Gosh, just think how intellectual America could be with less of them and more like you.
I agree. Jacque Ellul's The Technological Society is proving to be a better read than I expected, for example. I don't typically go in for straight philosophical texts, and especially after coming straight off of a back-to-back reread of Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. I was tempted to re-read Dune before I bit into something heavy again. Or perhaps Miyamoto Musashi's A Book of Five Rings, another favorite light read.
I am also currently using a retired aerospace engineer friend's Schaum's Outline of Differential and Intergal Calculus, circa 1964, to relearn what I've forgotten since I earned my B.S. in Industrial Chemistry, with a minor in Technology (back in my pre-Master's days).
Most American's have a 7th or 8th grade literacy level. Most American's can't do calculus for fun. If more of them were like me, as you suggest, this thread would not exist. Dumbfuck.