Speeches on FIRST

[dlavery]

I was lucky enough to be able to attend an event at the U.S. Capitol last summer when Dean gave the kick-off talk for the annual "Science Coalition" presentation to Congress (Teams 116, 122 and 365 were invited to send some team members and robots to help provide a "FIRST presence"). The Science Coalition is a lobbying group made up of 400 university presidents and Congressional liaison officers there to ask Congress for more Federal tax money for basic research (and guess where basic research money goes? Yup, straight to the universities! But of coure - they will tell you - their cause is not at all self-serving. ). They had invited Dean to speak, expecting him to automatically be supportive of their cause.

I guess they don't know him very well.

He started out saying (I'll never forget these lines) "I am here under protest. I think that what you are doing is fundamentally wrong, at every level. And now I am going to tell you why..." Which he did for the next 20 minutes. He explained exactly why he doesn't like the way Congress deals with lobbyists, the problems with the Coalition's approach to fund raising, and why he does not believe in asking the Government for taxpayer money that should be provided by corporate sources. It was great! It left a whole room full of lobbyists with their jaws on the floor (I don't think anyone had been that honest with them in a long time), and a certain marketing director from FIRST trying to hide under the table (hi Laura!).

To my eternal regret, I don't have a copy of the speech. I am hoping that someone, somewhere, has a videotape of it. If anyone does (NASA Knights? Team MOE?), I am willing to pay cash to get a copy.

-dave

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"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr