Nobody is home in France today. I dont really know my students real names of jobs. Major companies doing business in France allow students of my company to use names and even phone numbers assigned to their companies for various reasons. Out of five students called today, 4 were absent and one told me the usual random excuse (sorry if it was really true)about a dead grandmother.
Tomarrow the US plans to shoot down its old spy satelite. All last week people were telling me of their involvements in the French and Spanish space programs. Now today there is radio silence.
In the past when they didnt want to set off any alarms I would spend weeks with undersecretaries and so forth, people with no real connection to events.
I suppose everyone is a bit concerned about the american tendency to make coincidental mistakes and say "I apologise" then actually evict you for their mistake. So I guess thats why I have the day off sorta.
If all the satelites go out, stay inside please.
Oh, if they accidentally hit some top secret armed thing that clears the space slate so to speak and knocks everything down, the French, Spanish and Japanese among others launch every week, I suspect only a three day outage if that should ever occur.
