We have a guy working in our lab, who is a retired volunteer researcher. He's in his 80s and spent the bulk of his career working in one area as a PI, and moved to chemistry, I believe, after he retired. He likes coming in and working at the bench, and talking with the other researchers. In general he's a really nice guy, an exceedingly hard worker, and very thankful for assistance he gets, when he needs it. He even asked me to learn about reading proton NMR recently (he had a lab tech do it for him before), and was really into the undergrad NMR training web pages I found for him.
As is not uncommon for someone of his general background he's extremely conservative, politically. He's good natured about it, and likes to make jokes with the more politically liberal lab members, which is a bit unusual, but very welcome.
Yesterday we were talking about politics in a general sort of way, and the coming elections' main players. He mentioned he's a registered Democrat, which I thought was a joke, but he claimed to be true. He said that while the GOP was his party, the primaries were very boring. That and he likes to go to the competing party's primaries and vote in such a fashion as to fuck things up just a little bit.
While my political leanings are pretty opposed to his, I think he may be my new hero. Long ago I had thought that would be an interesting and nefarious way to massage the system, but hadn't the motivation to do it. Talk about balls, damn.
2 comments:
I am reluctant to talk about politics with friends and coworkers, because I think that I come off sounding like a sanctimonious, know-it-all, opinionated asshole because I am one. With that said, this guy is an idiot. When people start treating politics seriously instead of some game where we go over to the other side and fuck it up, then maybe a person elected by these serious voters will actually get something positive accomplished. The sorry state of our political system is a direct result of the fact that Americans are by and large a bunch of retards. Just look at how excited they are about Sarah Palin. Need I say more.
I think he is pretty serious, and he's playing to win. He just likes to make light of things.
I was thinking of voting for Palin until I discovered that the picture of her in the bikini with the gun was a shop job.
Post a Comment