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USA to Pass Science Crown to China
instantgames writes "According to a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research, rapid development of a science and technology base by populous Asian countries soon may threaten the economic position of the United States. Not only is the U.S. losing ground in high technology exports, but its very capacity to develop new technologies is declining rapidly with respect to the rest of the world. According to Richard Freeman, the paper's author, the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology." From the article: "The phenomenal growth of China's industrial base has been widely publicized, but Freeman focuses on what is perhaps the more important long-term indicator of a nation's prosperity - its re-investment in science and technology education.
"
Scary stuff, no question. Bill Gates, in a speech to the nation's Governors three months ago, cited some pretty startling takeaways on the state of Science education in the US. NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman had a great piece on it. More on both here: ahref=http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/04/fire_aim_read y.htmlrel=url2html-6897http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005 /04/fire_aim_ready.html>
...with China's commensurate commitment to freedom of speech, human rights, free flows of information among its citizenry, support of protest and political dissent, and so on.
That's not the only critical front on which the US will be competing with China: the US will soon pass the oil/fossil fuel consumption crown to China as well if current trends continue.
Further, China is free to spend for its own growth with little oversight from the populace (such as investing heavily in pebble bed fission reactors, planning to build 30 new reactors by 2020), allowing it to spend money as it sees fit without the same social and political constraints as the US. And even with what little oversight you think we might have in the US, it's far greater than the influence a typical Chinese citizen has. It's too bad that we'll likely never see new nuclear plants built anytime soon here, with all the political baggage.[1] We'll just keep using the quickly diminishing supply of conventional fossil fuels.[2]
[1] An environmental research group came to my door the other day extolling the virtues of environmental law, conservation, anti-pollution law, and etc., as you'd expect. All noble causes, when tempered with economic reality. But they continued on to also say opposition to ANY nuclear project was critical. Could they "count on my support?" In a word, no.
[2] Bush is actually pushing hard for the nuclear plants we're in desperate need of. See the policy speeches here. Contrast this with some typical opponents' opposition to all ongoing nuclear research under the guise of nuclear weapons nonproliferation.
How many managers you can hire.
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Still, some economists argue that China isn't growing nearly as quickly as it could. How could that be?
One probable cause is that infrastructure for research and development has a long way to go in many developing Asian countries, especially China. Having some history behind your scientific community has its benefits. Thats why, even with our moral and ethical hurdles in the way, we're still winning the "great stem cell race." For now.
(enjoy the plugs for great articles in my favorite magazine)
tcd004
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mobile search - coming soon
It may mean more tall people, but the future will be ruled by the few. With robots, transhumans, posthumans, and such--large masses of people just aren't needed.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
From an elementary school's billboard in my neighborhood: "Adequate yearly progress, once again!"
This is what we get for handing our children's education over to the government.
Moderators, please don't rate this post as "Funny", because it isn't.
You got any karma man? I really neeed it. Just a little hit! Come on!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Hardly rocket science there... spend money on education, good science. Kids eat Mcdonalds and watch reality tv, bad science.
What baffles me even more is the fact that the USA's primary export seems to be entertainment, yet schools cut art and music programs like crazy.
I say all organized sports should be taken out of schools... there's enough money in those they could be privatized and still thrive.
That's okay, though, because here in Jesus-land, we know that the only true science is the science that comes out of the Bible! So, while all of those other countries are polluting the minds of their children with ideas of the Big Bang and Evilutionism, we here know that we're actually pulling ahead!
Sigh. The scary thing is that there are people in the US who actually believe that.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
..or has the US been readying itself to get humped by China, big-time.
On the one-hand, they're the Commie enemy and on the other their money has got the business class drooling.
The problem is more a lack of will to put funding into research and development. Many companies in the US have unfortunately fallen into a wait and see approach on technology and concnetrate on short term gains. Sad as the US used to be where most of the new ideas and approaches came about. When you hear of innovations now, they are coming from other countries.
China is still very much more a copier of technology than an innovator. Once they become successful innovators, then we have to worry.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
correct link: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/04/fire_aim_ready.html
You may purchase this paper on-line in
I didn't buy the paper, but would like to make one point:
As long as the culture in the US continues to denigrate academic achievement and to glorify ignorance, this country will continue to fall behind the rest of the world in research and invention.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
... is to fall sooner or later.
I'm very interested of how all those chinese people will integrate into US/Europe economy and business. Say, they have very different mentality, it's the fact...
but rather due to capital flight. Our corporations, in an effort to turn a quick buck, intentionally transfered our high-technology manufacturing assets to asia. Our design centers were sure to follow.
It only makes sense that a majority of future developments are going to come to us from Asia as we are no longer the experts -- they are.
Does this remind anyone else of the dire warnings about Japan "taking over" in the '80s and '90s.
This just reeks of fear-mongering. I half-way expect Michael Crichton to write some stupid novel about it.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I, for one, welcome... uh...nevermind...
rewriting history since 2109
I for one care about science and the advancement of human knowledge far more than any sort of jingoism, and I'm very glad to see people in China getting the opportunities to use their talents better.
We need a paper to tell us that?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
So who here spent $5 for the PDF before commenting?
My brother's company in California sent him to China for some work. When he came back after the two week trip, he immediately started learning Mandrin because the speed at which the chip production industry has been picking up scared him enough - that in case they fired him in America, he might be able to find work in China.
As long as American institutions have the research dollers to invest into the universities - I don't think America will lose its research crown.
I think China's simply playing catch up for now. But if my brother's experience is any indicator, then if we dont smarten up and invest even more into our research industry - then we'll be learning Mandrin too..
R&D is one of the reasons why Americans have been ahead of everyone else - even after the manufacturing went to China. If that goes, then it'll truly be a nation of Walmart workers.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
...is to raise taxes and give the schools more money.
I mean hell, that's always worked so well in the past!
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." --Benjamin Franklin
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
at least our kids know how to be politcally correct, don't have the stress of having to know how to read their own diplomas, are sensitive to every kind of form of sexual proclivity by the time they are in 4th grade, have shitloads of self-esteem, and can be sure that when they or their neighbors with little or no english skills work so hard that they reach the pinnacle of academic achievement - community college - they can be sure that there will be free childcare for them and their 4 kids when the go to class after working the all night shift at McDonalds.
/bitterness and dispair
why are we worrying about science? Thats for nerds that don't watch American Idol. Which is, in and of itself, a sad state of affairs when you look at it...that those people are who we collectively teach our children to idol.
just so long as we can yell and scream and blame every problem in the country on Bush and Judge Roberts, why would you want to fill our kids' heads with crap like science? They won't have room for remembering Nelly lyrics!
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
(queue monty python and the life of brian style response vs the romans)
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Typically, the overhead required to put humans into a massivly parallel environment is enormous. Doubling the number of scientists will never double the rate of discovery. It takes so much time for individuals to process information, and so much effort (in terms of management) to herd them in a particular direction, that there is a great deal of inefficiency in armies of scientists.
Thats not to say that China doesn't have a leg up, having a significantly larger population. But its still more about the quality of the researchers than the quantity. I've hear it said that the US is where it is today because it got most/best of the german scientists after WWII (this was an aerospace-nerd dinner). Progress is made by hard work, and is infinitely slower than innovation - which is usually accomplished by a very few.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Now couple that with right-wing attacks on public schooling in general, bleeding the public schools systems dry in order to push private schooling, and things get worse.
Now add in an economy where many of the jobs that really use your brain get offshored, and what's left are service jobs that require not as much education, and you have an increasing pressure not to care about higher education. Just get one of those service jobs and root for your team and have a beer after work and all is well in your world. Right?
Meanwhile India gets the tech jobs, and China is our major creditor, and suddenly all those smart Chinese students think why should they bother coming to xenophobic and dopey America when they can get the good science education and jobs back home. Where the economy is strong, education is encouraged, science is not neutered by religion, and things are moving forward.
The main thing holding back the US is not science, but freedom and government. While our sciences are well into the 21st century, our freedoms, especially our economic freedom has been on the decline for nearly 95 years and has not advanced at the same rate.
It's true, we don't have the freedom infrastructure necassary to keep up with the science infrastructure over the long term - but this is just another symptom of the freedom problem playing itself out in the public school system. A socialist system we are forced to pay for no matter how incompetent or top heavy they are.
This is the year of the rooster and everyone know's things get done with cocks. I'm cautiously optimistic of the coming dog year. Now pigs and rats, I'm just not sure...
The US getting its ass kicked (economically) will hopefully put a lid on the arrogance that it has displayed by running roughshot over world opinion on matters of security, economic justice and the environment. Besides, the Chinese make better scientists anyway.
I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords. Didn't Kurt Vonnegut predict this in one of his novels? Galapagos maybe? He was writing about ratio between brain mass and body mass, the Chinese have the most people speaking the same language with the largest brain to body mass ratio.
If I get too pissed I might just default on my tax/credit obligations and leave.
Your time as world bully is soon coming to a close. You had 15 years to do pretty much what you wanted, and ended up invading and killing like all previous empires. You won't be missed.
I don't quite understand what exactly the "scientific Crown" means, but on the balance I think this is positive news - science is not a zero sum game. What's invented in US works the same in China and vice versa. I don't view it exactly as US falling behind but Asian countries catching up because growth is always faster when you have lots of room to grow but then it slows down. Of course, US needs to do more to invest into and encourage better education to stay competitive. The fact that this is not currently the case is alarming.
It is also good to hear that developing Asian countries are on a way to contribute to progress rather than dig their heels in and do everything in a futile attempt to stop it (as seems to be popular in some Middle East contries now a day).
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
Good.
All empires fall, and your time has come.
China isn't training more Chinese engineers than the U.S., U.S. graduate schools are training more Chinese engineers than American engineers. We are the problem.
In my program, 60% are not from the U.S.
I blame the overpaid CEOs. For just a small reduction in their rediculous saleries, they could avoid overseas outsourcing and kept technology jobs here, which is one of the best ways of reinvesting in technology.
The Chinese are going to stomp the west into the ground (And that's not a good thing). Not only will they have more scientists, but they censor their media to keep their kids from being mesmerized by sleaze, and teach the kids a work ethic both at home and at school. While our kids will be 30 year old virgins, working at Walmart, living in their parent's basements, drinking beer, smoking dope, and simulating sex on their Xboxes, the Chinese offspring will be starting the next generation of intels and oracles. Don't be surprised when the Microsoft software development offices move to Beijing in 2015. America is destined to take its place as a third-world debtor nation, and the republicans with their obsession with get rich quick schemes and huge deficits are leading the charge into economic collpase and a political oligarchy. Not that the democrats would fix anything with 60's era social programs. We need a new approach in the US, a true populist party with responsible economic growth as its mantra. And while I'm at it I'll wish for world peace and an end to tooth decay...
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
Would you prefer an exclusivly for-profit system where only children of parents-with-disposable-income were given the privilage of a proper education? ... I for one would rather just pay an extra 5% on my taxes, or have a couple less stealth bombers defending me, to re-vamp the public system.
.. less competition for high-earning jobs that way, right?
I'm sure you'd rather let 80% of the kids go without any real education anyway
-GenTimJS
...but thanks, guys.
Deck the hars wef brows of ha-ree, Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra!
Being an engineer in China is a big thing, so you find that many people are one. However the reason isn't that they all studied what we consider engineering, it's that more degrees over there are engineering degrees. Nothing wrong with that, the US can't claim to have the perfect definition of an engineer, but when they consider people who are basically techs and tradsemen as engineers, the comparitive startics aren't very useful.
I have to say, I don't believe much in China. Sure, there are going to get better, much better, but with the current regime, they will take the third place (perhars) behind India and (perhaps) Japan. The sings are allready there (like underperforming stock markets). Right now the economy rides on the backs of the poor. When they are no longer so poor, the lack of economic efficiency (lacking a better word) will show up in terms of inflation and perhaps even an economic crash. India looks so much more promising. If they can come to terms with the corruption, I belive they will fly indeed.
Sure, having a high population will allow them to train more scientists and engineers. I just hope they are building enough temples and colosseums, or they'll fall into civil disorder and sheild production will cease.
The number of American students who choose to defer the instant gratification of making The Big Money would appear to be shrinking when compared to the number of students from abroad (e.g. India and, of course, China) who think grad student wages ARE The Big Money, and who will help their sponsoring countries by bringing back their new-found expertise.
I don't necessarily think that this is a bad thing, for we should be exporting knowledge to the world. However I AM concerned that intellectual pursuits no longer seem to be quite as valued by American culture as I [rose-colored glasses=ON] remember them being back in the misty dawn of time. [rose-colored glasses=OFF]
Perhaps someone in an English or Sociology or Psych department out there will let us know what they have observed of this trend.
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
When a lead story on one of the most popular news sites for US geeks concerns Nerdcore Rap, then yeah, I'd say the US has lost it.
US geeks have been pwn3d. Even Fortune magazine is running a story in this month's issue, with "Uncle Sam" on the cover, portrayed as a 97 lb weakling, getting kicked around by China (ala those old Charles Atlas ads that used to run in the backs of comic books).
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
China sent its first man into orbit in an indigenous spacecraft just last year. It is planning to send a probe to moon in 2007, first woman to space in 2010 and manned missions to moon much later. India is yet to do any of this.
USA did these about 35 years ago.
One thing the Chinese and Indians are good at - is taking a design replicating it in large numbers. This is a good thing by the way. It makes the production costs of hardware and software smaller.
At the same time, true innovation is only just now starting to happen there. While they send early rockets in space and explode little nuclear devices, the US has moved onto technologies such as bombing deep space comets, Mars exploration, Nanotech Medicine and Stealth and lots of shit no one even knows about.
They may catch up but it will take time...
The U.S. will rule where it really counts! Sports heroes!
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
This is what we NEED! Not only is engineering tuition usually more expensive than that for liberal arts, but there are plenty of bright kids turning to business and econ so that they can start making six figures right out of college. Money matters to students, and most are not willing to put themselves through the stress of engineering education only to be saddled with loans the first 8 years after school. This bill of course would not eliminate that, but it would defray the costs enough to make engineering much more attractive to freshmen.
ANY bill towards reducing tuition costs is good, especially one towards engineering, math and science majors.
Think of all of the brain power they're devoting to their efforts to keep the populace uninformed and subversive ideas from creeping in.
The great firewall of China is surely a paragon of what happens when China gets their people the opportunity to use their talents better.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
A poster above mentioned that ignorance is glorified, and I hate to admit that it's true in our dear sweet USA. People who get good grades and aspire toward academic achievement are labeled and taunted as "brainiacs" or whatever, while some dope fiend who can snap back at the teacher in some incomprehensible slang-based language is held up as the modern-day hero. I doubt that the same is true in China.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
The US middle class is shrinking. Thanks Bush. By the way, the next time you nominate a Supreme Court justice and praise his character for putting himself through college by working summers in a steel mill, don't forget to mention that:
a.)today most of those steel mill jobs are gone
and
b.)today, those jobs that still exist aren't paying enough to cover the rising cost of education.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Is dissent allowed in Hong Kong, or is that a thing of the past? Do the Chinese think differently than me? What is the best way to learn Chinese? Has anyone tried Wenlin?
", the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. "
China already does produce more engineering graduates than the U.S., by a factor of ten. They also produce produce three times the number of college graduates. See the latest Fortune cover story for details.
Sadder still is that China is also graduating twice the number of engineeers per capita as the U.S. (India isn't far behind in either of these metrics). Before you blame this on offshoring, keep in mind that offshoring has only been a pressing issue for techies in the last four or five years, and economies are slow to change. This is a cultural thing too.
This is what we get for handing our children's education over to the government.
You say that as if public education is a recent development. American Public Education goes back as far as the American Revolution, and has roots that go back even further. It sounds like you are not aware of this history, so here's a primer. Read and learn.
Abandoning the poor people is bad for the American economy and American democracy. If anything, you can trace the growing ruin of American society to increased privatization and reduced funding of public services such as Public Education.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
...the US's short-term greed is selling us out in the long term.
It wasn't always this way. Henry Ford used to pay his employees very well so they could afford to buy his cars. That's but one example of how we used to take care of each other in business. We don't do that any more... we just try to take care of ourselves now. The predictions are being made based on trends being unchanged.
I'm wondering why I should atrribute any validity to your criticism of the current educational climate in the United States, when you yourself apparently can't be bothered to post using correct punctuation, capitalization, or spelling.
It's apparently not just Science that we're failing to instill the importance of in children.
You're saying that America has a freedom and government problem? Is this compared to the enlightened government of China?
One of the main points is that China can in fact force their people to go in the direction that they want without having to deal with things like community interaction. Can you imagine the emminent domain kerfluffle over something the size of the Three Gorges Dam project if it was done here in the US? Heck a highway bypass takes forever here.
And hey, if the populace gets TOO rowdy they can just send in the tanks and mow 'em down.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
You probably don't realize this, but this is a prime reason credited with the US dominating europe,etc., in the 20th century.
That we're falling behind the new new-kids, well, that's a whole different discussion from the only-the-elite-get-a-balanced-education one...
Developer: Ok! I give up... I am going to China! Actor Friend: The country ? Developer: No.. the big pile of dishes in my Mom's kitchen !
Free (at least basic) college education for every citizen. Some country will do it first and everyone else will have to play catch up.
:P
Aside from the worker skill advancement take a look at crime vs. education statistics. Hire 10,000 teachers, not 10,000 police officers
It's been a predictable tendency. There are enough people I personally know which have or are studying Chinese (I believe the study is refered as as 'Chinelogy') in order to be a step ahead when China or in more general the East will rise to be the greater economical power and the dominating influence in the world.
Face it, the US has been slipping away for quite some time now and is losing popularity at a troubling rate.
If I'm not mistaken South Park adressed the issue of the ever growing influence of the East quite some time back in episode 301 (aired on 1999-11-03) where the southpark kids get obsessed by Japanese Merch. Which turns out to be a brainwashing tool.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I read several dozen academic and science news articles a day. I think you need to look at the sheer number of asian names attached to various tech R&D papers out there now.
Hint, it is not "just a few".
No, western monied leet society rewards big business conmen and money re arrangers, sports "stars" and other entertainment "stars" and that is IT. and those goombahs think so little of people who dream up tech and then go do something with the tech that they are either outsourcing all the jobs they can or insourcing foreigners to do it. *That* is the problem, that and the bribed off politicians give those crooks TAX BREAKS to do this.
Young folks are always wild in their own way, every generation, but they aren't so stupid right now as to not notice that trying to do a job that takes brains and skills outside of sports/music is a complete waste of time, if not now then real darn soon in the "coming economic attractions". There's zero future in it. Why should they give a crap? And why should anyone care what a billionaire conman crook like Gates thinks anyway? He is a crook, always been a crook, he's slimy, just sucessfully slimy. Young people can read the news same as anyone and see how things are shaking out.
Asia, different story, they know what real wealth is, and what real work can do. the world revolves around tangibles, the US in particular has turned it's back on tangibles for short term profits for the top1% and massive credit and promises for the other 99%.
there's only a few people left in denial about this, and their numbers are dropping daily. and the young folks are way ahead of the curve because it's their entire future ahead of them, they look, see crap, say fuggit to themselves.
party on
A huge part of the problem is the way we compensate employees in the US. Engineers simply are not paid as well as they should be, and executives and managers are over paid. This creates a dis-incentive to enter engineering, or at least creates an incentive to view moving out of engineering and into management as "advancement."
US companies need desparately to eliminate the artificial ceiling on the advancement of pay for engineers. IBM has made some small efforts in that direction by creating the "Distinguished Engineer" title, so that highly skilled engineers can be "promoted" and paid more, without being forced into management. A few other companies have similar initiatives, but that's not nearly enough.
If we want to attract workers to high tech fields, we have to give them a reason to want to do so. And quit wasting multi-million dollar salaries and millions of dollars of bonuses on inept CEOs like Carly Fiorina.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
This is what happens when every putz with a lawyer and unlimited checkbook patents every little innovation. This is why we were so great 40-50 years ago because every little widget wasn't fighting it out in court. Welcome to the corporate run gov't folks !
Remember: most US scientific marvelry was gained from adopting foreigners: Einstein, the rocket boys etc.
Many scientists are foreign, but for any defense-related research U.S. citizenship is required for security clearances (confidential, secret and top secret).
Seriously now, its not like we are at war with china. If they start making more than the US, then good for them. Last I checked we were allies, and anything good that happens to an ally is good for the group. Using words like "threaten" or implying we (the US) are about to be asked to step down from some god given position is pretty damn arrogant if you ask me.
:-)
More likely though, the paper was just meant to scare some govt types into dumping more money unto the university system here, and we need it bad
Speaking as a non-American, this news is hardly startling. The other 96% of the world has varying degrees of education and science too. China is a power on the rise again after a couple of centuries of appallingly bad leadership and not exactly great luck. Before the industrial revolution they were the world's largest exporter and had some impressive technologies. Now finally ... it's time they've caught back up.
Watch out for India!
Okay, I put my sarcasm tags between < and > tags and turned off HTML. Unfortunately, this meant that my sarcasm tags got lost.
I do NOT believe the nonsense I mentioned above! I do NOT buy into a 5,000 year old Hebrew myth of creation that was lifted from the Babylonians in the first place!
Gah. I didn't meant o flamebait. I meant to make a snide, ironic remark about the foolishness of the right-wing Christian nuts who seem to be worming their way into the American education system.
*crawling back in my hole now*
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
seriously, what good does this thinking do?
best of luck to all the asians. i hope we do well too. screw this fetish with being #1 in everything.
...is improvement of the ability to carry out science seen as a bad thing.
It's okay, we still have more nukes than China. That's the only science that really matters in the long run.
- Encourage the US population to increase. This is already being done with our government turning the other way as illegal immigrants flood into the country. Further encouragement could be given for families to spit out more babies, perhaps additional tax credits for larger families?
- Just wait - once our 'pop culture' is embued within these rising Asian countries, they're minds will slowly turn to goo watching Fear Factor, American Idol, the Simpsons after season 8, and the slew of other mind numbing products beamed into our living rooms each day and night.
- Do a better job at attracting the smarties in other countries. We have done a good job in the past in offerring a very prosperous, free country that has attracted the well off/smart from other countries to come to school here, live here, contribute here... we'll need to do this in spades, I imagine, moving forward.
In the end, though, is it really such a bad thing if the US is not #1 anymore? Being a USian, I'm not hoping we're a distant #2, but rather I'd like to see many nations on par with economic and technological might. I subscribe to the idea that nations that are prosperous in a global economy must be mostly peaceful ones. Furthermore, a higher standard of living for people in other countries will, eventually give us here in the States and even higher standard of living, as well. (True, there may be some hard times for the somewhat spoiled US consumer as the global marketplace 'readjusts,' but in the long run, I believe, the average US citizen will be better off if many more people in the world are likely better off than they are today.I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Just because a country can't output as many nerds doesn't mean it can't attract as many nerds.
Loosen work visa restrictions, and you'll see how many nerds drop china and move to the US.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Or export it to China. That'll fix 'em good.
China and any other Asian countries have a tradition of scholarship and respect for learning going back, oh, maybe 2-3k years.
In the US we have developed a tradtion of respect for, um... fashion, sports, 'brand awareness', greed and use of military force.
I see the US becoming China's mercenary army in the next century, just as they became Saudi Arabia's mercenery army in the last century.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Thing you have to remeber is though alot of asian students come to the US to get an education, and a decent portion of them remain in North America. Abit jobs are moving but till the Head Offices start moving (and the premium some investors are willing to put on North Americain innovation) I doubt to see the US falling off the map that fast...
Although that whole think of 3/4 of a trillion dollars a year in export/import deficit will bound to speed things up but thats another story...
Of course the idea of intellectual property works best in a capitalistic society - it is truly foreign to a Communist nation. Our 'Western obsession' has served us quite well so far.
What exactly will such a nation 'blow past us' on anyway? Democracy? Individual rights? Freedom of expression? That all plays into development of technology in the first place. Take that away and the impetus is gone also.
You know mother Russia also had a great deal of our technology for years but until the embargo of high tech stuff, they did very little development (or anything not military) on their own.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
2000 years is not a long time to the Chinese. They remember how Rome took care of business in Carthage, and before 2030 they'll do the same thing to the USA.
*IF* you are not careful (and I say this as a Canadian) they'll hit your west coast with 100 million cloned troops with the highest technology in the world and roll the USA up like a rug.
You'll become the CAP (Chinese Agricultural Protectorate) and few remaining Americans will be tenant farmers for the Han.
Flame me, but this is a warning.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is *laughably guilty*. Check the evidence.
It's just that this change has a tenfold impact compared to the impact that Japan's step into the club of industrialized countries had.
Yes, right before your very eyes.
Dire warnings aside, the Japanese did take world-class American know-how and made it cheaper and smaller and built a patent portfolio on their processes and cut Americans out of the entire industry. Same story, new character. It's death by a thousand cuts.
The sad thing is the richest 10% of Americans have no urgent reason to care so the average american won't have much work besides washing the rich guy's car and serving his overweight family at the Golden Arches in a few more generations.
Some of that is the fault of the average american in many ways, so there's lots of blame to pass around.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Whenever information like this surfaces, there are two typical responses from Americans. Group A gets all scared and starts thinking we should do away with the Constitution, or let corporations pump black smoke directly into our lungs, or sell our souls to anybody willing to 'reform' education. Anything to stay number one, because if America isnumber number 1, the world is officially over. Group B flat out denies the possibility that any country could ever be as great or innovating as America and that no matter what happens they'll have a nice split level home with 2.5 kids, and a two-car garage.
Of course, neither outlook really helps things. People never seem to remember that America has not always been the best at everything. Hell, before there was an America, the British were the world power in technology, science and military, and Rome before them, and Greece before them. Obviously they at some point fell behind and somebody else took the reigns. But the world didn't end. Hell, the British have practically been number 2 in the world for the last 200 years or so and they are doing great as a civilization.
That's not to say that education is not imporatant or that Americans should sit back and enjoy the ride to the bottom of the list, but this constant obsession with being the best at everything is just not sustainable.
persecuting all scientists that we differ with. That should help America. Between the jobs shifting and America's priority shift over the last 5 years, I start to wonder about us.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, for one, Europe only ceeded its "science crown " to the USA because of the World Wars. Since then, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Western Europe are science and technology powerhouses. Taiwan is especially instructive, as they speak the same language and have many of the same cultural factors. Despite their miniscule sliver of the total Chinese population, they're way ahead. Population don't mean much if most of your people are living in squalor due to repressive and corrupt government.
The US's open-door policy for researchers from around the globe to study and research in the US had more to do with getting the "crown." The metling-pot mindset, especially popular with educators and institutions, allowed the best and the brightest to come to the US to do their work.
That, and the US is, like, you know, a first world country? Once China and India and Indonesia can get phone and power service to the medievil huts the majority of its population lives in, then I'd worry about the massive population difference.
New Zealand and Finland are good examples of miniscule countries in terms of population that are doing very, very, very well for themselves on the science and technology front. New Zealand is isolated by location, and Finland by language. They still have engineering firms and physicists that are world class.
SoupIsGood Food
Large corporations squashing innovation with the whole US PTO fiasco.
Expecting Jebus to save us and show us the way.
Passing of laws to cause more restriction than freedom.
Non effective punishment of the large corporations who do break the law. (Microsoft anti-trust, Sony payola, Enron, Worldcom, etc.)
Parents who don't want to take responsibility for their own children and thing the government should intervene. (GTA:SA example)
Stupid people reproducing (who end up falling into the category above)
Govt. Poorly managing money. How much was spent on iraq? Why are we feeding africans? The whole "we gotta spend our budget or we won't get as much next year" mentaility in govt.
Underpaid teachers who are _good_.
Dare I say it, excessive amount of junk food available. (I'll brace myself from the onslaught of "illegal" cantennas flying at me.) Eating healthy is expensive here.
What else did I miss?
Just Friday, China floated the Yuan on the currency markets. It's no longer pegged to the dollar, most of those in the know claim it's about 40% undervalued at the moment, so it's almost certainly going to increase in value over the next year or so, even though they still have constraints on the rate it changes.
Chinese people and products are going to get more expensive. Chinese people are going to become more wealthy with the appreciation of the yuan and will want all the stuff we have...
At which point World War III will break out over global resources, so maybe all is lost really.
Deleted
If you distribute a problem among a lot of people, the job will get easier and easier, until it is subject to the laws of diminishing returns. The more people you have working, the easier it is to find people who are smart (and China has a lot of smart people. In the past they were all leaving China, but they've been doing a remarkably good job of keeping them as of late).
The thing is, even if you assume that the rate of smart people is smaller in China, you've still got 8x the population to select the smart people from, which means it will occur. But the facts would more support that China has more smart people (Asian Intellegence, Artificial Intellegence, same difference), meaning that it's pretty obvious China is gonna be on top very quickly. And with their government set up communistically with democratic influences, it has the possibility to grow fast, and start outputing at a rate that will bury the states, a lot like how Japanese car companies got on top during the 80's.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Well stated. The US (government, at least) still thinks of progress in limited terms: winning and losing.
Not everything is a competition, and if you insist on looking at everything as a competition, eventually you'll lose at something. In this case, everything.
Assuming the US doesn't start a war in a desperate attempt to maintain their world dominance, China will eventually surpass them, at least so it seems.
This is what happens when our industrialists are undervalued.
I know so many thinkers and idea-creators who are below the poverty line and I know of so many collectivists who are living in wealth.
Although China doesn't actually encourage thinkers and industrialists, they have the people to account for the loss. The U.S. doesn't and when so many thinkers are living in poverty, they have more important things to concentrate on, such as earning food for themselves.
The U.S. needs to encourage the creators of ideas, such as Japan and other nations have done. Instead, all of our thinkers are migrating to other nations (myself included).
The U.S. won't rise above other nations in technology and science until it begins to value industrialists again.
Unless one envisions a future in which the bulk of the world's poulation is eternally mired in a under-developed nation limbo, it is enevitable that the most populous countries will have the highest GDPs with all that entails. Rather than dreading this desirable (IMHO) and inevitable (I hope) change, the USA should be thinking about its _realistic_ place in a globalized future world. I would suggest the model of the Neatherlands: with a population of only 16 million they remain a major player in science, R&D, and commercial activities. Of course the Netherlands are not a "super power" like the USA currenlty is, but the citizens there have and can expect to maintain a very hgih standard of living (unless global warming drowns them all :-o).
The climate in the US has driven away conferences and discouraged researchers. Export controls hinder work on crypto systems. Presenters may be prosecuted / threatened for their work under our DMCA (remember Dimitri? How about Felten's battle over SDMI?)
Is anyone really surprised that such tactics have scared off science/engineering discoveries?
From my Journal.
I have been giving some thought to what some of the US leaders have been saying about immigration (esp. illegal immigration). If you ignore the racial rantings of such idiots as Tom Tancredo (sadly, he is my district representative), there is an interesting angle that many Americans have not thought about.
Basically, the illegals do come here and they take the low-end jobs that regular Americans do not want. Considering that these ppl do not bleed the system (no welfare, no medical, no retirement, etc), but instead contribute to it (almost all pay taxes), it would seem to be fine(IOW, they contribute more than they take out).
But the real problem is that by having these illegals come here, it discourages us from moving forward. If they were not here, then farmers would be paying much more for workers. Likewise, we would see dishwashers, construction workers, lawn workers, etc. get paid a great deal more. In doing so, it would encourage robotics for these low-end menial jobs.
A good example is that at the Colorado Ski resorts, we need seasonal workers. But they may get lower hours if snow is bad and skiiers are cancelling.
OTOH, if a fast or medium food restaurant were to use robotics for dishwashing, and cooking, then it would be lower costs overall. More importantly, it would allow the wait staff to focus on the customer rather than dealing with the back area.
Another example is that the farmers here are not roboticizing the work when they could afford it. Now, it is much harder to do so, and instead most will start parting their farms to big businesses or selling their water to cities.
Japan has the right idea WRT to doing robotics on the moon and esp. on mars. The ability to have 24 construction and exploration going on would be useful. Because they invest in science and R&D as a nation, there system will go futher down the road.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I say that it's not all bad. What we lose in scientific-ness, we more than make up for with our awesome Jesus-osity! We may be dumber, but we're Holier!
It's China's movement toward free market economies that has spurned it's economic growth...not government control.
I would love to finish y graduate work but with a wife, kids, house, etc I just cant afford the 700+ dollars per credit hour.
Well, TFA mentions both the countries. Is there a preference in ./ community to be taken over by China rather than by India?
According to Richard Freeman, the paper's author,
I should have seen this coming. He's always been so radical about the Free Software movement, I guess he viewed his name as one more marketing opportunity.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Nuclear power is "still in the 60's" when it was OK to run a company, filling up your back lot with industrial waste, until you ran out of space, or went out of business, found somewhere to hide it/dump it, or all of the above. The name of the game in industry is "make our waste someone else's problem" or "make it go away". Dump it into the local river, into the sea, in a pit, or throw it up into the air...and hope nobody notices. This is precisely how current nuclear plants handle their waste; they drop barrel after barrel into concrete bunkers filled with water in their back yard, thinking some day it'll just disappear, or they can fold the company and run, leaving the government with the god-aweful mess (hint: metal containers, water...)
Right now, the US Government believes that the solution to the problem is to make it Nevada's problem (or is it New Mexico, I forget?), but either way, it's just another variant of "throw it somewhere out of sight".
When we have a way to make power and take the waste products and make them harmless in SUBSTANCE (not in CONTAINMENT), give me a buzz and I'll stand outside on the street with a pro-nuclear sign. Until then, I'm not willing to support a technology which will be guaranteed to be a major liability or outright disaster in a few hundred years.
Please help metamoderate.
Public Education is now funded more on a per GDP level than it ever has been before. The difference now is that schools are now burdened with much more restrictions than they ever have before.
If a kid spoke out of turn or swore at a teacher in a school 300 years ago, or even in some places, 50 years ago, the teacher would beat the kid over the head with a ruler. Today, the teacher is expected to just stand there and take it. I'm not suggesting that we return to the days when teachers could use corporal punishment, but teachers should have the ability to kick out any student that is disruptive, and administrators should have much more latitude to expel students.
In my high school, the administration was preoccupied with ensuring that attendance figures stayed up, and once the kids are in the classrooms, not much else really mattered. To get expelled, you had to commit the equivalent of a felony, and sometimes even that would only mean that you are sent to another school. The administration didn't do this because they were dumb, but rather the New York state government makes school funding predicated on attendance.
Getting rid of that one requirement, and funding schools based on the total amount of students would do miracles for education.
Yes, but why is the capital taking flight? The U.S. and Western countries have made their countries buisness hostile. China and India are becoming more free-market, and the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe are becoming more socialist and centraly planned. And now we are just crossing the threshold were China and such are becoming more free-market than we are.
It is in the long term interests of Capitalists to invest in more free and open societies. China is not there yet, but they are becoming more free while we become less free. China is a better investment.
It's because technology is created by engineers and in China, India, Germany, etc. engineering is the most prestigious field of all.
In the US people only value giant houses, rims, expensive watches, luxury cars w/ wine glasses in tv ads for them. Noone even knows what engineers do, they just admire doctors and lawyers for having lots of dolla bills and bling. Meanwhile, legal and medical cost are far and away the highest in the world.
Visit the engineering building at any university in this country and you wont even find anyone who speaks english -- it's all exactly Chinese and Indian people receiving stipends in addition to free tuition courtesy of US govt grants and then head back to their own countries, contributing nothing to tech in the very country that paid for their education.
Freeman focuses on what is perhaps the more important long-term indicator of a nation's prosperity - its re-investment in science and technology education.
Translation: "I want my gravy train federal funding back."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
But that sounds a lot like the world of Open Source and Free Software.
Though granted, we who develop Open Source apps often have to keep a unified user interface that's familiar to Windows and Mac users.
We also work hard to have a Linux friendly version of all the popular Windows-only applications so that Windows fans can't say "well yeah but Linux doesn't have ____, or ______".
Some examples of what I'm talking about include Evolution (a Microsoft Outlook clone) and Open Office (a clone of the entire MS Office suite).
However, we are making in-roads in areas like CSS support for Web browsers. Recently, Konqueror and another Open browser became the first to pass the CSS smiley test.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
I figure all our (American) smartest scientists are the Asian ones. So who better to pass the crown to than an Asian country? There's a whole hell of a lot more Asians thre. It just makes sense.
That's a made up concept by lawyers.
The US government should have been smart enough to treat people as resources to be developed. Give high schoolers a standardized test, and the kids with the best results get a full-paid scholorship to study certain majors in certain colleges and universities. The list of subjects would change year to year. The test would indicate aptitude in some areas, and that would narrow down the list of available majors .
The details would be hell to work out and administer, but the government (and possibly certain corporate sponsors) would have first-dibs on the graduates. Everybody wins, particularly the US economy.
It's getting so that higher education is completely out of reach of most people (and good higher education out of reach of all but the rich). Giving the poor and middle class a shot at the brass ring is the smartest thing the government could do to help reverse this science gap.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
So many levels of irony in this article its frightening. So unsuprising and just what everyones been saying for years, and we all know the reasons why. Forget that. What to do ...
To make things better we must,
Stop inhibiting progress with absurd patents and IP laws. The Chinese and others ignore this crap, they benefit, good for them!
Stop treating information as a sellable commodity instead of a public asset. The fact that the article cites 'research' material available for pay speaks my case entirely.
Give public voices a greater say in the direction of science. No one wanted GM, we all said so but millions were burned on unwanted biotech research that is (thankfully) banned, at least in Europe.
Ditto for DRM, traffic tracking, etc.. nobody wants it, isn't that enough of a clue that you are creating a bonfire of wealth and resources! Pointless science.
Meanwhile the Chinese are using science and technology to solve real social problems and educate their children. A healthy state economy depends on so much more than high street spending and corporate profits, you actually have to invest in a culture of knowledge. America today seems to be all about disempowering people and divorcing them knowledge to gain social control. This is the price to pay for being lions led by mice.
will this cause cancer in peaceful iraqi rioters?
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
Remember that old quote?
This is what happens when the cost of everything is way way up. When the only drive of the people is materialism. We need more people who like science and engineering because it's fun, and not for the money. Most importantly, provide these people with JOBS. Lots of Jobs with adequate pay.
The big problem is unemployement. Fix it now before it's too late. Our chinese friends are happily accumulating experience in the high tech fields for very low wages.
Unlike checkers, the global economy isn't a zero sum game. The description "may threaten the economic position of the United States" is flawed. If I get a 50% raise but my neighbor gets a 75% raise am I worse off? That's what the wording of this article would have you believe. We may get richer but if someone else is #1 then our "position" has been compromised. America is hated largely because we are number one in terms of GDP, freedom, etc. I say let someone else take that spot at the top (at least in GDP) so the rest of the world can hate them for a while.
America spends more per student than France. France! The problem with education in America isn't a lack of funding regardles of what the angelic teachers unions would have you believe. Maybe the problem is that as the richest country in the world, parents have simply gotten lazy because they know their kids aren't going to starve here no matter what they do.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Its not really surprising though, but I think its all well over blown. Economies that were growing because of increase in inputs but not actual increase in efficency all failed in the end. Once they actually catch up with the US with native Chinese technology (not copied or bought US Tech) then I might be more concerned.
The endless raging river of media vomited images of the intelligent person being something that should be made fun of and looked down upon, washing over generation after generation of ill-educated and hyperactive minds, worming its way into every single crevice of the collective coma is appearing as a giant sinkhole after eroding away all support beneath the surface.
And you think this news will stop the stupidization of this society? Dream on. 99% of the population will never even become aware of it. They'll be blithering about red states and blue states and angels and demons and what whore Justin Dumbass Timberlake is fucking this week.
Harsh attitude? Tough shit. I have met parents who were bothered when their children did *too* *well* in school, lest they be considered "brainiacs" or "geeks". People aren't remotely harsh enough on these sorts of memes.
I was tapped out of tolerance on this front years ago. I'm on my way to retire in my early 50's, and then I'm outta this dump. Sit an wallow in your celebrity gossip, sports teams composed of sociopaths who are forgiven every crime by their followers and your endless wasteland of (pseudo)reality television and basing scientific legislation on ancient fairy tales.
is because it is mainly used in the US to support the military. most kids dont want
to use their minds to kill people and that
is why they turn away from science/tech
in school.
You know, for a long time I was inclined to believe all the alarmists about America losing its edge. But you know what? We haven't yet and people have predicted the decline of America for a long time. Yet our economy remains the most innovative, vibrant economy in the world. Why is that exactly? I don't know, and no one else seems to. Its some combination of education, ambition, and market flexibility that has yet to be replicated. You can piss and moan about test scores until the cows come home, but its really means less than you think. Consider that I knew jack about Java beans until I wanted to use them. When I decided to use them, I learned, and now I'd pass a test about them with flying colors. To a large extent success is not measured by what you know, but rather you capacity to learn. You need a certain base of information, but after that it doesn't matter. Teaching how to learn is much harder than teaching knowledge. Maybe Americans are good at learning something when they need to know it, and that's our edge. Maybe that's not the case. My point is I've heard for a decade how our demise was just around the corner, I have yet to see it.
Pretty soon we will succumb and give up our agrarian rights too - thanks to WTO
ok start flaming me.
We the investor (care about our 401(k) invest for growth all the time - who cares what the company does)
-> Stock Market (invest for return, short term is OK. Do whatever it takes)
-> Analyst (Squeeze the CEO. Show him the benefits of success and the perils of failure. Somebody is going to screw the company anyway)
-> CEO (screw nationalism make more money for next quarter. Enjoy the options my ticket to glory)
-> his goons (outsource everything and focus on sales. Keep the boss happy or get replaced)
-> Govt (Keep this chain happy) !!
-> We the employee/investor (the whiner)
-> educational institutions and business schools (teach what sells. rationalize this idea, for better funding and enrollment)
Somehow, when the fault is with the average US public, how easily we keep blaming the Govt. For starters when was the last time you invested in a socially concious fund. When did you see a balance sheet where the company's social impact and it as a national resource, taken into consideration.
Does anyone think the Chinese are teaching their children alternative evolution theories?
The US will continue this decline in true science until they TRULY seperate church (or rather Christian dogma ) and state.
Someone thaw me when that happens or no longer matters.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
I'm curious why Americans are so shocked that the world preeminence we have enjoyed for a century looks like it will come an end in the next few generations (if we're lucky).
History is in fact rife with empires that rose to politcal, military and cultural dominance and then (for whatever reason) saw it slip away. The English before US. The Spanish before them. The HRE, Romans, Egyptians...
Why on earth do Americans think, "Oh, but the American world dominance will be the one that lasts forever?" Didn't the English believe that in the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries? The Spanish in the fourteenth - seventeenth centuries? ...
It is a fact of history: Cultures rise to dominance and then fade from dominance. America is just fulfilling the eon old historical pattern. Maybe China will be the next in line; Maybe an unified Europe; Maybe India; Maybe a repeat of the middle ages where there was no global power. I don't know. But I do know, that eventually America will fall from its penacle. No doubt about it.
A bit harder to protect than we thought it was, then? Hell, I know a lot of people telling me explicitly that they won't apply for patents because it'll allow corporations to use them, and they will get virtually no money for it. If their idea's totally unheard of, then they'll make the millions, and be fine and dandy.
If we had an open technology interchange, we'd all be making progress at the same rate. Any new technologies invented or discovered could be passed along for the common good, and the people making money could be the various different implementers of the technology. Perhaps the government should get into the Knowledge Farming business; simply churn out enough ideas and let big business implement.
If you wanted to be less radical, simply shorten the length of patent protection, and for certain, disallow patents of stupid, unoriginal things. This is simple enough to do; pay a few college students 10 bucks an hour to go through a stack of patent documents, do a quick google, use common sense and rule against patents. The ones that get past the students go on to supervisors, who make sure patents are being well put down (all they really have to do is check a website, or actually read the patent aloud and laugh their asses off). The ones that nobody can find a problem with, goes on to a small public review (say pull in people like jury duty), pay them a few bucks a day and have them listen to a company explain their patent, why it should be aloud. Make patents a courtable ideal, and there will be much, much less abuse of the system, as they realize they can't pass bullshit on people.
I dunno.. I have strong opinions, but you've got to agree that it's rediculous that we're churning our asses off with new technologies, and meanwhile they're taking all of our exploits, making more of their own, and at a rate that we can't possibly ever hope to keep up with. If we share, we'll both succeed. If we become secretive, nobody will, and really, patents are just the legal way of being secretive (of course, not getting one is "top secret", but not without it's own problems).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
.. albeit one that was not expressed very diplomatically.
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, it sent a shock wave through the collective American populace. From coast to coast, people were asking themselves a simple question: "How could this have happened?" There was a sense of general dismay that the Soviets had won this particular leg of the Space Race, and Americans were more or less united in the goal of making sure that it didn't happen again.
As a result of this, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which set new standards for math and science education and established low-interest loans for college tuition. We recognized a threat, we took it seriously, we invested in our educational system, and the result of that investment was the generation that built the tools with which we won the Cold War.
Fast-forward to Modern America, and not only does it seem that we did not learn from that lesson of the past, but we're also moving in the wrong direction. Test scores are slipping, math and science education are being regarded in some circles as irrelevant (and even as "dirty" in some more extreme circles), and I've even seen the phrase "college-educated" used as a slur. (As if having a college education is a bad thing!)
It is dismissive to suggest that the rising and disturbing trend of religious fanaticism here at home has nothing to do with this trend. No offense intended to anybody's beliefs, but it should be obvious that the "6000 year-old Universe" crowd has far more political clout and organization than they did (say) ten years ago, and it is dangerous to dismiss them as "quaint" or "traditional." When I think "quaint", I think of Norman Rockwell paintings; it is hardly an adjective that I would attach to a movement that (I would contend) is a threat to the national security and the future of the United States.
Of course, it's equally dismissive to suggest that only religious fanaticism is responsible for our nation's disinterest in proper education. We've got a culture that is obsessed with shark bites, missing white women, and celebrity divorces. We've got parents that are more worried about having better landscaping or a bigger SUV than their neighbors than they are about their own children's education.
Personally, I don't care so much about the root causes of the problem as I do about the problem itself, and I'd like to see it fixed. Maybe what we need is a new national committment to math and science education, much like the one that served us so well in the past. Maybe what we need is a National Defense Education Act for the new millennium.
Sadly, however, I have very little faith that such an act would even make it out of committee in today's climate.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
From what I have seen, and it is a lot, private education and quasi-private education such as charter schools, do an apalling job of science and math education. Sure, exceptions can be cited, but the overall level is well below that of public schools. Teaching these subjects requires smart, motivated teachers with the time and resources to do the job. You are more likely to find these in a public school. We have a fine Catholic school system with a high school and two elementary schools in our area, but they don't teach AP anything. There is no math past Algebra II, no third year foreign language, and only one course each in chemistry, physics, and biology, all taught by the same guy.
A lot of the problem is cultural, in my opinion. It's not cool to be smart these days in the US. The President talks like a dumb fucker, and he and his fundamentalist buddies spend a lot of time, energy, and money bashing science. Funding for research is being cut left and right, so its no surprise that the center of science and technology is moving elsewhere. If you want to get your bad heart replaced with a cloned replacement, you're going to find yourself in Chiba, not Chicago.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
It's all about culture.
Ours promotes innovation, individualism, independent critique, and the free flow of information.
Theirs doesn't.
They can train a billion scientists, but until their culture evolves, the west will still generate more scientific advances.
Well, to be accurate, they just give more of a crap about everything else, like funding an unjustified war. Or taking care of big business. Or any of other 1000 things that the government wastes OUR money on. Everyone gives lip service to bettering education, yet they love to say ignorant things like "well, at least teachers get the summer off".
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This could all be interpreted in many ways, but at face value, this is hardly surprising.
The United States, at large, pushes ridiculous religious dogma that infiltrates and dillutes science and science education with theology.
This country spends untold billions on its military and and related conflicts, diverting money from education and research.
Certain government entities almost routinely intimidate scientists and alter research findings that don't support a money or dogma-driven agenda.
We have a society that demonizes the educated, and also frequently for religious reasons, blames education for a break-down of morals.
Corporations pander always to the lowest common denominator when it comes to offering products and services rather than depend on a thinking population.
We eat junkfood like there is no tomorrow, effectively eliminating the chance of a healthy lifestyle that is essential to a healthy brain and mind. (Yes, bad food makes you stupid.)
I could go on, but that would just get too boring. Also, none of this would be too hard to defend (I'm not providing refernces because I'm on a cell phone at the moment). Really, when you think about all the nonsense and silly behavor which saturates our society, what do you expect? A population of enlightened thinkers?
Join Tor today!
It really makes one think. Maybe in Firefly, everyone should have spoken Chinese and cursed in English.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
When the U.S. gained science and engineering "leadership" in the 20th century, what exactly did that get us? Some national prestige, but I do not think our standard of living is much better than that technological has-been, the United Kingdom. In the 19th Century, I would say the U.K. far outshone all the intellectual output of the United States, and yet their sky did not fall when they lost the title of "#1 innovator." So I am not sure what exactly America will lose when China takes the title away from us.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
With the world becoming more global in its trade and IP ruling the day, what happens when another country is producing new technologies beyond what we are doing in the US? It means that someday the US will be paying other countries for IP as opposed to the other way around. Which do you think is a better model? Either way, in the case of medicines, the consumer gets screwed. But it is a matter of where the money is flowing, not who is getting screwed and that means lots of money will be flowing out of the country for licensing IP or consuming IP from the source. Hmmm, I wonder how long a country stays rich that exports its money.
Boy, I sure feel better we are fighting "terrorism". The rest of the world has to be chuckling that we are wasting our political and capital investments on stupid rhetoric. And because the rhetoric is heating up again, this means we are only going to spend more money. Since when is declaring a war on terrorism a service to the people of the US. It is a burden.
This will not happen. China does not invest in research. Sure they do to some extent, but look at what NSF and NIH alone fund for research and development. If China or anyone else want to take over, they will need to come up with their own ideas and fund them on their own, rather than take what someone else has already done and either blatently copy it or make it more cheaply. It is simply NOT the same thing as investing in the developent of ideas.
that title is very fitting considering your nick. Good point too.
...book back out again. It's a great language with a nice structure and no grammatical tables to learn. The script is a pleasure to write although it's a pity I have little clue how to pronounce it. Seems like it might be a useful skill to have in years to come.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
That North America glorifies cash as the ultimate goal of everything. If you've got 2 phds and are leading breakthrough research for a modest wage, you are considered less of a success then high-school dropouts who are making 6 figure (or more) salaries. Think of all the College drop-outs running amok in the billionaires club, you think for a second they respect the intelligent researchers that make the breakthroughs for their company? Think again, they think they're the smart ones.
I hear all the time on the radio. The talk-show jocks will mention that they didn't go to college and are making a killing, will take calls from people who started a roofing business or whatnot and are raking 250k, and laugh together at the college graduates making 35-60k a year.
Not that this is a new phenomena, the history of science is filled with geniuses that contributed monumentally to science but lived modestly.
I, for one, welcome our new tai bang le han cong ming zhong guo ren lao ban.
What we lose in scientific-ness, we more than make up for with our awesome Jesus-osity!
Well done, NineNine! We also would have accepted "scientificality".
I imagined your post read in the manner of a 1950s announcer: "Yes, that's one hundred percent US of A, now with added Jesus-osity!".
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The Chinese economy and manufacturing base will dwarf that of the US in fifteen twenty years, but dominance in science will take far longer. It's dangerous to rely on sheer numbers -- population, tech graduates, and research dollars -- to the exclusion of factors such as culture, or sociopolitical freedoms. The numerical approach is incomplete; look at Ireland's new status as a tech mecca, though it's no more educated than the rest of Europe. For that matter, look at Israel, which is on the cutting edge of more than a few scientific fields. Culture is hugely underrated as a factor, and the Chinese will be held back big-time on that score. People here have noted the utter lack of respect the Chinese tend to have for intellectual property, but haven't pointed to the source. Their culture is fundamentally collective; individual knowledge, innovation, and initiative aren't valued at anywhere near a Western level -- in fact, they're often punished. The concept of intellectual property, of individual creative achievement, is fundamentally foreign to Chinese society. More than the overall education level of a population, that concept is essential for real scientific advance. The only question is how quickly Chinese society will reshape itself. Which goes to the second point: Socio-political freedom matters. When lines of inquiry are shut down as unsanctioned by the government, when intellectuals are muzzled, when information-sharing is hobbled, creativity of all kinds suffers -- including scientific creativity. Genuine scientific advances, as opposed to mere notations completing some minor gap in existing theory, come about when ideas cross paths. By slowing down the flow of information, the Chinese government is smothering its scientific community.
1998 called. They want their cheap scare tactics back.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There are just too many words like "may" in there for me to get really excited.
The last major gigantic push for scientists and engineers in the US came when the Soviets launched Sputnik. It's going to take an event like Sputnik by the Chinese to get the US going.
I remember one wag telling me that China was the market/power/society of the future...and it always will be.
"I Can READ That!" is a gentle introduction to reading Chinese characters, focused on stuff you'd see while traveling in China. Won't really teach you how to say anything, though.
For self-paced learning of conversational Mandarin, nothing beats the Pimsleur language programs. I can say from personal experience that after listening to just the first-level program, you will be able to ask for stuff in restaurants (and drop a few jaws in the process if you don't look Asian!), hold simple conversations with Chinese speakers, and start to make a little sense of the dialogue in Chinese movies and TV shows. There are three levels, each with about 15 hours of material.
If you have a Palm handheld, PlecoDict absolutely rocks for building up your vocabulary of both spoken and written Mandarin. It has a great graduated-interval flashcard mode.
The New Practical Chinese Reader is the latest edition of the textbook that's been used in just about every introductory Chinese language course in the English-speaking world in the last couple of decades. It is available with cassette tapes to help with pronunciation.
For more vocabulary, both spoken and written, Rosetta Stone is good. Its major weakness is that it uses the same vocabulary words for all the languages it covers, and the word list is based on some Western assumptions; some things that take just one word in a typical western language take several in Mandarin, and you find yourself getting a small flood of new words with no clear idea of exactly what each one means on its own. But once you've learned the basic conjunctions and so on, that's not a big deal.
For actually learning how to write (stroke order) there's Easy Chinese Tutor, not a great piece of software but the material is decent and it even comes with a bunch of character tracing sheets you can print out and practice on.
Zhongwen.com has a bunch of good resources.
What I really want, though, is for someone to do the equivalent of Destinos for Mandarin. Maybe in the form of a historical kung-fu soap opera comedy drama fantasy like the awesome Tian Xia Di Yi. I'd pay good money for that!
Not only is the U.S. losing ground in high technology exports, but its very capacity to develop new technologies is declining rapidly with respect to the rest of the world.
So what? In the U.S. we can outlaw evolution. We'll just change science when and if needed.
"Kansas school board's evolution ruling angers science community" [CNN].
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
...and thus the US retires to elder statesman status. Which is to say, it passes tons of socialist laws and ceases to produce anything useful to future development, as Europe did before it.
I guess Chinese language will be the first to the stars after all.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The US would rather product marketing droids, ambulance chasers, and PR flacks than scientists and engineers anyway. Doing science is so.....20th century.
This, however, does not stop various pundits from bemoaning the drop in science graduates in the US.
This is bound to be a cyclic trend. The US had a lot of momentum going for it, because of the continuous stream of smart immigrants, & those immigrants (subsequent generations) have taken a lot for granted. Now it is time to put ones' head down, and get the same level of work ethic back in schools
I never thought I'd post one of these "Mod Parent Up" posts...but goddamn!@#!
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
those in *control*. So I guess we'll have to see what *they* come up with. How much you want to guess it won't include *your* well being.
Just another reason to engage with China in 2006-2008 ( Remember Taiwan plans new constitution for 2006 and beign independent in 2008 . Of course China won't let that happen.)
Forgive me for I cannot resist. Does this come as a surprise? The U.S. is filled with the dumbest, laziest, fattest people I've ever met in my life (I'm Chinese). Post World War II economic growth is the one and only reason this country amounted to anything in the first place. Black people are worthless bags of flesh, Mexicans can't do anything but operate lawn mowers and white people are slothful imperialist scum. Goodbye and good-riddance to the United States of McDonalds. It won't be long before China owns you!
Thing about the Simpsons and similar shows, even Beavis and Butthead - they portray the moronic exploits of some dumb characters, but the don't insult the intelligence of the viewer while doing it. This is important. The Simpsons is funny to someone with no education and a thirst for cheap beer, because they relate to Homer. It's funny to educated people on higher levels, though, too, through the generally good writing and subtle references. That is why it is so successful. I don't feel ashamed of our culture when Homer has a crayon extracted from his brain.
;). There's no reward there for being more educated, no subtle technology references, no cultural or real history, and no exploration of interesting characters and themes that make you think.
I do feel ashamed (and insulted) whenever I see the schlock that MTV peddles as the "reality" of our society. These are the shows that need to be outlawed
It doesn't do much good to crank out engineers and scientists from the universities if there's no work available which requires such credentials. It's not like they're going to sit around and do R&D for giggles. These people have to earn a living, one way or another. How many engineers and scientists have wound up doing whatever work they could find to pay the bills?
I get the impression from listening to alarmists like Gates that our situation can be remedied by cheerleading more young people into training for non-existent jobs. Is he serious? Enrollments have tracked demand. Demand for native born American engineers, programmers and scientists has fallen and students have veered away from those fields.
It seems no company can resist the siren song of cheap labor. Only now is it becoming clear what the true cost is. It won't be long before China has the US by the short hairs.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Pity no-one cared when Creationism gets top priority in science lessons in schools, or when people don't want cellphone masts near schools (but still smoke cigarettes).
Well, America, if you think science is a dirty discipline that gets in the way of policy and religion, what you gonna expect?
K.
The United States already hires engineers and scientists from all over the world. If Asia trains more engineers and scientists, the United States will just hire more Asian engineers and scientists. What's the problem?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The Freeman peddles the same upside-down "logic" as Gates -- the offshoring is due to the lack of US programmers, so we need to educate more kids here. Yeah, so they can flip hamburgers the rest of their life, while waiting for a job in their professions.
The recent flood of similar articles, all playing to the $ame drummer, blaming the US workers and students means that shortly there will be more extensions, higher limits and more tax breaks for the importation of foreign 'experts' (to be trained by the US 'nonexperts' they are brought to replace) and offshoring. Whenever you see this kind of orchestrated yapping from the regime hacks, you should watch the Congress and hold onto your wallet. It's the same thieves, rigging the system again for the next squeeze on the US programmers and engineers.
as an economic power - in fact, the only way that most economists think we could have even a chance would be if we suddenly started pouring money and people into Doctoral programs, especially engineering and hard sciences.
...
But, that's unlikely to happen.
So we'll turn into another Amsterdam.
Something to look forward too, when you think about it
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I blame the overpaid CEOs. For just a small reduction in their ridiculous saleries, they could avoid overseas outsourcing and kept technology jobs here, which is one of the best ways of reinvesting in technology.
...
Very true, but our market system here in the US, as opposed to say, the EU, encourages one or two quarters of forward looking, as compared to the typical five to ten year forward looking planning the rest of the world enjoys.
Sadly, most shareholders aren't even permitted to vote on the CEO/exec salaries, an obvious loophole
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Believe it or not, China's fuel economy standards are stricter than the US's and are a significant detriment to the US automakers exporting giant hulking SUVs there, according to an article in yesterday's Wall St Journal. This actually may be a significant motivator for the US to develop hybrid vehicles with better mileage, to be able to export them to China.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
The United States has become a hostile environment to those who want to innovate. The Patent and Copyright system has become too oppressive, with the result that industry and new inventions are hobbled by expense and fear of litigation. Combine that with religous fundamentalism and you have a recipe for the decline of American competiveness.
This concept is fundamentally flawed. Sure, they have more people, but to broadly discover the talents you have to educate the lot of them. Your return will scale roughly linearly with your investment; they don't get all those extra scientists for nothing.
But there are also a lot of throttling factors including limited communication, limited resource availability, and more rigid societal hierarchies.
I personally expect China to be the next economic powerhouse, but it remains to be seen as to whether they will be willing to loosen things up to the point where real innovation takes over and they become drivers rather than copiers. It never really happened with Japan, although Korea is doing pretty well....
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
In no particular order:
1. Funding slashed for public education.
2. Lawyers fighting trivial patent battles (instead of that money being used to innovate).
3. Companies suing their own customers for copyright infringement
4. "Infotainment" instead of informed news. Fox News anybody?
5. Controlfreak-behavior everywhere. Controlling what people with their information, controlling foreigners/terrorists/everything, etc.
6. Manipulated Science Papers to receive funding.
7. Polically motivated resaerch to bring a certain politically favoured outcome.
8. Removing of non-PC topics from school books (like "fanatism", "racial issues", in some cases "evolution theory").
9. Huge defense budget (instead of using the money otherwise).
10. Religious (christian) fundamentalism.
11. Campains to make the US the most disliked country on this planet, even by its allies.
12. etc/etc/etc
Honestly, who is surprised? This maybe what currently the majority of the (US) people want, but these same people should realize that actions have consequences.
Europe isn't much better either.
Teachers know they are going to be replaced en masse at some point in the future. The writing was on the wall in the 50's with sci-fi stories of robotic teachers and has been reinforced every generation with the advent of first radio than video than computer based education inching ever closer to a purely artificial tutor whose expert systems are actively discovering the latest trends and breakthrough in their fields. Eventually all teachers will be redundent and unlike union workers in the 60's they see it coming.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Is it worth? Teaching that is?
If I want to be a teacher (in europe), I could.
However, I am not sure I want to be. It feels like a worthwhile profession, but it's also clouded in many negative connotations.
Perhaps you can offer some insight?
It's ok, they'll still need people to "manage" all of those Engineers and Scientist and they'll neeed lawyers to get in the way of innovation. The USA has an abundence of these.
...because China was clearly the technological leader in blue-water sailing, military technology, literature, the arts, etc. for centuries and look how they dominated the world!
Oh wait, no, that's not right. They ended up getting butt-raped by every Western society that went screaming past them on the industrialization ladder in the 18th and 19th centuries. Funny how that "technological dominance" didn't help them much?
Please. China has a gajillion problems of its own, not least of which is an outlook that peripheralizes and trivializes everything beyond it's own immediate boarders (Zhong-guo, anyone?). Taiwan is an issue to them because it's considered a domestic issue, NOT an international one.
I'll put money on a mediocre go-getter over a brilliant introvert any day. On the world scale too.
-Styopa
Bill Hicks, "Ever noticed how creationists look really unevolved..." ;)
He was totally a prophet, in the sense of being a truthsayer.
Hello, I am an alien who has transformed into this signature. As you are reading this I am having sex with your eyeballs. I know you like it because you are smiling.
My son, who is now four, can read "Green Eggs and Ham" and is working on the words in "Red Fish, Blue Fish". I read to him every night religiously, and I am asking him comprehension questions. Although he was slow in learning to speak, he is definitely ready now. Plus, he is learning Korean from his mother.
Except that gifted kids aren't much different from regular kids! All the studies I've seen show that if you challenge a kid, they will rise to the challenge. That means that we shouldn't classify them into "smart" and "dumb". We should be teaching them all as if they were all smart! As far as I can tell, the only factor in whether a kid is ready to learn is whether they are motivated. Kick all the non-motivated kids out, tell their parents to motivate them, and we can challenge the kids we have and give them the best education in the world.
Kids should come into high school ready for college. They should leave high school with what now passes for a four-year degree. There's no reason why we have to wait until they are 19 before we can really start teaching them. You'd be surprised what thse 14- and 15-year-olds are able to comprehend. I've had some seriously deep rational conversations with boys from this age, and these boys are by no means bright. Why aren't we taking 14-year-old kids and showing them Calculus and Physics and how transistors really work? I know they're ready for it because I can teach it to them and I'm not even a professional!
In order to get there, middle school should be what high school is today. The kids should learn to devour technical books. They should wrap up their ability to compose English and to reason with mathematics. They should get a taste of what is coming in high school.
Which means in elementary school it is absolutely critical that they master the basics. If you can't read, you can't get into 3rd grade, plain and simple. If you can't read a thick book and understand it, you can't get out of 6th grade. If you can't add, subtract, divide, multiply, and solve basic algebra problems, you won't see middle school.
Kick out the non-motivated kids, let them know that they had better change their attitude or else life is going to hit them like a semi-truck at 2AM on the interstate. Kids MUST get educated, and fast, or else the U. S. of A. will become a third world company as all the tech companies are forced to leave for India and China.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Here is a counterexample to your arguments.
Ever been to Britain? Indians and Pakistanis occupy the social status that African Americans occupy in the US. They dwell mostly in inner cities. They are poor. They do most of the shit-work. They are derogatorily referred to as "Pakis" by the white mainstream. They form street gangs. The liberals and conservatives debate ad-infinitum about the causes of their backwardness. Of course, the few that break the mould to become professionals/businessmen are considered to be the exceptions that break the rule.
Go to the US. What a difference! Most of the Indians and Pakistanis are well-educated. They are affluent and live in posh suburbs. They may not be accepted by the mainstream, but nobody really considers them inferior in any way. The tech companies are full of them.
If that is not an argument for environment over heredity, I don't know what is.
Magnus.
It may seem inevitable that China outpaces the US and we can count the reasons. So hard working, desperate wedge between the rural undersociety and the city people, 1 billion people. But there are a lot of structural obstacles they still must come to grips with. At 8% growth, it will take decades to bring the countryside out of poverty. Helping those folks along will be a boon for everyone.
Besides, a funny thing happens when an economy succeeds: it's harder to get people to work hard and you have to pay them a lot more, eventually undermining some of the determinants of early success.
As Nova says, China may become the biggest worldwide exporters of products, but the US remains the biggest exporter of lifestyle. And if China, albeit sadly, commercializes like the US, they will be the kick ass partner we wanted Japan to be.
But, with history in the rearview, we know their ascension is far from a slam dunk.
It's incredible how much ignorance has been spewed on this thread.
What makes the American system different from all others is our emphasis on freedom. Economic systems derive power directly from the vitality and social cohesion of the societies which generate them. Free societies with high social cohesion generate the most economic value and power because all the incentives align.
American society is losing its social cohesion, mostly because so many people believe all the idiocy being spewed on this thread and everywhere else.
China's government is very successfully motivating huge sectors of its subject population with nationalism and the dream of recovering past greatness. This strategy is profoundly dehumanizing, but it generates tremendous national purpose and cohesion. The last government that tried it was Nazi Germany, and it worked so well there that the rest of the world had to stop them by force.
In the 80's our friends from Japan were going to take over the world.
I suggest you look at the past 7000 years of Chinese history.
How Western of you to think the past 50 years means a god damned thing in the long run.
These are some fairly impressive developments. For one, consider that Western science progresses using variations of the Latin alphabet. Whereas in China the spoken languages of Mandarin (and Cantonese and other more localized dialects) use an ideographical alphabet: one character means one word.
As a result, they cannot form acronyms. And as most Western scientists and engineers know almost innately, without acronyms, there cannot be scientific progress.
Or so we thought.
US universities are still receiving record numbers of Asians studying science.. If we are second rate than why the vast increase in Asian student numbers?
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
China becomes the new target of Al Qeada.
Osama don't want no part of second best. It's always been a vanity thing.
The problem is that we've now gone from NIMBY to BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone)!
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
China replies by nuking Taiwan, invoking US response. US nukes 12 major Chinese cities. Chinese hurl nukes at Redmond WA and Los Angeles and set off nukes in shipping containers in Chicago, NYC, Houston, Denver, Washington DC and Phoenix. US massively retailiates by hurling 25% of nuclear land-based missiles and 15% of submarine-based missiles at China. Scorecard follows:
Bad News: China population problem only partially solved at first. Remaining Chinese feed themselves first by trading children and eating them [as Chinese have done in previous famines], then by eating the dead, then by slaughtering and eating each other. China descends into chaos and Chinese civilization disappears except in sheltered mountainous isolated regions. India, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam reclaim regions previously lost to China then seal off their borders.
Good news: US debt to China is written off (no Chinese banks available to accept payment). US becomes dominant power for 500 years. US productivity increases by 30% thanks to
Go search via google for environemntalist web forums
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I've had a number of conversations with intelligent young people who've told me that they're looking for a career that will put them into a position where they aren't subject to competition from around the world. Viewed from this angle, science and engineering are dumb choices. Rather, if you want to study something that will lead to a job that can't be outsourced, you should look towards business (management or sales), medical fields (such as nursing), or the skilled building trades (welding, plumbing, electrician, etc.) It's no surprise that there's lots of interest in those fields.
As long as our immigration laws slow down the influx of foreign competition in the labor market, and as long as some jobs can easily be outsourced while other jobs cannot, there will be a strong incentive for young people to specialize in those jobs that can't be outsourced.
Of course, outsourcing is happening in lots of fields now, including law (paralegals doing routine work over the internet) and medicine (radiologists interpreting X-ray images over the internet.) However, it will likely be decades before this process of globalization is complete.
Hitler was an excellent public speaker.
Thats not what I saw on a PBS show I watched recently (I forget what show it was). They showed a woman who was looking to purchase a car and on the lot they had cars that looked just like ours, in the background they had a Hummer H2. They said that even though the cars look the same the engine is a cheaper model with few pollution controls and poor mileage and can't pass US emission requirements.
They also showed a bunch of guys learning how to drive a Jeep up steep hills, and talked about how 4WD is becoming popular in China
One other thing they mentioned was that 10 years ago almost everyone in Beijing rode bicycle and now its the opposite, most drive cars.
Its possible China changed the mileage requirements since the show aired
Most of the Indians and Pakistanis are well-educated. They are affluent and live in posh suburbs. They may not be accepted by the mainstream, but nobody really considers them inferior in any way. The tech companies are full of them.
7-11 is full of them as well. Ever watch the Simpson's? Apu was America's idea of an Indian before H1-Bs came around.
Even with years of H1-Bs coming to America, there are still plenty of Apus around.
Thank you, come again...
The neglect of gifted children is one of the worst things that occurs in the public education system. For those children who are gifted and could succeed, there is no reason to strive. They would be belittled by their peers and given no additional resources. For those children who are gifted and have concomittant special needs (i.e. can finish assigned reading in 1/2 the allotted time and then disrupt the class because they're bored, does the teacher have anything for them to do afterwards?)
You know the saying about the first 80% of an objective being easy to achieve? The next 10% is challenging, the 5% after that very difficult and the final 5% almost impossible. For some reason our schools are attempting to get the final 5% onto par with the first 80% through mainstreaming of students who may never produce average results; simultaneously they are ignoring the 10% of potential high achievers who may require more stimulation to really bloom.
you mean innovators like Dr Kai-Fu Lee?
First google result I found.
"Ignorant of what?" Here's a few things:
... biological evolution ..." (p. 79). They in fact said that students should know about evolution, but they just decided that the students would not be tested over it. (http://www.ksde.org/outcomes/science_stds2001.pdf [ksde.org]) See page 12 or 47 (quote on page 74).
1. "religious extremists" Not all religious people are extremists. Some are very normal and live everywhere. Chances are that you have an "extremist" living next door to you. (FYI, I am not religous)
2. I was born in raised in Kansas, and they have not "thrashed" science education in any way. They did NOT ban teaching the theory of evolution. Here is a quote from the often debated standard: "As a result of their activities in grades 9-12, all students should develop an understanding of
now git to yer bible an stop tawkin abot debvul majick! aint no need to be aksin abut the majic until jaysus is in yr hert and hee tells you to look at the majick!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?Artic leID=9128
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
We've downsized and outsourced just about everything except the bean counters and now you want to know where the technology is?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
...the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology.
This is just one of the reasons I'm against population control as opposed to appropriate use of technology to insure there is enough resources for everyone to live comfortably. The more people we have on the planet, the more brain power we have. Good to see somebody else recognizes this.
What?
I was in a PhD program (had been for 3 years) and looked at my life. I was fast approaching 30, still had a full load of undergraduate education debt($24k) and was single. Trust me; the girls you want to date aren't impressed by the words "PhD candidate". And the stipend you get doesn't allow you to go to a bar to actually meet a girl. And I was a "lucky" grad student that had the tuition and stipend payed for by a research grant.
I went to the school bank and cashed out all my credits and received 2 master's degrees. I went to work in industry and within 3 years met an amazing women and got married. I'd like to go back to school in a couple years, but the fiscal pain my wife and I will have to go through will be surprising to her I'm afraid.
When I do go back to school, I don't think it'll be in the US. Only because most schools will want me to start at the beginning of a PhD program - and 6 years is a long time. Over in Europe, I should be able to go straight to research and get a PhD in about 2 years.
I don't think this is something to worry too much about in the short term, given that, as some previous posters have suggested, the real potential for economic gain comes from innovation rather than emulation and refinement. China has some (in fact, many) great innovators in just about every scientific field however they are for the most part employed by US or other foreign multi-nationals in domestic research labs, or even poached and ported into overseas research labs. It's pretty easy, from experience, to convince any chinese researcher to move out of china (to a western country), though this may not continue if domestic Chinese companies and research institutions become able to offer the same level of salary and funding as foreign companies.
We're waiting for Chinese tourists to visit: while Chinese men are spying on U.S. industrial facilities, American men will be using our glue guns to fasten your women to the bed - they'll be begging us for more. End result: many happy Chino-honky hybrid babies in China 9 months later.
All Chinese women want to escape Chinese men's tiny disappointing bug pricks.
I have a masters degree in chemistry, work at Pfizer Global Research & Development in Ann Arbor Michigan as a MANPOWER CONTRACTOR in a position that is NOT TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT. I make nowhere near as much as a Pfizer Colleague (FTE), though I perform similar if not the same quality of work, get no healthcare benefits, no retirement benefits, and I live with my parents 70 miles away BECAUSE Ann Arbor is too fucking expensive to live in. Pfizer Global Research and Development is actively forming strategic aliances with 3rd party companies to outsource its benchtop chemistry research as much as possible. It is negotiating a deal to have another company manage its 3 million plus compound library, stored off-site. Hopefully those under-paid people working at that company won't "accidentally" send any of those compounds to Merck, Eli Lilly, Roche, or Astra Zeneca.
In fact, this very week the grim reaper took away 600 jobs from Kalamazoo (500 souls lost) and Ann Arbor (100 souls lost) in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division due to the "Adapting To Scale" initiative. The Discovery Technologies Department is currently being dismantled and being regrouped with the Chemistry and Biology Departments with unspecified job losses. The Chemistry Department is weeding out its people this week.
"Adapting To Scale", (bright-sizing: getting rid of your brightest people) was announced as management's top-down approach to reduce research and development costs by over $4 billion annually this past April 2005. What does this say about science in America? Firstly, it's a "no confidence" vote from the very company one works for that the work you're performing isn't as good as the competition's work and talent. Secondly, human resources (i.e. "the company"), sees its work force as a liability and not an asset. Thirdly, science and the people working in science are not that important, it's part of a business model that Pfizer uses to make a 30.8% NET PROFIT on it drug and personal care products.
If I could be a high school guidance counselor I would give this advice: DO NOT GO INTO SCIENCE because you WILL NOT FIND A JOB THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO LIVE ADEQUATELY AND INDEPENDENTLY IN TODAY'S SOCIETY. I suspect the same is partially true for Computer Science majors, can't find too many people in America studying that major anymore.
Damn all this outsourcing pisses me off. We've been handing over to the Chinese our skilled jobs for quite some time, eroding the middle class, which as any intelligent individual would know, is an artificially constructed socio-economic class put in place by the well-to-do and "those with power." This country is so divided in its politics, democrats trying to save the middle class, and the republicans brain-washing all the church-goers in this nation that science and evolution are evil, the doings of the antichrist. Damn it! Education is supposed to free people, freeking republicans are preaching through the churches that we'll be saved. From what!!!? Sam Walton and Walmart!!!? Working at some fast food restaurant on the poor side of the counter?
Let's just send our armies around the world to make our oil supplies safe and the world economies more "American-friendly" to please Wall Street. Screw American Freedom, The American Dream (now a nightmare - college kids accumulating student loan debt and not finding a job to pay it off), and Screw American Ingenuity!!! All for the sake of boosting short-term profits (the all mighty buck), and implementing the new hidden tax agenda, revenues that are fueling the Iraq war - higher gasoline prices at the gas pumps, which we all know go to Uncle Dick Chenny and his friends at Haliburton.
I'm going to go sit in the corner now with tin foil hat and wet towel tied around my head. Will someone please offer me the red pill or the blue pill?
Anomymous Coward (for obvious reasons)
I do not think we can blame the education problem in this country simply on one group or another, ask them to change their behaviour, and hope everything will come out dandy. I believe that the idea of compulsory education is fundamentally wrong. Schools don't encourage individuality, creativity, and motivation.
Think about a day at school. You may really enjoy your European history class, but 55 minutes later, ring ring, on to something else. You can't focus a large block of time on what you are interested in and instead learn indifference. John Taylor Gatto, a former teacher, has written a few books on the subject. I remember a passage referring to a study done in Mass. that showed literacy rates were higher before compulsory education. I live near Detroit, and everyday in the news you can expect to see articles and editorials complaining about the schools (this has been going on for decades). Has anyone ever wondered that maybe our schools can't be fixed? And that schools themselves are the problem? I think society seriously needs to look at alternatives to schools and stop placing such high value on pieces of paper.
We will deploy our San Francisco Gay Warriors on the West Coast. The swimmers will have the time of their life trying to avoid anal rectification. Most will swim back to China after one encounter with a Gay Warrior.
But seriously, why bother? We'll just nuke the country in a few years.
Going to call bollocks on that mate.
Walk into any hospital in the UK and count the number of doctors of Asian ethnicity.
Walk into any large IT company in the city and count the number of Asian programmers.
You're talking crap mate.
Asian families aspire for their children to be professionals in the UK pretty much as they do anywhere else on the planet. And they succedd at it. The stereotype of most Indians and Pakistanis is of hard working, family orientated, law abiding and honest people.... you'll find it really hard to find a view of them being backward.
I suggest you visited another country and simply carried your own view with you.
For reference, I now live in Spain (used to work in central London), and the model of the Indian/Pakistani family is exactly the same here in Spain as it is in the UK. It's completely identifiable in every way.
I came into this discussion late so my comments will probably disappear into the void, but...
You can make a lot more money by going into finance or sales than you can by becoming an engineer (particularly if you have the brains to hack it as a scientist or engineer in the first place). That's a simple fact nowadays. And a person stands to make this money with considerably less effort expended while in school.
Put simply, it isn't primarily an education problem as most posters here believe, but more of an incentives problem. If you're very bright, and want a high paying job, you get a degree in finance, not mechanical engineering.
Honestly, if America starts to experience a shortage of scientists and engineers, I think the problem will be self-correcting. (This sort of flexibility is one of the nice things about our society, particurly in contrast to Japan and China's rigid systems.) We will just start paying scientists and engineers more money to induce more people to go into these fields.
No, then we have to celebrate, because we'll reap the benefits of their innovation. They'll invent ways to make things and provide services better and cheaper than before, and the world will be a better place for it. What nonsense the original article is, whining about us losing a "science crown". The world economy is a collaboration, not a competition! The richer and cleverer people in other countries get, the better off we will be.
I play Nerd-Folk!
In no way do I support eugenics... I'm simply an observer. However, I have to note this:
1) In the west we have a "natural" selection of people where less successful people tend to breed more and sooner (they have more kids earlier in life). If there is any genetic component to success, we are effectively breeding it out.
2) In China, they have an artificial selection where parents can only have 1 child. Those that have 2 are fined for the second, so effectively people with money (sometimes equivalent to success) can breed more. Therefore, China is encouraging the breeding of more successful people.
I admit this is a simplification of the matter. However, I think that several generations down the road, this will turn into an advantage for the Chinese nation.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Read China Mountain Zhang to see a future dominated by a China like today's regime. Excellent novel-- stays away from the tried and true SF tropes... See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312 860986/102-0461210-1100147?v=glance
the role filled by "african-americans" is played by exactly the same ethnic group in the UK too. 1st and 2nd gen Asians are usually fairly business focussed - the paki chants are mostly jealousy. It the the afro-carribean group that suffers most at school which translates to poor aspirations further down the line.
(and, it seems that it is poor boys that are suffering as much as any particular ethinic group)
...at least not without further details. India has had an extensive caste system for a very long time, which has also discouraged interbreeding, especially with the brahmin elite class.
One might argue that the differences in british vs. american immigrant indians might come from different ratios of caste immigration. I am completely unaware of any data on this, but it does question the strength of your environment over heredity arguement.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
AC
My daughter (17) is great in math. On a recent test she took (ACT?) she scored in, or above, the 97'th percentile in all of the math and math related scores. She claims that she would have done better if she hadn't forgotten to take her calculator to the test. You know what she is planningt o major in at College? Classical Studies. Of course I had to ask, and her reasoning is this. The only job she will be able to get, if she majors in math, is teaching. She does not want to teach. She enjoys classical studies and there are more job opportunities. (I told her to take welding in H.S. and study mechanical engineering in college. As a female, the corporate recuriters would be trampeling each other to sign her up. However, the fire of the welding torches scared her.)
I believe Apu has a Phd in Computer Science.
No wonder, while we teach Intelligent Design the rest of world gets designers with intelligence.
Every thread like this spawns an enormous number of comments criticising the Religious Right, Jesus Freaks, President Bush, the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, etc. etc. etc.
If I understand the above posters correctly, the reason that China is making rapid gains relative to the U.S. isn't due to the fact that China is a third-world country emerging into the first world; it's because George Bush believes in God, or something like that.
So here's my question:
First, President Bush has (again, if I understand correctly) forbade the U.S. of federal funds to create new stem cell lines. Even if I don't agree with him, I can certainly understand how one could have moral and philosophical objections to this practice. To use a crude analogy, we can get useful and potentially life-saving data by performing hypothermia experiments on Jews; however, I certainly hope most of us would agree that this would be horrible.
2. Second, I understand that some few school districts in the U.S. have come under pressure to include Intelligent Design in their curriculum. I disagree with this, but in the larger picture, it hardly seems like a firestorm that is sweeping the nation. And aren't school districts supposed to be responsive to local concerns?
3. So, what other evidence is there that the fundies, or Jesus Freaks, or mindless religo-bots or whatever are taking over our educational system? I just don't see it. From a historical standpoint, our schools are far *less* religious than at just about any other point in our history, as far as I can tell. What am I missing? Where is this blitzkrieg of uptight, WASPY/redneck stormtroopers?
- Alaska Jack
Woah, like Freeciv, China needs more scientists to get those advances and wonders!!
Right now it's collecting dust in the basement at MIT. They have to move it every now and then when they need to get to the chemistry set.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
sorry I'm outa mod points. this is insight.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I seriously wouldn't doubt it. The Simpsons is about poking fun at stereotypes rather than being racist, sexist, or any other -ist.
My main point, which I realize I wasn't completely clear, is that the idea of Indians being successful, highly-educated members of American society is a relatively new one. It is also not a pervasive view. The Americans that are most likely to think that are in tech companies with the most exposure to H1-Bs.
The rest of the population only has experience with Indians from their exposure at 7-11 convenience stores or with the Simpsons. These Indians may not be poor, but they certainly do the "shit work" mentioned in the great-grandparent message. Of course, "shit work" is a relative term to each society. But in America, working career-long in a convenience store is generally considered shit.
To get back to the topic of this thread, I do not think that intelligence has anything to do with race. However, I do believe that intelligence, like any other trait, tends to run in families. The effects that we've seen and commented on in this discussion could be directly related to the level of intelligence required for the jobs needed to immigrate. Maybe the jobs that originally attracted the Pakistanis and Indians living in inner-city Britain didn't require that much intelligence. Therefore, those families still don't have much intelligence.
Apu was America's idea of an Indian before H1-Bs came around.
But America's idea doesn't necessarily reflect reality.
Most of my Indian friends are American born-- all professional, born in places like New Jersey, Ohio, etc. Indians have been a sizable minority for several decades now.
They are all citizens. None of them have ever had an H1-B visa. Their parents are immigrants, just like my European parents.
They are my friends, collegues & neighbors.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
If the science crown means 'rat race' and 6 days of school a week, and studying to the exclusion of all else for tech toys, they can have it. I'd rather a post-apocalyptic future or Amish lifestyle.
Ha ha, check out bitterasianmen.com
I'd like to start this off by saying that this isn't the first article to stir up fears of an ascendant Asia vs. a descendant America. Slashdot is full of them. Just take a look at any single article noting a technical achievement anywhere, and I mean anywhere outside the US, be it Europe, China, Brazil or India.
And what is the typical slashdotter's reaction? One of blatant chauvinism, racism and derogatory remarks about backward Chinese spacecraft supposedly copied from the Russians, supposedly socialist Europe supporting a dying dream of having the wrong vision of passenger aircraft future or not even knowing that Brazil has had a working ethanol based gasoline system for more than two decades.
That is the typical reaction. If you ask me, the problem of the US is perhaps one of arrogance based on ignorance. Ignorance on what happens beyond the US' borders. I suppose it comes from 60 years of superpower status and genuine leadership in many areas. It's gone on for so long that people in the US possibly take it for granted.
It's also not the first economic scare the US has had. The Japanese frightened many in the 70's and 80's. And now the outsourcing of jobs to China and India is frightening many more.
So where is the problem? Is it education as so many slashdotters like to believe? Is it the US media that is almost exclusively US centric to the extent that your average slashdotter knows neither the difference between Sweden and Switzerland or between Austria and Australia, and has vague and unsettling notions about the EU being socialist or even communist, let alone about place that have cultures even more remotely removed from the US such as China and India?
I think it's probably a bit of all of that, but that the real problem is that the US population is simply not interested in the rest of the world. It's US consumers that drive the US media. It's US parents that drive the education system. It's the US population that votes in a President who is only semi-literate. It's the US population that votes to supplant science with dogmatic religion and yet rail against another equally dogmatic religion, that being ironically, one of the few foreign affairs that genuinely, even if only out of fear, interests the average US person.
Taking an active interest in our world is step one to rejuvinating the US. IMO.
A point you will find nowhere in the scientific literature.
consider the many fascinating mysteries of this universe that science by itself is incapable of answering.
Intellegent design does'nt pass the test to be a scientific hypothisis (it is not falsifiable). Much less a theory. It belongs in philosophy not science. Based on the above quote I assume you agree?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Like all great empires, the US is now in its decay phase. Other countries are passing us up in everything from technology to economics. The real problem is the US has lost sight at what is important. Everyone is so concerned about cutting off the drivers in rush hour traffic and eating at Chipolte. I like most US citizens have become fat and lazy. Only Richard Simmons and Dr. Phil in a pair of fundies can save us now.
Let me guess: you are not native English speaker?
Which commonly-used browser is it that ships with a spell-checker for textareas?
(Yes, I know there are plugins, but most people don't know about them, or get tired of installing them every time they reinstall or buy a new machine...)
For that matter, give me a browser that has an easy way to let me use my own favorite text editor to edit textareas. (Yes, there's Mozex for Firefox, and I love it, but it ain't perfect, and it ain't likely to be installed on $random_computer I'll encounter when not at home).
Actually, reading your post again, I realize I have something somewhat on-topic to say:
It's not ALL the parents' fault, but I believe the changes we need to make in society are much more involved than providing arbitrary and unnecessary testing. We need to somehow advocate more parental involvement in their own child's development and not advocate that everyone must work slavishly just to survive (or to purchase that nice boat).
Today at work, I had to turn a pre-employment test into a web form (I hate my job). About half the correct answers in the test were "Notify proper authorities and await further instructions".
Schools are turning out mindless drones because that's what corporations want to hire. If they let anyone but the very highest executives make any decisions, said executives can be held liable for "wrong" decisions. Only a very small percentage of the corporate workforce is in this category; everyone else is there to blindly follow orders.
It's not just the corporate world: witness the popularity of "Zero Tolerance" policies in the law enforcement world (though probably those policies are handed down to them by the more powerful legislators, instead of being invented by the police... this would be in keeping with the whole theme I'm talking about).
I can't even get the old cashier lady at the local "convenience" store to stop pestering me to join their "preferred customer" program. I've made it abundantly clear that I do not want yet another card to carry around with me, and she has made it abundantly clear that she is required to try to push the card on every customer, and has no authority to decide, on her own, that it's a waste of time with me. (At which point I made it abundantly clear that I would seek some other retailer of "convenience" items).
Let's not even talk about mandatory ID laws: I have a grey beard and wrinkles, there is no possible way I could be under 21, but I have to show my ID to any $6/hour idiot who asks for it, if I want to purchase certain items that are perfectly legal for me to have... even if I showed the same clerk the same ID every day for the past month (it's not like I got younger since last time you sold me a 6-pack!). Even as recently as ten years ago, I didn't run into this sort of non-thinking at every retail establishment.
Wow, sorry about the ranting. I think I've posted more to /. today than I have in the past year... and I'm getting to that age where I sound like a grumpy old man. Think I'll call my Dad, see what he thinks :)
Not that science matters to you, the rapture is coming anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
China's move is largely based on trying to keep demand for oil from spiraling out of control, as the number of cars on Chinese roads increases rapidly. Recall also that fuel economy standards are based on average mileage across all vehicles sold within a given class, and the average Chinese consumer is less likely to afford a big SUV as opposed to a smaller econo-mobile.
My bet is you'll see US manufacturers scale down the size of the cars and motors in order to meet the demands, rather than invest in technological solutions.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The problem is that the environment in the US is becoming hostile to science.
I'm with you there - though "becoming" implies something recent and this trend has been going on for decades. (Trust me. I lived through it.)
The religious extremists, greatly enheartened by a Fundementalist President's second term, are pursuing an agenda of undermining public education to replace science with nonsense like Intelligent Design and "teach the controversy."
But here I call BS.
The downfall of the US educational system predates both Bushes and has nothing to to with religious fundamentalism - unless you chose to label the "progressive" movement fundamentalist.
It it the result of a package of new-age ideologies that have formed into a meme strong enough to infect and unify nearly half the politically-active population of the US - including the entire administrative infrastructure of public school primary and secondary education (along with the professoriate of most of the institutions of "higher" learning, especially in the "liberal arts" part of the curriculum).
Some of the components:
- Look-say reading instruction - turning out functional illiterates.
- "New math", "Rain-forest Math", and other defective math and science teaching practices, turning out functional ilnumerates. (Note that the latter, while neglecting math skills, spends its time on story problems that amount to a political indoctrination course.)
- Bilingual education and "ebonics" - indellibly marking children as underclass via an accent and sabotaging their chance for higher education and employment above the burger-flipping level (at least in the legal economy).
- Self-esteem and "results-based" educational practices replacing grading on performance - removing incentive (actually producing a DISincentive) to learn.
- "Sensitivity" and "diversity" training misused to define gang activity as "black" and "latino" culture - and to require teachers ignore disruptive behavior by young gangsters as they block other kids from what little learning they could otherwise achieve in the dysfunctional institution.
- "Non-violent conflict resolution" that amounts to permitting the bullies to hit first to their heart's content, while drastically punishing anyone who attempts to defend by blocking a blow or hitting back.
- Revisionist history: Ad-Hominem flames of the founders as "Dead White Men" (whose anti-authoritarian principles and teachings can thus be dismissed), characterization of the constitution as "a living document" that can be stretched to allow anything rather than a limit on government, treating historical facts as matters of opinion, utterly failing to cover most of the most important events of the last several centuries, and a list of other misdeeds too long to go into here.
- Teacher retention, promotion, and pay scales based on seniority and tenure (in ELEMENTARY schools!) while totally blocking any consideration of qualification or performance.
- School-of-education curricula that consist entirely of political indoctrination and utterly ignore science, math, biology, and any sience except so-called "social science" (which has less to do with science than "creation science" and "Christian Science".)
And a host of other misdeeds, again too long to post here.
All having the effect of dumbing down the victims of the education system and turning them into a mass of easy-to-control (though not as productive as they might have been) sheep. And virtually all coming out of the ideology of the left.
Yes, there are some religious sects to the right of Joe Stalin who take issue with Darwin and make noise about it at school board meetings - especially when books are being selected. They get all the press - because the press itself is more than happy to turn its spotlight on its own opposition. This lets it blame its own side's destruction of science education on the other side. They've
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I mean what IS science anyway except for some voodoo cooked up by the Big Deity in the Sky to Challenge us. But not too much - can't talk about 'science' related to biology.
Hahahaha - we're ALREADY sending people overseas for medical treatments unavailable here.
you need not hide , AC. look around: most of us are with you on this commenter's wrongheadedness. the mods,however ought to be careful and less biased readers...alas, the mods must be crazy!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
So they can train more scientists, we'll still have more Elvises.
> at least one new subclass of human is emerging than I don't know what is.
Then I humbly submit that you don't know what is.
> Evolution takes time but
But nothing.
Evolution doesn't just "take time"---evolution takes tens of thousands of years (for something with as long a reproductive cycle as humans, and for something as significant as a new subclass of humans).
You're trying to ascribe to evolution things that are pretty clearly social in nature. Aspergers' being more common among tech people may well be no different than hemophilia being more common among European nobility---breeding within a small population allows genetic defects to be expressed more frequently. That doesn't mean they've "evolved" differently---at least, not unless you're using the term in such a broad sense that it loses almost all meaning.
> I think most of us were what we are warts and all before we came here though.
Even if there is a common "what we are"---which is doubtful---isn't the obvious explanation that how we were socialized influences who we socialize with?
Why should kids today go into science and engineering? American corporations are turning their backs on today's scientists and engineers by shipping their jobs offshore, not providing for continuing education, pushing salaries down, etc.
Similar calls to the sciences were made when I was a child. Our government and corporate mouth pieces told us "you are our future", "the future is in engineering", "by studying science and engineering you will help make the world a better places", etc., etc., etc.
Well a number of years later and they haven't fulfilled their end of the promise. There are thousands of out of work engineers and scientists. Jobs keep getting shipped offshore while the corporate mouth pieces make up lies that there are not enough trained people in the US. At the same time you have thousands of peopled with university degree, graduated degrees, and years of experience waving their hands and shouting "hire me! hire me!".
I get the distinct feeling that ALL of this crap about not enough Americans are studying science and engineering is just bull crap so that American companies can have an excuse to go looking outside of the country for cheap engineers, technicians, etc. or so they can import cheap H1-b slave labor from India, etc.
In one china, poor farmers live with their chickens and pigs and ignorantly breed new influenza strains for the world to deal with. In another china, they are executing a global warming nightmare with filthy old coal fired steelmaking thats been outlawed for decades even by republican administrations in the US. In another china, young technologically savvy workers and administrators make out OK in the nascent market economy and expect to drive a car as none of their parents did with gasoline from where? In yet another china, vast and poorly paid labor pools help the nation rack up huge trade surplusses which the government cashes in for infrastructure, housing, office buildings and universities where science for both peaceful and military purposes is carried out. This latter china is of concern in TFA. But all the china's will have to settle accounts as one. Like us, they will run out of gas before they run out of ideas and long before they run out of pride.
I for one, avoid walmart just so I DON'T contribute more that I absolutely have to to the cash flow funding that latter china.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Now having just said that, I do have to admit that a lot of this countries large city school districts are crap and corrupt. That can be fixed by firing the current administrations and breaking the districts up into neighborhood sized units. Sure there will be a couple of years of chaos in places that are real bad like Dallas and L.A., but hell it's that way already.
Comparing American education test scores with those in other countries isn't a very good comparison. Education oportunities are still very limited in most other countries, even European countries.
About 20 years ago, I met a great guy from England, his dad was a Phd and was here doing research. He wasn't stupid by any means and he had decent grades and test scores coming out of their equivalent of High School. But he had no possibility of going on to a college education, the university system in England was so limited that he just could not get in. Here in the states, he would have been easily been accepted to a state university. He was a smart guy, but the upper class - nobles and royalty, their lackies, the truly brilliant forgein imports from old colonies, etc, got the first crack at a post-secondary education, there was no room for anyone else.
Sure a guy with a 110 IQ isn't Einstein or Billy Gates (who never finished college by the way - proving once and for all that bullshit will get you farther than education), but he will be far more productive and a much greater benefit to society if he has 16 years of education than if he had 12 years of education.
Forgein labor and scientist are cheap. Eventually we have to decide if it's better for US, and I am speaking to the State's crowd, or guys like Billy to get their way, and their cheap labor. Increasing Billy Gates wealth may not be in our best interest.
I hope this doesn't conflict with the "Source Awards". My MythTV box is down right now, and I could never decide which to beam into the ole' telly.
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. Here.
Or Google it.
This is too funny to me right now:
evolution vs creation
Democrat vs Republican.
The international contributions of Chinese science have been growing very rapidly. Chinese universities have been expanding enrollments at a 15% annual rate for the past twenty years, except for a short dip 1989 - 1992. Chinese science is moving away from the Soviet academy model and more science is being done in the universities and to a lesser extent in private industry. Widespread IPR violations are a significant discouragement to investment in R&D for Chinese companies.
The Influence of Chinese Science [Zhongguo Kexue de Yingxiangli], edited by Sun Chengquan, Xiao Xiantao. Kexue Chubanshe, Beijing, April 2005. ISBN 7-03-015100-3
The Influence of Chinese Science [Zhongguo Kexuede Yingxianli] is a 380-page study by the Chinese Academy of Science based primarily on the Science Citation Index measuring the influence (citations and citations per paper as a proxy for quality) of Chinese science papers for 1993 - 2003 in various scientific fields. Price: 38 RMB.
Here are my gleanings from the book, which highlights weaknesses as well as the growing strength of Chinese science.
The Science Citation Index charts the rapid rise in Chinese highly cited scientific publications. The average citation rates for Chinese papers appearing in high impact journals is considerably lower than the international average, reflecting a continuing quality lag.
The rate of Chinese patent applications at patent offices in Europe and the U.S. is very low, reflecting difficulty in transforming scientific work into innovative technology.
Much of the best scientific publications by Chinese scientists is done by Chinese at U.S., European or Japanese universities. Many of the top Chinese scientists cited have multiple affiliations such as China, Taiwan; China, U.S.; or even China, Taiwan, U.S.
(Pp. 25 -29) The dominance the Chinese Academy of Science has had over Chinese science is declining as some universities, led by Tsinghua University and Peking University but also by Zhejiang, Xi'an Jiaotong, Chinese S&T, Fudan, Shanghai Jiaotong, Harbin Industrial, Wuhan, and Xiamen universities. Chapters on various scientific fields compare the number of citations of Chinese publications in many subfields.
"Influence" doesn't confine itself to the Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index but also examines many other indices of S&T work such as the Derwent Innovations Index (based on patent filings in many countries), the INSPEC (Information Service for Physics, Electronics and Computing (UK) and Chemical Abstracts.
"Influence" combines analysis of ten year and year-by-year international rankings of individuals and institutions in the SCI and other indices to outline, field by field, where Chinese science stands. (Pp. 30 - 31) Over the period examined, 1993 - 2003, the rate of increase in citations of work by Chinese scientists and engineers in many fields was much higher than for any other country. Chinese contributions to the international literature were most significant in chemistry, physics, materials science and engineering science. Judging by average citations per article in various fields, Chinese science had the greatest relative influence in mathematics and materials science and the least in agriculture and the life sciences.
The proportion of Chinese contributions was least in clinical medicine, molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience, behavioral science, immunology, psychopathology/psychology, and agricultural science. For both China and Russia, the rate of patent applications compared with other countries was significantly less than the rate of citation of scientific articles.
[My take on this: The Science Citation Index, although it is one useful method of measuring achievement in world science, can be misleading if looked at in isolation as a Nature editorial pointed out recently (June 23, 2005). Nature pointed out that the citation index varies by type of content (review articles and the last article on a pro
> as we recognize that homo sapiens is subject to evolutionary pressures
> and its various subpopulations are variously adapted to their environments.
>
> Any leftist with a lick of political sense is now branding me a racist.
> Odd how anti-evolution the left becomes when you discuss apply the
> principles of evolution to the human race.
See, if you actually were applying the principles of evolution to the human race, you might have a cogent argument. As it is, you seem to be misusing the notion of evolution to apply a thin veneer of respectability to your preconceived beliefs.
"Evolution", for something with the long, long reproductive cycle of humans, takes tens of thousands of years to produce significant differences. To get an evolutionary difference in intelligence or learning ability, then, we'd need all of the following to hold:
a) Environmental pressures that select strongly for intelligence/learning on one population.
b) Environmental pressures that select weakly or negatively for intelligence/learning on the other population.
c) Effective continuance of that selective disparity for tens of thousands of years.
If you were truely applying "the principles of evolution", you'd be able to isolate and explain all of those factors. As it is, though, it's not at all clear what type of environment would select for intelligence/learning significantly better than another environment, and it's not clear that such environments could have been maintained over the last 50,000 years. It's also not clear that the answer wouldn't be "sub-Saharan Africans---similar to having vastly higher genetic diversity than the rest of the world---also have both the lowest and the highest adaptations for intelligence/learning, making societal notions of ethnicity useless in this regard.
In other words, if you truly were applying "the principles of evolution", you would come to the conclusion that this is a question we don't have enough information to answer, and one that almost certainly doesn't fall neatly along "racial" lines.
If you're just using "evolution" as a magic incantation to try to justify your predjudices, though, then, yeah, people will call you racist. And they'd be right.
If Bill Gates had his way, here is what he'd want you to learn:
1. Learn computer science and how to program.
2. Learn to work for a dirt cheap wage.
That's business tycoon 101 for you.
I Think it would be interesting to be able to see 25-50 years into the future right now.
/Bible Belt
I think the USA is going to blukenize, i.e. split up. The pressure from political, economic and religious groups is going to fracture your country into 3-5 diffrent nations with in a half century.
And from where I sit, I'm looking forword to it. Not that I wish violance and death on anyone. In fact, I think it might be a non-violent split:
1) West: Oragen, Cali, and possibly washington state.
2)North East: New York, Maine ect.
3)The South
Possibly 4) or 5) Central west, or Cali on it's own.
Anyone else have any split predictions?
Abacha, General Sani Nigeria
Amin, Idi Uganda
Banzer, Colonel Hugo Bolivia
Batista, Fulgencio Cuba
Bolkiah, Sir Hassanal Brunei
Botha, P.W. South Africa
Branco, General Humberto Brazil
Cedras, Raoul Haiti
Cerezo, Vinicio Guatemala
Chiang Kai-Shek Taiwan
Cordova, Roberto Suazo Honduras
Christiani, Alfredo El Salvador
Diem, Ngo DihnVietnam
Doe, General Samuel Liberia
Duvalier, Francois Haiti
Duvalier, Jean Claude Haiti
Fahd bin'Abdul-'Aziz, King Saudi Arabia
Franco, General Francisco Spain
Hitler, Adolf Germany
Hassan II Morocco
Marcos, Ferdinand Philippines
Martinez, General Maximiliano Hernandez El Salvador
Mobutu Sese Seko Zaire
Noriega, General Manuel Panama
Ozal, Turgut Turkey
Pahlevi, Shah Mohammed Reza Iran
Papadopoulos, George Greece
Park Chung Hee South Korea
Pinochet, General Augusto Chile
Pol Pot Cambodia
Rabuka, General Sitiveni Fiji
Montt, General Efrain Rios Guatemala
Salassie, Halie Ethiopia
Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira Portugal
Somoza, Anastasio Jr. Nicaragua
Somoza, Anastasio, Sr. Nicaragua
Smith, Ian Rhodesia
Stroessner, Alfredo Paraguay
Suharto, General Indonesia
Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas Dominican Republic
Videla, General Jorge Rafael Argentina
Zia Ul-Haq, Mohammed Pakistan
Just remember folks, religion is the new Microsoft. And we all know how you feel about Microsoft.
Those ideas come from somewhere. The fact that people see Indians and Pakistanis as convenience store clerks comes from running into them predominantly behind the counter at convenience stores.
The message that I was responding to said, "Most of the Indians and Pakistanis are well-educated. They are affluent and live in posh suburbs. They may not be accepted by the mainstream, but nobody really considers them inferior in any way. The tech companies are full of them." (Emphasis added.)
I'm sorry, but when the predominant view of Indians and Pakistanis are of running 7-11's, then that is the exact opposite of what the previous poster mentioned.
You may call them a "sizable minority", but I never met one until my 3rd year of college (incidently, when I briefly worked at a convenience store). And I'm a Army brat who did not live a sheltered life, moving every 2 years, growing up in California, Washington state, New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, New York, Washington DC, and Germany. Even now, there are very few in the Seattle area, despite all the large tech companies around here.
> Once they become successful innovators, then we have to worry.
Like, say, if technology magazines start saying the world's hottest computer lab is in China?
"Microsoft Research Asia has become a powerhouse of infotech R&D. Far faster than even Microsoft's top brass expected, the Beijing research outpost is influencing the company's global business."
The people who migrated to Britain are very different from the ones who're going to the US or Canada.
Most of the people who went to the UK back in the sixties were driven by just economics.
Any job they got was okay by them. Given the history of racism that the British have, it's no surprise that they got the low end jobs.
The US has it's share of similar migration, but most of the migrants to the US from India (or China) have been through the education system. Naturally, they end up in better jobs.
(BTW, the US is no better at providing "high end" jobs to those millions of mexicans - sorry, hispanics sorry latinos - who slide over the border to California).
> fatherlands of old become crippled with left-wing ideology, mostly from
> the Muslims and the Jews.
Er - then how do you explain Finland, which is less than 2% immigrants, but is one of the most socialist countries in the world? Even the Finnish government's own Ministry of Finance website says "The Government's main aim is to develop the welfare society". (And, before you ask, its GDP is growing quickly and its debt is much lower than ours.)
Face it, dude, "liberal ideology" ain't a foreign influence from "Muslims and Jews"---it's homegrown, through the whole western world. Sorry, but you'll have to find another rationalization for your prejudices.
It's not about the college dropout making $250k per year as a roofer, nor the high school dropout who made it big in radio, nor the right wing religious conservative. It's all about society's worship of money and rewarding thievery as hard work. Take a look at society- everybody seems to be leaving college and realizing that you either need to become an MBA corporate slut or a legal sleeze to make it in this country anymore. Why? Where's my proof? Look at TV- everybody marvels after the lawyer that twists the truth (so much sometimes that we might all believe they sky is plaid if we were told so). Nobody talks about how alot of tech companies (and many non-tech too) are worthless despite the listed stock price because they don't produce anything- no sir, as long as the stock price is high and the IPO is flashy by the VC its buy buy buy! Let's face it, this nation of lawyers and MBAs is what is detroying America- not only in Science, but socially as well.
Is greed. it's the underlying reason for all of the US' problems.
Education system is fucked because hey, as long as people are getting paid, why bother improving it, as long as teachers get their paycheck, and get it increased whenever they want it increased, why fix the educational system?
Why contribute to science and technology? THOSE WASTE SOOO MUCH MONEY! MONEY THAT COULD BE MIIIINE!
Why give to public access television when your tax dollars could go to funding a military that still gets more money and than any other sector when it comes to taxes during peacetime, and even more when there's a war.
Why produce a product for people that's great quality and not get as much money as we want? when we and several other companies can band together to ensure we all make shitty products that break, that way, people keep buying the same shitty product over and over again, and we all can live happy! Also, why should so many people be allowed to work? why should they work at $10 an hour? let's work those fuckers at $6.75 an hour instead and make them do the work of 5 or 6 people! So we can shave some more money off.
Why should I pay 99 cents for a candy bar? I want it for 20 cents! hell, fuck that, I want it for free, and I want more as well!
and so on.
Just a perspective look at what drives greed, and where it's applied. Hell, trying to find minimum wage jobs is getting harder because companies are hiring, but they only want half the workforce at the lowest wages possible, with little or no chance of getting a raise, because they'll be fired or just up and quit, so they can hire more at low wages. The whole fucking retail industry is like this, and get the dumbest of the bunch too, so they dont know when their rights as a worker are being stomped on.
Hell, what's even sadder is when people who are actually educated and are experts in many high up fields cant get a job because they're overqualified, thus, they're a threat to their potential bosses. and as you get higher up in the fields, the less jobs there are available, unless a growing company like, say, google wants you on because your added knowledge could help with a new technology, downside with this is that this kind of job is unstable, and you can only hope to work there for at least 2 or 3 more years before finally, they start laying back when they start to hit their mature point and stop growing, they'll have a lot of baby fat so to speak and will shed it off.
Then it comes back to government greed, where if you wanna be a scientist, most jobs for that are with nasa or most govt (under) funded agencies, then you could be a university professor. But then you cant get to your possible potential, mentally or financially.
The only ways to succeed is go through hurdles and in the end, with some luck, become either a doctor, lawyer, or an inventor, the latter is highly questionable because of the abuse of the patent system, thanks to that lovely factor called GREED.
Then, being a doctor is risky, you work long hours, and eventually, someone will sue you for malpractice because they neglected your orders to stay in bed and take their anti-biotics, because you're some nerd doctor, or they wanted the incision you made to fester so they could sue you for some quick money. greed once again.
Greed seems to be the major foundation behind
And I, for one, welcome our new Communist Chinese overlords...
I am 99.8 percentile smart and about 40% percentile pretty. I'd swap in a heartbeat. Isn't that sad?
But seriously, folks, the sooner all these Chinese graduate students/spies leave the U.S. the better.
I recently graduated with a BS in Computer Science from a state university. I graduated first in my class with numerous awards; awarded best comp sci student junior and senior years. I thought I would have an easy time finding a decent job, but holy fuck! I was shocked at how hard it has been. Most of the companies won't even give me an interview or I get turned down because I don't have enough experience. It's pretty depressing to have put all that work and effort into a degree and not being able to find a job. At this point i'm willing to relocate for a decent job (40k+benefits). If any slashdotters want to help me out :) my email is jds424@gmail.com.
When I read that headline at first it looked like "USA to Pass Science CLOWN to China". Unfortunately the article wasnt as interesting as I expected..
I couldn't think of a sig.
Japan rules the world...
oh wait, they don't?
But I thought someone once said...
Apu owns the store. Same reason you used to see a lot of Indians running motels -- buying a business is a way to immigrate. Entrepreneurial types.
Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill Yu the Science Guy!
Michael jackson's finger in his anus.
I was a typical smart kid, and entered an Honors College at a big state university after graduation. There, I made a lot of friends who were also smart people. It is now 12 years later. Virtually all of my friends from that era are successful, with good jobs, husbands/wives, houses, kids, etc. I am a post-doctoral researcher, slogging along on a $26000 per year stipend in the world's second-most-expensive place to live. I have no savings, uncertain job prospects, a 60h/week job, and an effective hourly wage that barely exceeds that of my janitor brother. I am single, in large part due to the fact that I have no money and no time outside of the lab to meet women (and there are sure as heck none in it). Most of my friends from graduate school are also single for the same reason. Simply put, there is little incentive for bright Americans to become scientists right now. A career in business, law, or medicine is both more lucrative and more stable, and puts you in the real world making money a lot sooner. By the time I finally get my first 'real' job, most of my friends with BS engineering degrees will be making about the same as I am, without having to have slaved away for peanuts for a decade as a grad student and post-doc. They will have cars, homes, savings, and a family. I will be a ground zero. Go figure.
It is cheap-wages eating at our science. Science and education CANNOT be our comparative advantage. Think about it. The laws of physics are the same in Asia, but the labor rates 1/2 to 1/7. There is no way we can be 7-times more productive to break even. We are just humans, like them. The cost of an educated brain is simpler cheaper there.
Table-ized A.I.
I agreee and disagree. Physical education is education. Learning a sport takes the same process as learning a new programming language for instane. Both that practice, committment, and creativity to be sucessful at. If you can be good at sports, then you can be good at the classroom too (normalizing both with your natural abilities of course). Sports help train your body of which your mind is part of; they can influence how well you think as well as how creative you are.
I went to a public school, and yes there were lots of "dumb jocks" and "geeky nerds." However, there were a lot of smart jocks and sporting geeks too. It never seemed to me as though my teachers were tried to segergate the jocks from the geeks.
I myself started high school as a stereotypical geek. I loved science fiction, science, computers and programming (before WorldWideWeb was written). However, I was also physically short, overweight, sucked at sports, and the butt of lots of jokes. However deciding to change that, I became a student athletic trainer and joined the wrestling team. Today I still prepare for a submission grappling tournament as I code my Google Summer-of-Code project. And I'm not alone; the student with the best GPA in my entire class was a track star and played baseball, for example. Geeks can be and often are jocks too.
I found that the stereotypical nerds are often as narrow minded as stereotypical jocks are about the social order of things. It is easier to obsess about the small number of things you're currently good at rather than improve the thinks you are bad at. It isn't anyone's fault, that's just the way it is. So the challenge of life is to do the things you are bad at. You are what you make of yourself.
That's probably the most important lesson I took from high school, and it is easy to forget. Once you know your limitations and work on extending them then almost nothing can stop you (delay yes, stop no).
the indians and pakistanis living in britain are of many categories, including the uneducated ones that setteled in britain more than 60 years back. In USA most South asians who came were skilled computer/electronics workers, otherwise they would not have got the visa. Now only if USA had ruled india instead of britain, things would be different
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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Their government represses religion instead of letting religion run everything thinly veiled by the supposed 'separation of church and state'.
... not becuase 'they tried to kill my daddy!'
Their government doesnt force the fables of creationism on kids during SCIENCE classes.
Their government doesnt tell their own scientists to go back and try again when evidence is found supporting the idea of global warming.
Their government doesnt force kids in some schools to recite the lord's prayer regardless of what religion (or lack thereof) they come from.
Their government invades / annexes other countries because of historical ties, to repress sepratism of semi-autonomous regions
Sure, there's a problem here and there with how China does things too, but there's no wonder why they are poised to take over.
Their government owns SO MUCH american debt, they just need to threaten to dump a little of it to send the US dollar plummetting. hmmm wonder why they just de-linked the value of their money from the US dollar peg?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
First of all all that talk in the paper about north-south trade strikes me as somewhat racist. It is also misleading because China isn't in the southen hemisphere.
The paper in general sees engineering and science as the only factors effecting the US's global status. That is a very narrow point of view and makes the authery seems like he's trying to fit the situation to a conclusion rather then finding the conclusion from studying the situation. There are many more factors effecting the well being of the economy in the United States. For example the paper fails to mention that globally the US dominates cultural exports. Sure bollywood makes more films but only Hollywood films get watched all over the world. US fast food chains are the only ones that are truly global. In TV BBC world is the only non-american channel I can think of that you might expect to find anywhere you might go holidaying in the world. On the other hand I am sure you can find either MTV or MTV like music video channels all over the globe.
The evolution/creationism debate is a wonderful tool in a science class - for teaching what science is and is not. This is far more important than spending another twenty minutes teaching "facts". You can always look those up. Science is a good tool for answering a very limited set of questions. It is blind to all others, particularly the important ones.
If that is not an argument for environment over heredity, I don't know what is.
Evolution doesn't only work on a genetic level, it works on a societal level as well. Social evolution is one of the forces of natural selection, and it is by no means governed purely by genetics.
Where do you think we'd be without the oppression of governments and the counterrevolutions causing reformations and enlightenments? The pressure on groups to succeed drives them to outpace the oppressors technologically or ideologically.
The *only* reason, as far as I can tell, that homo sapiens is so much farther advanced technologically than other intelligent species is that we fiercly self-predate. Dolphins and monkeys have a social pecking order, but they generally don't torture, ethnically cleanse, or wage war on each other. The overwhelming urge for humans to mistreat other humans drives our evolution. Wars, persecutions, genocide, petty crime, and murders all force the general population to evolve to counter these threats.
Once a species reaches the point where they have no natural predators, they cease to evolve since there's no selection pressure, or very little. By hunting our own kind, we've managed to drive ourselves far into the technological age. I think that deep down we know it's true, hence the love of individualism, capitalism, and even law and justice.
Whether our natural tendancy to self inflicted evolution is a "good" thing or not is open to debate. I'm sure we'd be *happier* swinging through trees or swimming in the ocean.
they would start at $30,000 per year as none of their experience counts a whit against the typical district pay-scale and there are no exceptions.
As long as the US (and EU) continue to send their R&D departments to Asian countries and the USSR there will be a decline in science and technology development and innovation here.
Simply put: it no longer makes sense to go to university to learn hard science as you'll end up in an unemployment line or running a shift in a factory producing something that can't yet be cheaply imported from China or Zimbadwe (think mostly of highly perishable goods or very large heavy things).
So why go to the trouble? Study "social sciences" instead and get an immediate job with some government thinktank or as a "counselor" somewhere.
The REAL problem is that our society does not LIKE smart people, it prefers jocks.
It starts in grade school with the teasing of the "smart kid" and progresses through High School where large football players with brains the size of walnuts play whack-a-mole with kids half their size and three times their intellect.
When we become adults are we, defined as popular society, more interested in learning about the latest advance in Physics or what Brittney Spears had for breakfest?
This is all too simple to explain, so, everyone, grab your bell distribution curve. Look, some people's minds can only go so far. Also, teachers are subject to this rule, and you're also trained by the average teacher, who is, well, AVERAGE, so you can't expect anything but average skills from that.
It is the bell curve, people. Take a distribution of people, and say, look at all of the slashdotters out there. You're all probably at least 1/400 distribution, with a few 1/2000 out there. You're just not "them." If you look at your average high school, then you get a pretty solid sample. It's all average people. They won't hold you up on high because of your intellect. They will never be there. They live in the "lower towns" of intellect. They repeat a phrase they liked a little too much; synthesize those thoughts a little too slowly if at all. They are a carnival barker's dream. They will always be a little too fascinated with explosions in Michael Bay movies, booty, and cars (things that you can shut out and control via your mind if you really want to). For a lot of them that is about as good as it gets. How could they see beyond that? Do you think most of humanity can see beyond the clouds in their mind's eye?
So why are they anti-intellectuals? Because that makes them take back the power. If you can't controll it? Destroy it. That is dominance 101 from the stones and bones era. It will always be that way. If they recognize that you are smarter than them, you're a liability to their dominance, and should be belittled if not outright attacked. This is as old as it comes. This is just as common with conversations as it is with kalashnikovs.
What you will all have to learn is that you have been given an invaluable gift, and to not resent your fellow man by living in their world.
YES I SAID IT. You have to face that you're living in their world. You're just an uncommon ofshoot of biodiversity. You could have been an American Gladiators studio audience member too. You just got lucky in one of the dice rolls.
Oh, and screw fucking China. The bell curve hits just as strong there as anywhere else. They're not special. NO ONE IS. BTW, on a societal level, no one is that fucking smart. I don't care if they can use an abacus faster than us. Who gives a shiat?!? Burt Rutan built a spaceship in an airplane hanger with a couple mil and a few engineers. When China starts cranking out the advances that make me gasp in wonder, then I'll worry.
But let's be honest:
China has made so many cool advances in absolutely NOTHING, that I am having a tough time holding up this blank NYC phone book of scientific achievements.
"Asians good at math? You don't say? Why, that will surely be the ruination of our societay!"
Look, intelligence just pops up, and it is found usually everywhere, under a bell curve. If China wants to spend all their time making engineers, then go ahead. They'll have a few good engineers based on population, and an absolute load of useless, mediocre, should-never-have-been-an-engineer types.
Then the Chinese can really hunker down and engineer some really excellent NOTHING.
I always liked the way that conversation goes at parties. If there's a follow-up question, it's always "What kind?" and occasionally incredulous. One learns to say "algebra" and change the subject.
Better educated primary school teachers are impossible until teaching becomes a legitimate career option for people with postgraduate degrees, or the public university baccalaureate means more. An Ivy League undergrad course is a PhD qualifying exam sequence at ordinary schools. The exposure to abstract mathematics doesn't reach significance--much less unification--with a BS in math ed. This becomes a chicken-or-egg problem as administrative culture more or less asks us not to "cover too much."
That horrible question, when will I ever use this?, becomes a sort of grim reality. The demeanor attractive to the job market is perpendicular to, if not opposite from, what one develops as a scientist. "Credentialing" is absolutely the right word for the university's function, unfortunate as that is. Our economy wants telephone sanitizers. We can outsource engineering.
Even engineers are given a sterile, utilitarian view of the landscape. This is math, we say: increasingly bigger calculus problems. We're squandering our geeks.
I don't think bad teachers are to blame. Boring, maybe, but not resentful. Our curriculum asks little of students, and they fail to develop a work ethic. Once things are less intuitive, it's easier to move sideways. Bright girls in particular seem to diversify to other subjects and find praise there.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
The size of China's population is irrelevant. Statistically speaking, yes, there may be more bright people born, but political factors take a much more prominent role. Take 16th century Venice, for example. With 200,000 citizens, it had a technological advantage and military parity with the Ottoman Empire, which had 20 million residents and thousands of times more landmass. The reasons? The tradition of free & rational inquiry, some free market mechanisms, and substantially more individual liberty. The point is, firstly that population size doesnt matter, and secondly, that, as long as the US encourages free thought more than China, it will always come out on top. It is no coincidence that revolutionary R&D (microprocessors, telephones, nuclear power) have come from the West, while evolutionary R&D (the latest in motherboard designs) comes from the East.
I teach in an engineering department in a fairly good european university.
We had a meeting recently where the senior members of the department discussed project work and instructions to students. Their concern was that a pattern was emerging along these lines...
Domestic students would or would not do what they were told by the deadline. They may or may not introduce some ideas of their own in doing this.
European students would tend to deliver but had a tendency to deliver what they wanted deliver rather than what was discussed, this would vary a bit as to whether it was a good thing (innovative, neat ideas, rejecting what on balance became bad advice) or a bad thing (willfully ignoring good advice) depending.
Japanese students tend never to say no, but would sometimes reappear at an advanced point in the project and confess they were stuck. Sometimes this would be a bit too late to do much about it. They'd normally get by though, just on the basis that up until that point they'd have had a damn good go at attacking the problem and there was often on close examination some stuff there that could be re-worked or otherwise given prominence to attract the credit it deserved.
Chinese students, basically, would never so no and always deliver exactly what was requested, even if they staggered in looking like death warmed up.
The bulk of the meeting was discussing how we could get our overseas students to loosen up a little and be more proactive. Its a fine balance obviously recognising the needs of individuals but not being discriminatory. But as one Prof quipped, we could probably kill a Chinese student by giving them an insoluable problem to work on whereas a domestic student would probably turn up and call us names (rightly). Be careful with the off-hand suggestions was the message, be clear about what the goals are and what are side issues. This should help all the above in different ways.
Does this translate into anything nationally? Not sure, but it might be relevant if it says something universal about mentality. Chinese engineers certainly have the work ethic, put it that way.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Doc Brown: "Unbelievable that this little piece of junk could be such a big problem. No wonder this circuit failed, it says made in Japan."
Marty: "What do you mean Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan."
Doc Brown: "Unbelievable"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future
Which reminds me, I saw a real delorean going down the street this past week. Kind of a neat little car - definitely something that very few people have.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Much of the EU really is socialist with Germany coming to mind in particular, featuring strong central government planning of the economy and extensive social safety nets, workers' unions with real power truly representing their membership, and so on.
Uhm, what central planning of the economy???????. Your assumption is more or less what I meant, I think. There is no centrally planned economy in the EU. In fact it's one of the rules of the EU to have free markets. If you're talking about the agricultural subsidies, then I would point out The US' farm subsidies in response. It has nothing to do with centrally planned economies.
Shit, and there I hoped to make a point.
...wish I had mod points to acknowledge it.
Im so tired of these posts that make anything change. Americans, africans, europeans, asians... whatever. Lets get one thing straight. The human race should be wiped out. We dont diserve to live on earth. Pleace good god, if there is any. Destroy us all and give earth to the animals.
is more interesting and if done correctly more valuable. Though I admit, asking people how they KNOW the world is flat is a rather fun question. A clever person can list a number personal observations rather than "I have seen the pictures" and "I learned it from someone else". I think many people on the evolution side in fact have a few assumptions they need to acknowledge, as well. I am a practicing scientist myself and know its limitations. It can tell us about the natural world but it can never answer ethical questions. It can only tell us what is true, not what is right. And even to the extent it can help us understand the truth, it is limited by its own unprovable assumptions - some of which very flatly contradict religious beliefs. Chief among these is that the laws of the universe are consistent - if Bob runs an experiment in America on Tuesday, and Tomoko runs the same experiment in Japan on Thursday, the results should be the same. If they differ, the two scientists will immediately begin to tackle what they did wrong in setting up the experiment. Both take it as a granted fact that the laws underlying their experiments did not change. This is unprovable and in direct contradiction to many religious beliefs concerning miracles. I don't want to attack science too strongly (it is my life, you know) but I do feel it is dishonest for scientists to pretend that their is no element of faith in their own methodology. At root, everything contains an unproven assumption or two.
A generalisation I realise, but the difference is there... China supports their hackers- instils a sense of public pride, and influences their skills to the betterment of their community.
In the "West", hackers are merely seen as a threat to governmental regulation... And demonised.
It's not that suprising China is doing so well in this new environment. Some of their new technology is very innovative - hacker style.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
The saddest thing of all is that science and technology have now become as competitive as any sport, if not more so because people's lives are on the line. Whatever happened to learning for understanding of the world around us and advancing it for our own intellectual stimulation? If we all share what we know, we
Oh wait it's always been like this. Thought I was on to something....
Anyway China could be the death of us all without the fastest computers. Not to make like of recent technological advancements. Rome was able to be conquered by barbarians , albeit exceptionally motivated and well led ones.
Oh, and screw fucking China. The bell curve hits just as strong there as anywhere else. They're not special. NO ONE IS.
If the Chinese have the same distribution, they have 3 to 4 times as many smart people in absolute numbers (I don't know the exact demographics offhand).
Of course that does not account for the quality of the school system, a good system may help more of the smart people to realize their potential.
This said, it seems to me that Asians are not great innovators, but very good at improving existing concepts. So when a technology matures and does not change much anymore, they will catch up. Consider cars for instance:
When Japanese cars showed up in the European market in the 70s, they were considered inferior in quality and could compete only on price. Today, they are in general equal to European cars in quality. Toyota seems to do even better, they are leaders in reliability and in hybrid engines.
C - the footgun of programming languages
This is suppost to be a surprise to someone? Our jobs have been outsourced for a very long time now.
Well put Ungrounded Lightning (62228)! It's nice to see that someone on this forum knows something about education before they post.
Having studied these issues, I can agree almost entirely with the poster above, especially on the following: "new math" and other educational philosophies that promote form over content, self-esteem in educational philosophy (which has been time and again proven in studies to be a false "truth" in education--just look at China!), teacher retention/promotion, the entire curriculum development process (which is geared toward selling books, not publishing good content, and its contents are often somewhat politically determined).
Another big factors that he excluded, but is highly relevant: The decline of extremely capable people willing to go into the teaching profession. Like it or not, women's 'liberalization' has vastly decreased the number of able-minded folks going into the teaching profession, much to its detriment. Teaching is a dead end career with practically no professional development.
For a good book on the subject of educational philosophy and why the current regime is not succeeding, pick up E.D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy. He doesn't get to a lot of the cultural problems, but he certainly takes on the problems with a lot of the now-dominant educational philosophies that are ruining public education.
USA lost its science lead many decades ago. The smartest people come from Europe and Asia and those parts of the world also has a much more high tech industry than the US. But the American empire is not built on science, it is built on culture and that is the area in which the US is and will remain to be unchallenged. American movies, sitcoms, series, big macs etc. Because of the huge cultural dominance, the US will remain the #1 superpower for the forseable future.
(Especially if they manage to get rid of idiots like Bush that pisses the rest of the world of.)
Have we been successfully attacked since 911??
How about, how long between the first WTC attack and the second?
Was that due to Bush's National Security policy?
If so, please explain..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The ideal, historically, in America is that the power does not come from the top, but from the bottom -- the people. That the government is a servant of the people, not their ruler. In this way, it has been thought, America could avoid the pitfalls of those former world hegemonies -- you might be able to knock over a government, but not a people.
Unfortunately, almost no one, it seems, thinks this way anymore. And that will be our downfall.
We are allowing our government to rule us rather than serve us. The situation will revert to the old way, and we'll be doomed.
Please prove me wrong. Anyone. I'm begging.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
this person is from. Odds are this person only has the freedom to spew such foolishness precisely because we have kept the jack-booted thugs and communist horrors from the doors (not to mention that without our R&D, the internet would probably still be years away and they wouldn't have a format to gripe in, either). People like these are one step short of worthless precisely because they miss the forest for the trees, and do so willfully. People who cannot understand that choosing the lesser evil is better than sticking your head in the sand and whining about what everyone else does can serve little purpose in the real world. For example, did we support rotten dictators in Chile, Iraq, and Pakistan? Yep. Were the alternatives better? Nope. You don't escape moral responsibility by ignoring the problem.
I am sick of listening to everyone else's whining about our driving. Why don't we let them take the wheel.
One overlooked factor in all this is how the USA's tax cut fever, starting with Prop 13 in California, has sapped our education system.
They are such things as the reality of the universe, the validity of deductive and inductive reasoning, and the consistency of physical law throughout the universe. It is just like geometry back in high school. You have to assume something to start with before you can demonstrate anything else. The same holds true in logic and even basic mathematics (there is an unprovable assumption underlying the statement 2+2=4). The only difference I see is that there is a lot more evidence that the well-ordering/induction axiom, Euclid's postulates, and the foundational assumptions of science are true than the assumption that an all-powerful and high irrational being runs the universe.
closed. Pinochet is accused of something along the lines of 20,000 deaths at the high end. Compare that to tens of millions killed by communism in USSR and China, and millions in Vietnam and N. Korea (where many are still dying today, and many more are in the gulags). How much "lesser" do you need than two orders of magnitude?
F.Y.I: The PRC has ratified the Kyoto protocol, whereas the U.S. has not. China is building a lot of nuclear power; the U.S. is working on getting more oil.
When (if) China becomes the worlds largest polluter, your comment will have merit. Until then, let's just remember which country is responsible for most of the greenhouse gases on our planet.
Here is another interesting read http://www.zdnetindia.com/news/features/stories/ns l,125682.html
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Well americans most likely didn't rate it funny, but as
it is quite in vogue to "hate america" u got to remember
the size of your audience here on slashdot .
We pay more for education than ANY country in the world,
but we are NO WHERE near the top on results per dollar spent .
The US has become the great harlot of the world whoring itself
to lowest bidder for any manufacturing and any worker to be
imported or work to be exported .
The fall of the US is WELL under way, and the greed of the
corporate whores is the foundation of this collapse .
China learned to win u can crush them with simple economics .
Sit back and watch the show, southern hemisphere is sounding nice .
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
yeah id agree with a lot of the comments on here regarding americas attitude to science. it seems you guys are going backwords, as opposed to embracing science and moving away from religion. this is only how it looks to me from waaaaaay accross the pond. so maybe im wrong. In this country (UK), people are becoming more and more aware of science and the world in general. Over there you seem to be putting up walls around your country and going back into the dark ages. but like i said, this is only how it seems to me
1. Good technical solutions to the nuclear waste problem have existed since the 1970's. Nuclear waste consists of highly radioactive isotopes with half-lives less than 90 years, which produce 99% of the radioactivity, and less radioactive isotopes with half-lives more than 70,000 years.
We can separate the two types of isotopes. We store the highly radioactive ones for the 300 years or so that's necessary for their radioativity to fall to background levels, and we reprocess the long half life components. Reprocessing can be done in a breeder reactor or in a subcritical reactor activated by a particle beam.
2. None of the waste can be used to build nuclear weapons without extensive processing. The highly radioactive light elements that we need to storeare useless for this purpose even with reprocessing.
3. Modern nuclear plants, like the pebble bed design, cannot melt down. If you're worried about meltdowns, you should be a strong advocate of replacing the US's aging plants with modern nuclear power plants.
4. Yes, but per megawatt of power, coal plants emit more radioactivity than nuclear plants due to the presence of trace amounts of radioactive materials present in coal and the immense amount you have to burn to produce a megawatt of power.
5. False, as explained in another post above.
Be specific please. I'm really quite interested in the list of freedoms that we've lost lately. Simply shouting "The Patriot Act" won't cut it either. Be specific and also highlight how we had those freedoms beforehand.
(I'll start by noting that things like library records were already subpoenable in civil lawsuits.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Plus many of the ministers have scitech educations too. In the last century only Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover had scitech educations.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
eom.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
See also John Taylor Gatto's related writings on-line:t m ... The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn and it isn't supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason's words, "the control of human behavior.""
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.h
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
U.S.: have ideas, get fired.
Asia: have ideas, get promoted.
The u.s. culture is extremely defensive nowadays. Managers fight for fewer and fewer opportunities, seeing any growth in their subordinates as a threat. American employees are pigeonholed into specific tasks. Their companies are literally at war with themselves.
Asian companies are in a dramatic offense position. Their employees are allowed to do whatever they want without being viewed as threats. An asian EE one day can be a software engineer the next day and a rocket engine designer the next day.
Grandparent has no concept of history, parent has it right on. Empires do not fall due to war, they rot from the inside. Yes, I do believe that the US empire will fall, and quite soon (10-25 years). The politics and legal functions are rotten to the core. Just sayin'...
Mind you, you'd be a fool to think that the Chinease government would be any better. Perhaps the 21st century will be "survival of the corruptest"?
Yes, and we all know just how blackpowder is NOTHING.
This sounds like a what have you done for me lately speech.
These Indians may not be poor, but they certainly do the "shit work" mentioned in the great-grandparent message. Of course, "shit work" is a relative term to each society. But in America, working career-long in a convenience store is generally considered shit. I don't care if they actually own the store or not.
I agree to some degree, however, if we were to find that the laws of our universe were changing, or that the there were alternate universes with different laws, we would immediately assume that there were new, invariate meta-laws underlying these observations. Hence, we have not challenged our assumption. There is serious research into whether our physical constants are changing with time (ie, c, g, etc). Also, religious often enumerate and acknowledge their assumptions. They are just silly.
If that he was 'moderate' I would hate to image what you consider leftist. Of course, we didn't choose Pinochet or even have a direct hand in the coup (we aided the campaign and Allende and encouraged the coup). It did not take us long to distance ourselves from Pinochet, either, so claims that we 'supported' him are rather vapid. We had an openly hostile policy towards him after just a few years and were putting pressure on him almost immediately. We had rolled the dice and gotten someone just as bad as had been removed. In the end, Korea was called due to rain, Chile was a bloody draw, Vietnam was a loss, but we won the war.
respectively were 1: Communism 2: Theocracy 3: Theocracy I don't think I need to rationalize much further. You are right, we should be doing more in Africa. So should all of the other advanced nations. I full support gutting all social welfare programs here and sending ALL that cash to the third world.
what you are saying, you would bid up the companies that subscribe to your beliefs or start one that does.
Is there a God? What is right and what is wrong? What is love? What is beauty? What is justice? What is valuble? What moral obligations do I have to others? What moral obligations can I enforce upon others? Who should decide?
I agree to some degree, however, if we were to find that the laws of our universe were changing, or that the there were alternate universes with different laws, we would immediately assume that there were new, invariate meta-laws underlying these observations. Hence, we have not challenged our assumption.
No, once we realized our current laws did not apply, we'd start looking for new patterns... hoping to increase our understanding. You're muddling the definition of "assumption" -- looking for reliable patterns that *may* exist in the observations we can make is not the same as assuming the patterns are there. For example, plenty of people are still searching for that elusive "theory of everything". They still haven't found it. We don't know it exists. Where's the assumption in looking for it? Scientists don't simply post the new law and say "trust us... someday we may find some support for this".
Our current physical "laws" are only called laws because they were patterns that were observed again and again, and have been reliably recreated and fulfilled predictions as expected.
If you applied the religious type of assumption to the scientific world... it'd be like if Einstein announced his theory of relativity as E=M^2C, and everyone respected him so much that no one checked his math but based all kinds of other work on this formula. And when experiments failed and although all evidence suggested that Einstein had been off, they insisted that doubting the formula was just a lack of faith, and that if your heart was really in it your experiment would have succeeded.
Obviously, I'm talking about the ideal state of science. In real life, some scientists fabricate evidence, some make mistakes.. but when an accepted finding is clearly shown to be unreproduceable or fabricated, no one wants to be left still supporting it... unlike Christianity, for instance, with "truths" that are easily proven false and contradictory by anyone with an 8th grade education, but friggin' 85% of Americans still identify as Christians, and are proud of it. By comparison BTW (sort of off-topic, but it boggles my mind...), only 78% of Israelis identify as Jewish.
Sorry if I'm ranting; this stuff seems so obvious to me that I keep feeling like I'm living in some kind of funhouse. Frankly, I understand why serious fundamentalists feel threatened by science. God can coexist with science, but not as a surety, only as a "this is what I *choose* to believe about the questions science cannot answer". That's utterly unacceptable if you are preaching that every word in the Bible is pure fact. Faith has to trump facts if this kind of believe is going to survive.
Let's take a really simple observation, and list a few assumptions a scientist would make.
Observation: I held the pen. I let go. It fell.
Assumptions:
1: I exist
2: The pen exists
3: I can trust my senses
4: There is a natural explanation for why the pen fell.
5: If the experiment were repeated, the same observation would result.
Now, I think we agree that these are all pretty simple assumptions, but science does not test them. It simple asserts them.
Aren't markets wonderful. It's like voting, without coercion!
and hence, look at shareholder resolutions. Most people who own shares only have mutual funds that vote against their shareholders best interests.
We need transparency and accountability.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You may never see this, but seriously, if I write the word "like", what does that mean to you? I mean, if you were to define it in the context I used it? Because, to me, it means "an example is".
Regardless, I have plenty of concept of history. From one post I wrote, you seem to have determined how much I know about this topic, hmm? I suppose I shouldn't expect more form this cesspool, but alas, I come back like an abused wife.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Ok, it was an example. A wrong example and you were called on it. What's the problem? Yeah, agreed, the banter here can be a bit cesspool-like, however if you post something incorrect, someone will inevitably point that out. One of the best things on the net if you ask me. You just gotta understand that most of the folk around here aren't caapable of doing that in a polite manner! Apologies for the way I put it myself, it's hard to rise above the prevailing attitude here ;-)
From one post I wrote, you seem to have determined how much I know about this topic, hmm?
Yup, welcome to the web. You are still wrong IMHO, empires tend to fall gradually, through a period of decay. Can't think of any examples of your scenario, however there are undoubtedly some, I'm not claiming an all-encompassing knowledge of history myself! :-)
The US and the Western educational systems are making themselves irrelevant and useless by being overly influenced by child psychologists.
Students who perform badly in school are no longer failed because child psychology pronounces that, if failed, a child's morale and self-confidence is doomed forever. So undeserving students are allowed to clear exams and tests. The educationists now believe that you shouldn't even use words like failure in school.
This results in good performers not getting the credit they deserve which will, over a course of time, discourage them from trying to excel.
Children should be taught the value of working hard, about coping with failure, about getting up and having a go again, about not quitting. Instead we teach the kids that they can get away without work. There is a lot of wisdom in the old saying "No pain, No gain".
The situation is gotten so bad that educationists favour removing the whole examination system altogether - so that students do not have to cope with the "stress" or risk "failure"! Also, to make the situation worse, the education system is dumbed down to meet the standards of the lowest common denominator! This thinking is so obtuse, its unbelievable!
If this wasn't enough, we have a whole range of terms for new fangled learning disorders - most of these so-called disorders can be explained as lack of discipline, and lack of adequate motivation to learn. This has been discussed on Slashdot before, so there is no point in rehashing anything here.
So yes, if the education system in the US is to be improved, the educationists will have to get real. The world is hard, it rewards the performers and punishes the rest. If the education system does not reflect this cold reality in some way, it is doomed to fail the people it is trying to help.