What’s weird about the Snowden leaks isn’t that the NSA was spying left and right, it’s that so much hubbub was caused by things that had been common knowledge (or at least I thought) for many years.

I remember talking with my friends about the Echelon project. In high school. In 1992.

That Edward Snowden is still working for the NSA, and there are other goals in mind, should at least be considered.

I doubt that they (national intelligence community and those who control it) are that smart, but you never know….

It’s funny that I would’ve made a really good – perhaps even a great – scientist 100 or 150 years ago, but now I’d be considered absolutely terrible due mainly to no real math talent or ability to learn.

Not a whine. Most scientists if they can find jobs at all are poorly paid and can work only in a few places whereas I can make more and work just about anywhere.

I don’t want to be a scientist and never would subject myself to the painful forced education in our society that it requires even if I had the requisite mathematical talent.

I just find it strange and interesting that the very skills that would’ve made me good 150 years ago – very wide knowledge base, ability to synthesize across many areas, etc. – would make me horribly unacceptable in the field now.

Fields change. Needs change. I get that. But I think even so-called “knowledge” fields form cults of expertise that serve as much to lock out and lock up ideas and approaches to them rather than pursuit of truth and human advancement.