[FPSPACE] from astronautics to paleontology

[Keith Gottschalk]

      When FPSPACE was founded fourteen years ago, who would have
guessed that the most acrimonious & protracted debate for ages would be
on events from paleontology!   Years ago, the most emotional exchanges
here would be based on residual loyalties from the cold war.

   Since one email mentioned the world's biggest-known crater, the
Vredefort crater, which lies in South Africa, let me end on a trivia
note. Since this crater impact was not, alas, 2 million years ago, but
2.2 billion years, erosion has long since ground it down to a palimsest
with no central peak surviving, nor any other high mountain that would
attract tourism. 

   The highest part of the rim surviving is called Hillbrow, an
inner-city ghetto in Johannesburg. On the highest-remaining peak is a
historic monument called the Fort. This is the only jail in the world
that had both Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela amongst its prisoners.
Next to it we built our Constitutonal Court.  - Keith


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