Thinking some more about this- The people who Patrick encountered tonight actually drove to an observatory- obviously they had an interest to begin with, and the desire to satisfy a curiosity- those I referred to were typically encountered by chance, on a camping trip, passing-by my yard, my friend's yard, or the school-yard. I also tend to prefer solitary astronomy- more than a few people in one place makes me terribly uncomfortable for some reason, so I rarely enjoy "safety in numbers" such as a star-party environment when observing; passers-by are more emboldened to make snide remarks, wise-cracks about geeks and nerds, I'm sure everyone has encountered the type at one time or another. I've been accosted by drunks on more occasions than I can accurately count, over the decades, mostly either camping or up the canyons east of SLC. Some have nearly toppled the telescope! I will not apologize for characterizing such people as "stupid". What I am asking, and trying to illustrate, is that no-one assume I was looking down my nose at everyone who ever waited for the rain to stop to look through a telescope. My original post didn't make that claim in any way- please read it carefully. There are a lot of dumb, rude, (sometimes dangerous!) people out there, and I have certainly run into my share while at the telescope. Those who deserve it will get my disdain, those who don't, won't. So I still maintain that the Profoundly Stupid and the Enormously Interested are two different populations with perhaps only a little crossover. --- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
Profoundly stupid? How about enormously interested?
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