Cool! "Science for Adults"

Otona no Kagaku (Science for Adults) is a magazine + science project line popular in Japan.  I just think it's so darn cool.

http://www.jbox.com/product/GAK036 - gramaphone project.

http://www.jbox.com/product/GAK035 - steam engine project.

http://www.jbox.com/product/GAK003 - robot project.

Sometimes I really wish I lived in Japan.  Not because I'm dying to do one of these projects (although I think any of them would be way cool fun to do), but because American attitudes toward science, math, and technology are so dismissive and generally hateful.  

I always remember how dismissive someone was in one of my college math class "discussion" sections (as opposed to the actual lecture) when I jumped up to work a problem on the board, because I was excited to do it (I also had the wrong solution!), like it was wrong to be excited about math.  It was my major, asshole!  (Double major, physics w/a concentration in astrophysics and mathematics.  And I shouldn't have been made to feel defensive about it, dammit.)

20 years later and I'm still angered by that moment, whether it was shut-me-up b/c math isn't supposed to be cool, or shut-me-up people aren't supposed to be passionate and engaged, or shut-me-up because I am female.  (Not that America has a lock on the latter, to be sure.  I'd sure hate to be pigeonholed as an "office lady" in a Japanese company.)

Anyways, popular science is a wonderful thing.