[BigV]

"...un-read SciAm..." Sad.

[cue flashback]
My friend is middle school, P, had an enormous cache of this magazine. We would hang out at his house after school a lot, and I *loved* reading them. Two of my favorite recurring aspects were Mathematical Games by Marvin Gardner and the endpage where some piece of technology was explained.

I read all the articles too. But I found that I didn't understand all of what I read. I could always start each article, I could always comprehend the conclusion of each article. And I usually got lost midway through each article as the depth of the science exceeded the height of my understanding. I found that as the months and years passed, the deep part in the middle became narrower. Believe me, it was still quite deep, but the parts I didn't have a clue about grew fewer in number.

My subscriptions over the years have lapsed, and now I just get it occasionally as a luxury impulse item at the checkstand. I still read through all the articles, I still find stuff I didn't know before. Now, if I find something interesting and over my head, I can research it further and faster than I could in when I was back in school.

Scientific American is one of my all time favorite magazines.
[/flashback]

For the record, I view with skepticism the proposition that subscribers to a given magazine is a reliable indicator that they are smarter than those middle America types... It has been my experience that stereotypes' truthfulness and breadth are correct in inverse proportions. It's also true that I had my sense of humor shot off in the war.