><i>The latest US generation has led a life of leisure. Arab protesters carry swords and machetes, ours carry iPhone 4S’s in pink, personalized cases.</i><p>Look dude, if it wasn't quite explicitly against Massachusetts weapons laws, I would go protesting carrying a sword. Also, if someone would teach my swordsmanship. And if swords were actually viable weapons in modern times, rather than nice symbols of Arabs' chauvinistic, honor-based culture.<p>><i>From computers to desks to chairs used by cute digital startups like Oink or Bizzle or FoSchnizzle, – it’s all made possible by better, more substantive innovators. This superior breed of entrepreneurs and inventors toils away in relative obscurity, often in Asia, solving real, complex problems. They squeeze 32GB onto something the size of mint strip. Or, they make un-killable batteries that let us Tweet deep into the night. They make solar cells worthwhile or water out of thin air.</i><p>Did you know? There's actually a whole economic sector to this stuff. It's called <i>research</i>, it's practitioners are called <i>scientists</i> and, often enough, <i>grad students</i>, and the United States of America treats them/us like <i>crap</i>. Science is <i>chronically and endemically</i> underfunded in the United States relative to most other developed countries, <i>and</i> several less developed countries such as India, China, and Israel.<p>Come on, people. I agree VCs are too quick to jump for the cheap, easy trivial "innovation" rather than the fundamental invention, but if you want fundamental invention, stop kvetching and figure out how to fund a university lab for the next 6 years to work on your truly important, fundamental scientific problem.