Re: [DL] Universities and Mad Science

[GriffithC@aol.com]

Just to add my two cents to Allan's discussion on Mad Science and 
universities -- I think he's right about the money aspect, academic 
scientists are driven by grant money, so if there is large federal funding in 
Mad Science, many, even those that don't know anything about it, might twist 
their research programs to embrace it (it's a little anachronistic projecting 
too much academic grant-grubbing back into the 19th century, but it is more 
fun).  If Mad Science funding is coming through the USA/CSA governments, then 
I suggest that much of the research would be going on at Land Grant Colleges, 
established by Congress in 1863 (and we assume in the DL timeline, the CSA 
would establish something similar because Land Grant Colleges were successful 
and popular). Land Grant Colleges were intended to provide research and 
instruction in areas that were most useful to the American public, i.e. 
agriculture and the mechanical arts. Surely research on ghost rock and 
building new gizmos would fall under the definition of useful to the American 
public (certainly to the American militaries)! Another interesting area of 
conflict is that scientists and researchers at Land Grant Colleges were 
looked down on by their colleagues at older colleges (i.e. Harvard or Yale). 
You can still see that today if you attended a "State" college and hear it 
referred to as a Cow College. Might be interesting to see how long those 
bluebloods would keep up that Cow College crap after a couple of ghost-rock 
powered automatons plowed through the alumni section at the Homecoming Game. 
Just another hilarious prank from the boys in Ghost Rock 101 at the local 
State College.

Clay