Getting a PhD means you went to a lot of school. You can still be stupid.

One more sort of funny thing about uncle Bernie, he worked for a very highly respected aerospace company for 40 years developing all kinds of crazy things. When he retired, he was the only one who knew how to make a very specific type of klystron tube. The DoD still orders about one or two of them a year which keeps him quite well off since each tube is well into the six figure territory! He bought all the equipment when he retired and makes about 2 or 3 tubes a year on a quonset hut on the farm. Kind cool really. Even though I think he is a nut, I still sorta have to give him all due respect.

No disrespect to your uncle, but book smarts and common sense can absolutely be mutually exclusive.

That is sort of funny because my grandpa used to say, there are two types of "learnin" book learnin and the other type of learnin (droping the g's is how he spoke). Just funny, but probably true, but on the other hand ole uncle Bernie may still have the last laugh on all of us, who knows.