For variety, I went to the Planetary Society meeting on Thursday lunch at LPSC, along with Pete Banholzer. There was a general discussion about implications and options for the new Bush space plan. Most of the discussion was pro-mars, or at least ensuring Mars was specifically enabled. (although one interesting wrinkle - TPS apparently beleives that Lunar ice deposits should be reserved for Lunar uses, not "wasted" as rocket fuel, so that potentially weakens one prop of the Moon-to-Mars plan).

At one point, a distinguished looking gentleman behind us spoke out passionately about the dangers to the human race from a variety of causes including supervolcanoes and impacts (I think he forgot ice ages, which are essentially a certainty, unless we fend them off with greenhouse warming). He warned that evolution and planetary environments were not conducive to survival of complex surface-dwelling species, and (paraphrasing) that we needed to get off our butts before it was too late.

Anyway, he got a huge round of applause and then I read his name badge...