APPNA meeting and Mars

For the last few days I have been at the annual meeting of the Association of Physicians of Pakistani descent of North-American (APPNA) in Dallas, Texas. I'm here for conducting interviews with doctors about evolution as part of a research project. So first just a comment about the hotel. The meeting is in a giant resort hotel, Gaylord Texan, right off the Dallas Fort-Worth airport. The hotel is actually quite comfortable (I watched parts of soccer games on a 52 foot - yes, 52 foot! - high definition projection screen), but it is all under a gigantic glass ceiling. Therefore, we the atmosphere inside the resort is always very comfortable and the conditions are impervious to the actual weather outside. This is all well and good, but at dinner today at an "outdoor" restaurant, it suddenly struck me, that this is how it will be like living on Mars - at least for the first few decades, before we terraform it to make it more comfortable for us. C'mon, it's about time we tame nature :)

But we've also had some serious discussions here about Pakistan, terrorism, and the fallout for Pakistani-Americans from the whole Faisal Shahzad (the Time Square bomber) affair. I will have a post on that tomorrow.