Last night I watched a re-run of a "Friends" episode. The gang is on the rooftop waiting for a comet to shoot across the sky. Right from the start, they've mistaken a comet for meteor, the natural science equivalent of not knowing the difference between the House and the Senate. When geeky Ross the paleontologist tries to say anything about the comet, even its name, he is shouted down by the others who groan and roll their eyes because of all the boring science stuff. Science is a drag, as all the cool people know. Yeah, I know its just a dumb TV show, but how often have you seen scientists portrayed realistically in popular culture? Not only are they often mad or dangerous, but even the good ones on our side are painted as helpless, ridiculous and retarded in any field but their own.

And it's not just science, there is a strong anti-intellectual streak in this country that seems to equate knowledge about anything except, sports, your job, pop culture or cars as effeminate, unpatriotic or even downright dangerous. Even the term "intellectual" has become an epithet in some quarters, and in high school, being called a "brain" is code for "you're not getting laid tonight, Jacko".

Every year we train less and less scientists and engineers, then turn around and import them from Asia, where they are not only plentiful, but cheap. Meanwhile, our own colleges are becoming more and more
diploma mills for business and psych majors or other lunatic disciplines like hospitality management or real estate investment counseling. I'm sure every one of you knows bright, capable technical people who've gone back to school for their MBAs or Law degrees because there is little money or prestige in the sciences and engineering.

In my own field, as in many others, I'm sure, more and more of the technical skills needed to do the work have been replaced by software, and now training in many technical disciplines is really just exposure to many different GUIs. My own job as a cartographer consists not of using computers to solve problems, but mostly in solving computer problems. Some of my colleagues routinely do complex projection calculations with software but don't have the math skill required to convert a fraction to a decimal. I spend most of my work time learning and debugging the tools, not doing any real work. Last year, I was selected to read a paper at a prestigious remote sensing/photogrammetry conference which was based on high school trigonometry. In this brave new world you have to learn how to operate an automated register, but you don't need to know how to make change.