If you’ve enjoyed the bout of transatlantic name-calling that my piece on public engagement produced (generally along the well-worn lines of Europeans from Venus versus Martian Americans), you might want to look at this exchange on the Foresight Institute’s Nanodot blog. Here Foresight VP Christine Peterson enthusiastically agrees with my not wholly serious suggestion that the origin of the UK’s aversion to the positive vision of Drexlerian nanotechnology can be traced to the generally pessimistic and miserabilist disposition of the inhabitants of this rain-sodden archipelago, and I desperately try and extract myself from the hole I’ve dug myself into.