One thing that stuck out, in my opinion, about the black hole science thingy yesterday was something the lead guy said - I'm paraphrasing but essentially "we're scientists, we are so much betterer than those untrustworthy politicians, because you know...science!" - I'm no fan of a lot of politicians, especially at the moment, but I don't think that it's a very good way to be thinking about science and science's role in society, just my 2 cents - There is really good science stuff going on in Europe, but there are also lots of not so good happening too (open access to science publications, reproducability of reserarch results, politics in academic institutions, etc)en.wikipedia.org #