Great story. Demything sharks has been a long, long project. And now a more sordid story. A similar event, JESSI, the Junior Engineers and Scientists Summer Institute may have been a precursor of the NSF affair. I had completed my Junior year in HS and was selected for that two-week affair. Being some years older than you I suspect this morphed into the NSA group.

Unfortunately, it was held at the college where my mother worked and in the town I was going to HS. My mother and sisters were spending the summer with relatives about 90 miles away, and I was, ostensibly, staying in a dorm on campus and being educated in a wide variety of things.

I figured out that if I volunteered for cafeteria duty I was excused from the morning body count. Therefore I could be out all night and just show up at the cafeteria. Therefore, I did. My friends and I played hearts, drank, smoked and in general raised hell at my house for the last week of the Institute, simply because we could. One of them gave me a ride to campus, and picked me up after dinner. It was all cool. Mom was due back on a Saturday, and we planned on Friday night cleaning up.

Mom came home Friday. Hell to pay. Thank God she had her sister with her, and a cousin of mine. And she didn't know how to load and shoot the gun in the house.

And I don't remember anything about the Institute except for getting some award for tests we were given the second day.

In retrospect that was a sad portent of a lot of wasted time and effort. No wonder some of us have to spend the last half of our lives making up for the first half.

By the way, that is a fascinating story. I wonder how much longer it will be before humans learn to respect the other forms of sentient forms of life.