47%

Remember when Mitt Romney disrespected nearly half of the country, calling them lazy moochers?  It was difficult to hear, for me, as someone who for a while (grad school) paid no income taxes but still had ambitions, worked hard, etc.  The ambitions were not necessarily to make money, but that's a different topic.  Most people I interact with regularly are in the same boat - which confirmed my thought that Romney had no clue what he was talking about.  However, I now realize it is not that simple.  Living in Boulder, and overhearing some conversations in coffee shops, bars, etc, has mad me realize some things.  There are plenty of people out there with no ambitions, no desire to learn new things, no respect for science and knowledge, etc, who hang out in bars talking about garbage and slowly destroying their livers.  Yet they still want their smartphones, cheap and abundant food, etc (hint: these things are not possible without scientific breakthroughs).  And I've come to realize that this subset of the population significantly outweighs the portion that I consider myself to be part of.  And I'm kind of disturbed by this.

Elitism

In grad school, many people seemed intellectually curious.  Here, it seems, siggnificantly less so - and it is kind of disturbing.  Researchers, with PhDs in physics, really shouldn't complain about news coverage for the Higgs boson, and really shouldn't say that such research is pointless.  We should celebrate all scientific achievements and understand that the microcosms that we choose to work on (or are coerced into working on by whatever circumstances) are not more important than some other microcosm.  Not everybody can directly work on everything, but everyone should be aware of what is out there and what remains to be discovered, especially for the bigger-picture items.  That's part of being a good scientist.

Sounds from the visible underground

I went to a fundraiser for a group that supports economic justice last night. Some highlights of the conversations (names changed for anonymity) (mostly paraphrased - I don't remember the exact wordings):

"[Rob] is like the smartest guy I've met."
"I don't know, I have a high threshold for 'smartest person...'"

"I bid on your military history lunch thing. I can't wait to discuss the Battle of Teutoberg Forest's impact on the unification of Germany."
"I don't really do unification of Germany ... I mostly do World War 2, some Civil War."
"Sumerian Civil War?"
"Nothing ancient."
"Oh."

"It would have been nice to have the money to go to grad school."
"My grad school was fully funded - I actually saved a small amount of money."