We just need to sell it that way. I’ve done it with clients who say they want to understand something, but really don’t and are wasting my time without being willing to pay for it.

If they persist, I start them on the road of binary math and transistors as switches. I had a board rigged with toggle switches and LEDs to form a half-adder, then a board using relays, one using transistors, and then a half-adder chip. Too many preferred ‘magic’.

When they made all of the science toys ‘safe’ for kids, they took the fun out. Creating messes and having exciting things happen was what made science interesting. No one wants to take a risk any more, so we are sliding back into the ‘dark ages’ of Puritanism.

I’ve been reading books and thinking… an unpopular combination in America today. I noticed our local public library, which is on the whole not horrible, has multiple copies of several of Tim LaHaye’s novels in my local branch library alone, but only about four of Richard Dawkins’s books… in the whole HPL system. I’m reading Brian Greene’s popular books, in order; I’m now on The Fabric of the Cosmos… I bought two of his books and received one as a gift, because HPL can’t bother to have sufficient copies of books by one of the finest… and most approachable… science writers in the world today.

Bryan, when you and I were young, American science was great, and I’m not using the term casually. Now, with all the god-botherers in positions of power, it feels as if we’re not even half trying. This isn’t going to cut it. I don’t like the sound of the labels sure to come: America the third-world nation. America the has-been. America the ignorant.

I’ve been trying to think of how to reverse the trend, and wondering if we could sell science as magic: “You think Harry Potter is mystifying? Try quantum entanglement!” Something has to inspire the kids, and Bill Nye, as good as he is, is getting old along with the rest of us…