum and
science gets back on track - current Russian climate science show
signs of, on average, being very significantly superior to that of
"The West".
<LoweringHurricaneShieldsNotaGoodIdea[tm]>


             Russell
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