Catching them young.

We argue that the large-scale moronification of society brought about by the development of black-box technologies has resulted in lesser respect for and interest in basic science. Within science, there is a marked shift away from physical sciences towards life sciences.. In India and similarly placed countries the state’s efforts to prop up astronomical research as a stand-alone, decoupled from college and university level teaching, is bound to be counter-productive. We also speculate on whether the recent economic melt-down and the expected trend towards some sort of economic nationalism would be good for astronomy and science in general.