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The Decline of Science and Technology in America
puke76 writes "There's a good article over on the BBC about the decline of science and technology in the U.S.. Vint Cerf and others are going on record to voice their concerns about the current administrations recipe for 'irrelevance and decline.' Scientists are increasingly concerned about the White House's pandering to the religious right at science's expense. From the article: 'radically we have moved away from regulation based on professional analysis of scientific data ...to regulation controlled by the White House and driven by political considerations.'"
There's a saying that I hear a lot of religious people say: "You reap what you sow". Ironic then that in this case America gets precisely what it sows. You teach kids that ID is science and you get crappy scientists. You cut the percentage of GDP spent on RND and you get less nobel prize winners. You ignore the science of economics and you end up with a huge current account deficit which will take a decade to repay. You ignore the *fact* that human produced carbon dioxide is warming the earth and you wreck your environment just in time for your grandchildren.
America is at a cross-roads of sorts. It can choose to be the The Christian Republic of America or the United States of America. It seems as time goes on these options are becoming more and more mutually exclusive. The religious fanatics are intent on replacing the textbook with the Bible. The atheist fanatics (yes they do exist) are intent on removing any shred of religion from public life.
The next fifty years are going to be interesting. Will the US continue to train world class scientists and be a home for the creative? Or will the US sink in to irrevelence through placing religious dogma before pragmatism.
The condom policy in Africa makes me think the latter rather than the former.
Simon.
The sad thing is many of these christian fanatics are uneducated, Rush Limbaugh/ Bill O'Reilly products (sculpted zombies) who's life doesn't stray further than Wal-Mart.
Church........[WALL].........State Not a difficult concept.
I think this is a key point. And not just public support for science and government funding, but the motivation of young people going into the field is critically important to whether or not scientific effort actually makes a difference in the real world. Are there real world problems (like the problems that led to development of
radar and computing in WWII, or the needs of cold war espionage and besting the Soviets post-Sputnik) that captivate people's attention? If the critical needs are there, that ensures both public support, government funding, and highly motivated researchers bringing real advances.
And we do have critical needs for R&D work right now - renewable energy probably most critical. Developing things further in space is a challenge that needs our best efforts now too. But our government and media, and even places reflective of geek opinion like slashdot, spend a lot of effort downplaying the seriousness of problems like oil depletion and
global warming. People can't be motivated to do anything about it if most of the country thinks it's not really a problem at all.
Energy: time to change the picture.
First off it's easy to decline when you're the world leader to begin with. Unfortunately in an age where the Internet is taking over, and unlimited possibilities for learning present themselves, the protectionists in the Bush administration are having their way with Americans. What kind of an insane world leader would suggest that we have to fight religious extremists, and then in the next breath insists that he supports Christian ideology being taught in the 21st Century science classroom?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Corporations are more to blame for the decline of science than the government. Most industrial development is ultimately driven by companies looking to make money on new technologies. Lately, most companies have been gutting research budgets in favor of more short term profits (ie. HP). Look at most job postings, how many both require an advanced degree and are willing to pay enough to hire someone? Most companies aren't interested. Until corporate America can look past next quarter's numbers, R&D will not really exist in the U.S. anymore.
Frankly I don't know what to think. All I know about science and Bush is the decision regarding stem cell research. But you can't possibly say science and technology is declining... after all, we constantly hear about new inventions in technology, new processor architectures, etc, etc.
Now, if you mean a RELATIVE decline of science and technology comparing with other countries, well that's a very different story.
No, I didn't read TFA, sorry...
As a red-blooded American, the only way I'll believe in evolution is if it's in line with the truth...
The cold, hard, undeniable truth about evolution is:
APES EVOLVED FROM HUMANS!
Isn't it obvious?
Laws are for people with no friends.
That just opened my email reader and created an empty file called creationism.
and this just in:
Galelao Persicuted in America for saying the world is round !
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
They're just pandering to whoever will get them the most votes. Thats what they've always done.
We've got to get out. While there's still somewhere to go. America has sent us a clear message, that it doesnt want intellectual thought over religist thought.
Republicans, stop covering for your right wing nutjobs, and same goes for democrats and left wing crazies. Its making the country a cesspool.
It's been a while since Slashdot had an article bashing Bush that included religion and science. Nice to know the bias is still strong.
Yet Americans continue to think that they are automatically number one in everything. The man on the street still believes that we Americans are the smartest, strongest, and most capable people in the world. Mostly that's a delusion supported by ignorance, as the typical American knows very little about what's going on in the world outside of the US.
Certainly any American is capable of being the best, and is more likely to acheive that given good opportunities and education, and a culture that values whatever endeavor they choose. For science and technology, that's just not valued much by our culture. Americans like entertainment and instant gratification, and think the more of that they have the better they will be.
I fear for our future.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Information sharing is also going downhill with a lot of out-of-country people refusing to attend (or being refused entry visas) conferences which are one of the major ways that scientists share information through the world.
I'll attend conferences in Canada, France, Spain, etc.... but I'll be damned if I'm going to the US
As I read the constitution the government is 1. only supposed to do things that the constitution explicitly states it is supposed to do and 2. is supposed to encourage useful invention with the patent system.
The article states:
I don't know what sort of warped and unrealistic idea of how politics work would cause a person to be surprised by this.
In summary, nobody likes how the government spends money. Only a person suffering brain damage would imagine that giving them more would improve the situation.
-Peter
PS: Poo poo on the person who wrote this article, and on G.W. Bush. And Mrs. Cartman.
-P
click a few buttons and yous got alls ya needs. Who needs larning when ya got...
oh, wait porn!!!
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
is now accomplished by outsourcing engineering to India and manufacturing to China. IF the trend continues we'll end up a nation of international brokers and their support laborers (auto mechanics, maids, cooks, home repair, etc).
Of course such trends never continue indefinitely - it's just a leveling of inequalities left over from the WWII and cold war days. The US benefitted from an immigrant brain source once (Einstein, Von Braun, Tesla) - it could easily flow the other way if conditions here become too hostile or the grass looks greener elsewhere.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
"Young Americans are opting for better paid law and medicine over science and engineering and visa restrictions on bright foreign students further dilute the talent pool"
Well, the more we blame this situation on religious/anti-religous bugaboos and other flamefests, and not on THE WAY WE RAISE OUR KIDS nothing will ever change.
How many of you (or your wives for that matter) get on their childs teacher's case for being "too hard on my kid", "they just aren't good at math" etc. and not the other way around?
Why do you think Asians kick so much ass in the sciences and tech fields? Because they believe in hard work and challenge their kids (granted, maybe too much sometimes)
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Don't study Darwin, don't study the Big Bang, no Stem Cell research, stay in the Dark Ages. They don't kill people anymore like they did with Galileo, now they just get a Texan in the White House to make sure as much scientific research as possible is illegal.
Meanwhile they want to teach our kids stuff out of the Bible because if it's in the Bible it MUST be true. What we really need is one country (somewhere else) where Christians can gather and live in whatever primitive manner they choose.
Someone could make a drinking game out of this.
/. leads to someone posting a link to Michael Crichton ranting about junk science, take a drink.
For example: Everytime a discussion about science on
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous, and it is among the merits of science that it prepares the future for its duties."
- Alfred North Whitehead.
States ruled through Religious Dogma do not necessarily sink before pragmatism. History is full of examples where holy wars shaped the world; and religious power over people is just as sure a way of controlling them as technological means such as the threat of nukes (though rest assured that military technology is still being heavily invested in).
For better or worse, I don't see this as America sinking to irrelevance, so much as the Rise of the new Holy American Empire.
The Bush neoconservatives believe that their destiny is to mold the world as they see fit, and they don't care what they have to do or say to fulfill that goal. If that means lying about WMD, killing civilians, or sacrificing military personnel, then so be it. It is all for the greater good.
So don't expect them to give a crap about the cost to science by doing what the religous right demands, cause they need them to be in power in the first place.
Now if they could find a way to launder money out of R&D, like the defense, pharma, or oil industries, then you might get somewhere.
Maybe some R&D project managers need to take
Jack Abramoff or Tom DeLay out for a few rounds of golf...
I suppose some arears of science are experiencing that decline, but look at our armed forces. We're creating lasers to shoot projectiles out of the air, even in close proximity. We've created a microwave gun attached to a truck. I consider these to be both science and technology.
They are just jealous.
We need to go back to the past when America seperated religion from government like in the 1800's when they put "In God we trust" on money or like in the 1900's when we put "under God" in the pledge of allegiance. The beauty of America unlike socialized nations is that the government doesn't need to be sculpting everthing for it to work. Involving politics into science is as good of a thing as involving politics into religion. You end up with a bunch of blow hards from Washington telling you what to believe.
To summerize the sky is not falling and good science will march on as usual.
I am surprised that slashdot is essentially running an anti-christian/bush article, when the truth of the matter is that the USA is losing it's edge in science and technology because kids today do not have the patience to become scientists/engineers.
Also, there was just an article on slashdot about how the nobody is going into engineering fields anymore since their jobs are getting outsourced and the Chinese are threatening to take over the lead in the scientific and engineering fields, because they don't care about low pay and go to schools paid for by the state.
The average student loan bill is what, $50,000?
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
And while science is suffering from religious activists and the whim of politicians, innovations in engineering and technology as a whole are suffering from an outdated patent system, whose sole purpose seems to be rewarding large monopolies rather than promoting innovation.
A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
Funny how liberal statists want the central government to control everything, except when the government is run by people they disagree with, elected by people they detest. You can't have your government schools and not expect the government to control the teaching as per majority desire, can you?
Here's the cycle of America:
1) Democrats gain power, expand government control over X, Y and Z.
2) Republicans gain power, use government control to fuck up X, Y and Z.
3) Goto (1)
If not that, they ended up running universities where their business depends on having more science students to
Then they get stressed out that my kids look around at their father and his cow-orkers stressing over whose job is the next to vanish. They look at the management, lawyers, and politicians getting wealthier and more powerful every year, and shock! they decide not to go into tech.
Here's the paradox: they want the best and brightest to make life decisions that they themselves saw as foolish.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
All of these "sciences" were politically manipulated for years by "the other side" to fit their agenda. Is it not suprising, then that the tables have turned? Even slashdot's own articles have pointed out the fact that governmental science labs have been manipulated almost from day one to give the results the politicians want.
That's one of the themes of the BBC article, and it's so true on a variety of levels. I recall that, recently, the DC Metro (WMATA) had a big chunk of its budget cut because they allowed pro-marijuana ads on trains and buses.
The real stupid part? The metro serves a large number of people and is always in need of more money. So, in reality, they punished the people. Look for lots of punishment from an angry God, er, government because scientists feel differently about religion, environment, and politics in general.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
What you have to realize is that disbelief in climatology does not necessarily have to do with Christianity. Incredulity of science among the extremely religious may be a factor there, I am sure. However, you don't have to be Christian. In fact, all you have to be is someone who believes so strongly in American-style capitalism that anything which implies the actions of capitalists to be imperfect must be untrue. For example, a Libertarian.
To see this in action, compare any "Intelligent Design" related article on Slashdot to any article in some way related to global warming. We don't have a lot of hardline Christians on slashdot, so in the former article will have a very "trust science, evidence and reason over faith" slant in the comments. However we do have a lot of hardline libertarians. So look in the latter article and you will find one of the greatest torrents of anti-intellectual anti-science sentiment imaginable. As soon as it comes up that all available evidence makes it quite clear that human-produced greenhouse gases are causing global climate change with negative effects, suddenly we are presented with people insisting that reality is ephermal, nothing is knowable, and rather than do risky things like attempt to regulate polluting businesses we should just have faith that our actions will not have faith on the world around us. After all, it is not like climatology or chemistry are hard sciences, like the economic science is which Milton Friedman has used to conclude that governmental regulations universally and always cause harm.
I think you'll find the business attitudes of people like Carly Fiorina et al, the dot com boom and bust, and the overhyping of nanotechnology probably had a lot more to do with it. Research needs cash and after the tech crash, 9/11 or any other tipping point existed for the economy, I think you'd find that research just wasn't a dead cert anymore and people pulled out their cash in droves. Science and research in teh US is more closely linked to the economy than religion.
As far as evolution versus creationism goes, I've never seen any reason why they can't go hand in hand, although I fail to see how you can take either literally unless you were there...
...about junk science.
Priceless.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
"Young Americans are opting for better paid law and medicine over science and engineering and visa restrictions on bright foreign students further dilute the talent pool"
Unfortunately there is more $$$ to make in Law (Look at all the frivilous laws to get rich on) and Medicine (Baby Boomers are dying off and have money to spend on longevidy 'products') A good majority of the once high paying research and development jobs are going overseas, where the labor is cheaper.
This is my signature.
Why are we allowing the rest of the country hold us back? They act like we are a bunch of nuts, yet they need us more than we need them.
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Jefferson.jpg
I knew about that, and i'm British!
> That just opened my email reader and created an empty file called creationism.
Well, go ahead and close that file. It's already got all the facts and hard science in it that it's going to get.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Face it, America is making the same mistakes Rome made. And the plebians are not allowed to complain. If they do, they are labeled "xenophobes" or "anti-freedom".
The only thing Americans can build is McMansions and even then, that's debatable: the wood is from Canada and the labor is from Mexico.
"The Bush administration does not take kindly to anyone who has drawn a federal dollar being critical."
I feel sorry for Joseph Wilson and his wife every day. They experienced this first hand - object and be retaliated against.
It's not my idea - I heard it originally from a journalist for the SF Chronicle - but one of the biggest tools the White House is using is distraction. Attention is being drawn to social issues (such as gay rights, and vegetable rights - Schiavo), while significant detrimental policies are being waged against science (like barring publication of papers about global warming) and civil rights.
The true crimes involve Writ of Habeus Corpus (Jose Padilla), and intentional endangerment (Valerie Plame), not stem-cells and Hubble.
Priests and whatnot, on the other hand, has a 100,000 year headstart over science when it comes to manipulate minds and suck-up to the people.
So it's no wonder that undisciplined simple minds will flock to religion en masse, as believing bullshit is far easier than UNDERSTANDING science.
If they think it's government is the answer, they got the wrong question. I know, it pains the liberal left that inhabit /., but if you worked a few days with me, you would clearly see what I am saying is the truth. Government does a few things right, and the rest is Dilbert zone on steroids.
Dammy
When you make technology impossible to develop without getting on your knees and begging your mortal enemies and your competitors, this is what happens.
I'm sure there would have been a lot less automobiles today if car manufacturers back in the 10's and 20's had to beg both their competitors and the buggy whip makers for permission to make automobiles.
You reap what you plant here..
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Every time I hear this tired gripe, "Republicans are hostile to science." I think of the Super Conducting Super Collider which would have been the worlds largest particle accelerator (20 TeV) and would have at least shed some insight on the Higgs boson and the origins of the Universe.
The project was approved by the Reagan administration in 1987. During the first congress of Clintons first term in 1993 the project was summarily killed. I might point out that at the time both Houses of congress were under Democratic control. So I find it difficult to blame those ludite Republicans.
All right lets begin all of the comments about how anyone with a religion is automatically a mindless fool who wants the "evil science" to go away so we can burn witches. Grow up people. Religion has and always will be an easy out for a larger problem. Simple, good old-fashioned ignorance. From both sides it seems. You see religion is a hot button issue that politicians can use to sway the public away from the truth. In this case it's an infinitely complex situation involving corporate interests and confused foreign policy. Are there some insane Christians out there? SURE THERE ARE! But the point is that you can say the same for ANY other special interest group. The unfortunate thing is that the loonies out there often make the most noise. So as a politician if you pander to the loudest voices, you will get the most media attention. For those of you angry anti-religious zealots out there, you have my deepest apologies for whatever made you so bitter. You really should wake up and realize however that the world is just a tad bigger, and that those in power have very little interest in "Christian" ideals. Instead of casting blame on a particular group of people within the system, I think you should take a look at the system itself. Right now it's not really in your favor if you don't make over 200K a year. Can you guess why that is?
Hey, if you don't like scientific progress and want your own little world where "magical gods and fairies/angels" run the universe, you could go to some countries in the middle east where a lot of people embrace similar religious ideals (you could talk to this guy Bin Ladin, he dosen't like tech either, it seems..) and would not have to deal with the current explosion of scientific knowledge and the new technologies of nano and biotech and where people will use technology to boost their brainpower etc.
Seems the Bush crowd will have a real big problem in the next few decades when people will want to sue bio/nano to change their brainpower and looks too (I think that's going to invite a lot of criticism from the established religions, because tey tend to look upon man as the ultimate product of their gods, made in gods image etc., so hacking of the body/brain will take many decades to be accepted, if at all by these people...)
id is a theological exercise, not a scientific one. thus it has no bearing in a science class.
sum.zero
That this article will generate >= 750 replies.
Meanwhile, Chavez mysteriously brutally accidentally cuts his head off while shaving.
It isn't a matter of falling standards and laziness. It isn't the fault of too much TV or rap music.
There are forces in society who want science neutered and brought to heel.
"Intelligent Design," and the manufactured controversy over "junk science" . . . it's all part of a plan to:
You can find it all here, in a document called "The Wedge Strategy."
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
It's just one way to go, down.
For Chicken Little, the sky is always falling.
As a Christian, and an amateur scientist (though not a Christian Scientist) I am increasingly disturbed by an administration that ignores whole chunks of the Bible (namely, nearly every word of Christ) in favor of pandering to a small and crazy fringe group who wants an untenable literal interpretation.
I am disturbed as a a scientist because it's holding us back, and educating our kids with BS, and I'm disturbed as a Christian because this is not Christianity, at least not of the mainstream portion. And most Christians are too afraid to stand up and say anything at the wholesale hijacking of their faith. (I wonder if this is how Muslims feel) Please, slashdotters, don't paint with a broad brush Christians as being like.....this.......
The "meat" of Christian teachings are _not_ incompatible with evolution, the big bang, modern society in general, etc, etc.
Voted for Bush the first time around, voted libertarian on try number 2.
These sorts of stories, when posted on slashdot, stir up so much self righteous anger and zeal...
yet not a one of you will do a damned thing to change it. Organize. Form a PAC. Form a Geek Political Party. Join the Democratic party. Join the Libertarian party. Heck, Join the REPUBLICAN party. Just get off your asses and DO something instead of just whining about it.
Or so the evidence would seem to believe. Due to the survival of the fittest (those who don't choke on pretzels, for example).
J.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Many of the people who came to America were not religious conservatives, but religious liberals. The quakers, for example, were prosecuted for their views on organized religion. See this link for example. Your comments are exactly what the religious right would have us believe, that religion should be the core of our government, when in fact it was founded by people who got the harsh edge of that stick. The basis of our government is freedom of religion, not freedom to choose a state religion.
I stay out of peoples bedrooms and churchs, for the very reason that I don't want others in mine!
the first amendment of the constitution has to do with separation of church and state.
thomas jefferson wrote of the need for a wall between church and state so as not to establish a particular religion and to allow the free practice of religion.
what was your point again?
sum.zero
I thought there should be:
x) Profit!!!
somewhere in that list
Don't some of you wonder why we need a new "enlightend" administration to save us? "Oh, bring back the Dems!" many will say. Oh yes, the Clipper chip people, I remember them well.
The basic problem is your ( not all of you, I know) belief that the federal government is the solution to your problems. Stem Cell research? Oh, this cannot happen without unrestricted federal spending. Public education is screwed? Let's get Ted Kennedy and President Bush to work together to create "No Child Left Behind", only to have Ted rip it after he helped create it.
The long term results of the Feds being involved is more slow moving, poorly engineered administrations like NASA. If the private sector had been invited into the space business 25 years ago, we would be much further along.
I am starting to think that this is a generational view. I am an older Gen X'er, and it seems that the younger Gen Y crowd is much more use to asking for solutions from their "Parents" (aka, the Government) than in doing for themselves.
What you are saying, that America has always been a Christian nation the way it is today, is a nice little fairy tale, but it simply isn't true. Members of the Christian political movement that have hijacked America's politics in the last 45 years try to pretend that the spot they hold is their divine right and that they have always held it, that oceania has always been at war with eurasia, but the fact is a political member of the SBC stranded 200 years ago would be nothing but a ranting street preacher. Drop them 225 years ago among the deist-packed "founding fathers" that people are always trying to lay claim to, and they'd be even worse off...
Take any shred of religion out of the government, but don't tell me our forefathers or constitution says it should be that way.
Our "forefathers" and the constitutional law they wrote say it should be that way, in very specific terms:
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
ok...seriously for a second...blame the baby boomers. They represent that major demographic for UK, US and Australia and hence they weild the voting power.
In the 60s/70s...they were entering the colleges and workforce...what did we get...a massive overhaul to the educational systems. In the 70/80s they were moving through their "working lives"...what did we get...a massive overhaul to industrial relations in favor of the workers...in 2000, they're all heading into retirement, mostly funded by shares, wanting to live on less money and also worried about death...what do we see? More power being given to corporations and taken from workers (in all three countries), more focus on immediate share holder returns rather than r&d, outsourcing to cut the cost of consumables, cutting of government research, services and educational assistence to lower taxes, and an increase in relious uptake as they all worry about death.
This is sheer speculation on my part, but in Australia we're watching all the great social practices put in place during the 60s/70s and 80s be repealed...from free education and medical, to workers rights...and from what I hear here it seems to be happening in the US and UK. These trends, to my untrained eye, seem to follow rather closely the needs of the major voting demographic (baby boomers)...so lets face it...if you're under 40 you're screwed...unless of course you move to south america where I believe the major demographics in most countries is 15-25 (they're having somewhat of a baby boom at the moment).
I have seen this time and time again while working for large corporations
1. Focus on short term profits over long term profits.
2. Management by MBAs that have no technical understanding, and cannot understand technical subjects, nor key trends and drivers in an industry.
3. Rampant cost-cutting, to the point of providing legacy computers to their employees.
4. Hiring incompetent, wannabe techies with no mastery of technical subjects or even the motivation to learn.
5. Lack of vision for developing core capabilities to market leading potentials
6. Revenue-stream milking, to the detriment of all other activities
I think the parent poster is very accurate. If there is a problem, it is our litigation prone society that rewards lawyers over engineers and scientists, exponentially. Our innovators should be better compensated, and the tort/IP system reformed.
That would be a start in the right direction. I'd like the Bush administration to change those problems first.
Vint Cerf may be the father of the Internet..
... but we're the mothers that have to make it work!
London's finest organic fairtrade coffee
It's "R&D" (research and development) not "RND."
Just like "D&D" instead of "DND."
What is it with you quasi-anarchist malcontents and "corporations"? Your interminable smear campaign against everything and anything "corporate" makes the rest of us on the left look like anarchist freaks with an anti-business agenda. How about at least switching up the terminology once in a while? "Businesses" or "companies" would do to start. Attacking "those capitalist pigdog rapists" would be even better, since nobody would then take you seriously enough to tarnish our ideological image. Corporate corporation corporations is all you ever talk about. Well, fuck you for turning America off to our message with your shrill sob stories. Fuck you for losing us the last two presidential elections. Fuck you for handing Congress and to the raging homophobes and creationists. Fuck you, you fucking motherfuckers.
Fuck ya we spend so much money these days on litigation, theres nothing left for more useful endeavors.
So what this guy is saying is that America's lead in science isn't because America is slipping, but because the rest of the world is catching up. Am I supposed to be alarmed by this?
As for the Bush bashing, it's weak and tenuous at best. More of the same "Bush is anti-science" bullshit coming from the Iron Rice Bowl crowd. I'm sorry they can't get their federal funding handouts to investigate the nasal passages of gerbils during ejaculation, but I think - and most reasonable people agree - that funding the war against terrorism takes precedent to the ability of masturbating rodents to breathe.
I realize the punchline is weak -- and that's part of the point -- but there's no point telling the joke at all if you're going to keep leaving it off.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
by harold bloom is an interesting read. it looks at the origins of several of the amercan-born religions [eg southern baptist convention, mormon, jw, christian scientist, etc].
that said, not everything in the book should be taken at face value [like most things, i suppose], but it does serve as a good primer for further reading.
sum.zero
Science requires an insane effort these days. All the easy things have already been figured out, so one has to either be a genius or spend a third of his/her life getting ready to actually make a discovery. And be prepared to be pretty darn poor both before and after you get anywhere in science.
But that's only a part of the problem. The other part is related to being not that well off if you choose science as your career. You see, the thing is true science is portable. There are smart folks in China, Russia and every other country on the freaking planet (even in India, believe it or not).
Lawyers and doctors, on the other hand, are not as portable. You have to have them around here to do things, and that's why they'll always be better paid.
Same with hi-tech (which is as close to science as it gets in the real world), and that is why we're observing a decline in enrollment for the corresponding majors. The effort is pretty monumental (assuming you want to actually know what the heck you're doing) the payoff isn't so great anymore.
I have a son, and unless he strongly insists on becoming an engineer, I'll be nudging him towards becoming a lawyer or a doctor. I'd like him to be an engineer, but I wouldn't like him to live in poverty.
I'm pro Bush, but let's ignore that. Whether you think Bush is killing science or not, I think the fact is there is a BIGGER problem. Bush will be gone in 3 years. You can choose someone else then.
But where are the kids who want to grow up to be astronauts? Used to be TONS of kids. How did you do that? You studied science. Wanted to be Einstein? Study physics. There were heros in science.
Name a famous scientist now (a current one). The only one I can think of really is Hawking. And most students I've seen don't know who he is unless you refer to him as "the wheelchair guy", and even then they don't know what he's done.
Where are all the famous scientists? Where is the acclaim for intelligence? TV and the Papers are full of anti-intellectual stuff. Who do we learn about? Brad and Jennifer and other celebrities. They don't have to be smart, in fact it seems better if they AREN'T ("Walmart, do they... like... make walls there?", and "...[Canada] is like a whole other country"). These are who kids look up to. That and athletes.
So while most people are worshiping at the Church of the Golden Calf Highschool (like that? Saw it in a book), "nerds" are ostracized. In this country getting high grades doesn't earn you respect, it earns you hate. You're not "that smart kid", you're "the kid who ruined the curve for the rest of us". Meanwhile a kid who happens to be able to kick a football gets people comming from all over the country to try to recruit them to a college (often with illegal bribes). But that is far more rare for the smart kid. Let's ignore the fact that not being able to post grades as well as "not hurting kids feelings" and grade inflation have made it TOUGH to compete on grades because everyone gets As and Bs.
TV is aimed at people with a 3rd grade education (don't know the real number, but it's down there), and even the best newspapers like the Wall Street Journal are targeted at someone with something like an 8th grade reading level.
You don't need to be able to read. You ain't needing to be able to be speaking properly. If you can play a sport, you can focus on that and have it made. Teachers may help you out, give you advantages, etc.
This country has a SERIOUS anti-intellectual current going on, and THAT is what is making things worse. If we can't reverse that, it doesn't matter how well we teach that 2% of kids interested in science; because if it's only 2% we won't go anywhere.
I'll reply to my own post with my thoughts on the Bush administration, so anyone wanting to argue about that can post under that reply.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
From the article: 'radically we have moved away from regulation based on professional analysis of scientific data ...to regulation controlled by the White House and driven by political considerations.'"
So the "professionals" are irked that they are no longer in charge and the relgious right is?
Both sides cry when the other kid has the ball. Solution, remove the ball from the playground.
E.G. less regulation, federal funding etc....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
... that it wasn't a US news source reporting this.
and we have known about it for a long time.
Ethnic diversity, multiculturialism an a bunch of other 'isms' are turning a country that once prided itself on intelligence into a ethnic and cultural slag heap.
Witness the kids hanging around the shopping malls,not exactly a bastion of learning. They wear ugly clothes, insert metal into their body parts, wear 'doo rags', listen to music that isn't music and destroys hearing.
This is DUMB. We are becoming stupid obese diseased and lazy people and seem to be proud of it.
We are lost. UK go for it. Bush is leading many into his "No kid left to learn" program by dumbing everyone down to the lowest common denominator.
I feel for my country and its youth. Such lost opportunities. Such a waste.
I'm incredibly disappointed with the lack of respect for science and intellectual achievement that seems to pervade the United States today. Everywhere I look I see this -- in energy, economics, medicine, education -- everywhere.
But, I had one glorious day last year. The Jet Propulsion Labs at CalTech had an open house in May, and I attended this year with my little boy. It was a unique experience. You don't just stumble upon JPL, it's way off in the corner of the LA basin, but people came from everywhere around to the open house.
At each of a fifty or so different stations, there were JPL scientists describing their current work to an incredibly diverse but intensely interested audience. The scientists and engineers are, of course, very enthusiastic about their projects -- but the tremendous enthusiasm of my fellow attendees was surprising and heartening. Young and old, of every imaginable race and combination thereof, in families and individually -- everyone was just enthralled. It was kind of interesting to watch the engineers trying to describe the interferometer that JPL hopes to send up to measure the positions and velocities of stars more accurately to this group -- but they struggled to explain it, and people struggled to understand it.
As I said above, it was glorious. I recommend it to anybody in the LA area. There is hope.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
.. and blaming it on the Christians.
I just can't bring myself to believe that it's the Religious Right that has turned our public school system into the crap that it is these days.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
god is, by defenition, outside of the scope of science. the question of the existance of god is theology [think sub-division of philosophy].
the only people that i see bringing god into scientific debates are fanatics trying to prove god's existance through non-scientific methods and logical fallacies while claiming it as science [eg intelligent design].
this does not make it science.
evolutionists have no opinion on god from a scientific point of view.
sum.zero
There is a portion of the article that disturbed me:
"For more than a year, the nationally well-regarded Union of Concerned Scientists - a non-partisan body"
Nationally well-regarded? Non-partisan? Is that the whole truth? Or is this fudging it a bit?
destruction of classical civilisation http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/science.html
uhhhh.....no.
or you could just say that the big bang and evolution are the means that God used in creationism. if i create a program to find the nth digit of a pattern, have i found the nth digit or created a program that would create the answer? both
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
To give the Arabians credit, they recognized its value and propogated the idea to Europe. They also came up with many original ideas themselves - but zero was not one of them.
Funny how liberal statists want the central government to control everything
It is of course easy to win any argument when you found your argument on putting viewpoints into the mouths of your opponents.
What I think is really funny is how the liberal statists think that all Jews should be rounded up and gassed to death, but they think Muslims should have civil rights. Or how liberal statists think that nuclear bombs should be deployed and detonated in all major U.S. cities to end all life on earth, but then complain about depleted uranium missles. Yup, darn those liberal statists for the incredible hypocrisy of not strictly sticking to my randomly conceived notions of what their opinions are.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I think Bush is using religion as an excuse to do a bad job, and unfortunetly, lots of christians fall for it.
We should not have a "he means well" mentality when it comes to our own president!
Religion is only a problem when the president is more interested in history of the bible, than the future of the nation he runs.
Bad choices, and ignoring the sciences is not just due to religion, but ignorance.
This signature is part of a balanced post.
(Note, obviously, that all of this is just from my personal experience with my friends and other people)
It's not surprising at all that science has taken a plunge politcally in America, even it's own people don't get behind it! Look at society for a second, people could care less about anyone with scientific evidence (or even a valid argument) for anything. They want to hear some witty phrase to explain away whatever is going on. People could argue merely that the sky is blue and loose to someone if there was enough of a "Charisma Differential" between them.
My point is, for whatever reason we've stopped worrying about the facts (if we ever have) and instead turned into a country that has made it a pass time to keep your eyes half-closed and speak condescendingly no matter what the topic is. In fact, it may well go beyond the country, it could be something with society as a whole, every last one of us.
Perhaps once we start to look for the truth and knowledge in life things will turn around. Of course, thats assuming we can look for knowledge in the right places anyway. All too often anymore I hear people discussing whatever and then bringing in some horridly false claim from a movie as fact.
We don't know how to seek knowledge, and apparently don't want to either.
Now, when I say all this, I do not exempt myself from these problems. Despite my conscious efforts, I know I contribute to the problem, although I'd be flattered if it was slightly less than other people. And as such, I encourage the other slashdot readers to think if they contribute to these problems as well. Maybe if we start getting our acts together the future will be a little brighter.
this is true, you can see this happeneing with Bush Admin's vies of eveolution, stem cell research, abortion, etc etc... as a scientist, i see this as a step backward for the US
I'll say that I support Bush and most things he's done. I agree with most of their science policies because they give true respect to human life. The one I DON'T agree with is Evolution.
I live in Kansas, so I've seen a lot about this. I am a Catholic. I support Evolution. I think it should be taught in schools. Basically everyone I've meet thinks the same thing. It is a few far-end nut cases that don't want evolution taught AT ALL. Most people do.
Here is how I would like things changed, and this is what most other religious people want (from what I can discern). The problem isn't evolution. It's "evolution". Kids should be taught the idea that a organism that is better able to survive will reproduce and overtake an organism that isn't. Over time this leads to species changing, branching, dying, being created, etc. This is perfectly fine. I see nothing wrong with that.
Now there are some (mostly on the far left) who get it taught like this: <everything above>, plus things started out as a few protines. Once they became alive through random chance, then millions of years of various random chances in the right order created everything we see. That is a LOT of random chance. Especially if you include all the random chance that landed us in this version of the multi-verse that has the right elements in the right ammounts in the right places to allow life to form. Another insanely unlikely random chance.
Once you go into that random chance stuff, I see you as entering into philosophy. Was it random chance, or was that random chance guided by something (the G-word... God).
There is nothing wrong with evolution, but when you try to expand that (as above) into guaranteed fact and teach that, I think that's a mistake. You can say some people believe everything came from evolution, some believe it was created by God, some by God directing evolution, and some by a combination of the above. But I don't think we should go teaching something we can't prove (that each one of those random chances was random and not influenced in any way) when we can't prove it. Leave it for the philosophy classes, the religious study, or even higher level biology classes in college. That part of the lecture isn't necessary for a 6th grader, it just undermines a parent's attempts at teaching a religion (if they are doing so).
Basically, it's the particular variety of evolution they are teaching (that has been taken into a philosophical realm) that's my problem, not the theory of evolution that I fully support.
I hope you can all understand my meaning, I have a feeling I haven't described it in a very eloquent way. Maybe if I had been an English major :).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
when one laments the politicizing of, and decline in trust in, "science", as it were, one should be sure and mention one of the primary actors...
namely, those "scientists" who have an aim first, and their theories, papers, and so on are simply the means.
Said differently - there wouldn't be a decline of and mistrust in "science" at large if some "scientists" weren't so interested in pushing their own agenda.
When there is consensus on what theory best fits the data, you get no argument from the president, the religious right, etc. When you have _data_, but no theory that explains it to the satisfaction of everyone, you get discourse.
In a way, it is nice that people _care_ about the origins of life, the biodiversity of the planet, and so on. The world would be in much worse shape if nobody cared to argue, and no one had the fire to continue to try and discover.
even if you _hate_ the the ID proponents, and beleive they are flatly wrong and that macroevolution is the endpoint of human understanding of lifes origins, you still need to be able to competantly address their arguments.... steel sharpens steel, if you like.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
DO you even read what you write?
Our forefathers came here because of religion, they were the very definition of fanatics. Just check the first century of conquest, the witch hunts and so forth.
How can you even pretend to be offended?
This reminds me of an interview in Reason (a libertarian mag) of slashdot favorite Neal Stephenson. Here's the relevant part:
http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.mg.neal.shtml
Reason: The Baroque Cycle suggests that there are sometimes great explosions of creativity, followed by that creative energy's recombining and eventual crystallization into new forms--social, technological, political. Are we seeing a similar degree of explosive progress in the modern U.S.?
Stephenson: The success of the U.S. has not come from one consistent cause, as far as I can make out. Instead the U.S. will find a way to succeed for a few decades based on one thing, then, when that peters out, move on to another. Sometimes there is trouble during the transitions. So, in the early-to-mid-19th century, it was all about expansion westward and a colossal growth in population. After the Civil War, it was about exploitation of the world's richest resource base: iron, steel, coal, the railways, and later oil.
For much of the 20th century it was about science and technology. The heyday was the Second World War, when we had not just the Manhattan Project but also the Radiation Lab at MIT and a large cryptology industry all cooking along at the same time. The war led into the nuclear arms race and the space race, which led in turn to the revolution in electronics, computers, the Internet, etc. If the emblematic figures of earlier eras were the pioneer with his Kentucky rifle, or the Gilded Age plutocrat, then for the era from, say, 1940 to 2000 it was the engineer, the geek, the scientist. It's no coincidence that this era is also when science fiction has flourished, and in which the whole idea of the Future became current. After all, if you're living in a technocratic society, it seems perfectly reasonable to try to predict the future by extrapolating trends in science and engineering.
It is quite obvious to me that the U.S. is turning away from all of this. It has been the case for quite a while that the cultural left distrusted geeks and their works; the depiction of technical sorts in popular culture has been overwhelmingly negative for at least a generation now. More recently, the cultural right has apparently decided that it doesn't care for some of what scientists have to say. So the technical class is caught in a pincer between these two wings of the so-called culture war. Of course the broad mass of people don't belong to one wing or the other. But science is all about diligence, hard sustained work over long stretches of time, sweating the details, and abstract thinking, none of which is really being fostered by mainstream culture.
Since our prosperity and our military security for the last three or four generations have been rooted in science and technology, it would therefore seem that we're coming to the end of one era and about to move into another. Whether it's going to be better or worse is difficult for me to say. The obvious guess would be "worse." If I really wanted to turn this into a jeremiad, I could hold forth on that for a while. But as mentioned before, this country has always found a new way to move forward and be prosperous. So maybe we'll get lucky again. In the meantime, efforts to predict the future by extrapolating trends in the world of science and technology are apt to feel a lot less compelling than they might have in 1955.
Apparently, you haven't seen The Stingy List (PDF)
Yes, those nasty Christians. The ones who kept learning alive inside monasteries during the Middle Ages. The ones who started the universities. Christians like Newton, Darwin and Galileo.
The poster demonstrates ignorance of the effect Christianity had on learning in Europe.
in a rational world that would be true, but as evident on even slashdot, you can see that most people try to use evolution or big bang or any science as proof to negate all of religion instead of just the beliefs of a few fanatics (who probably only use religion as a means to power because they like people listening to them and looking up to them as leaders)
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
Indeed the laughing stock of the world. Also take a look at the patent database.
Another brilliant parody from The Onion - brilliant because it so accurately illustrates the mind set of the religious right.
& n=2&ref=myy
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133
While countries like Britain have almost developed cures for Parkinsons and Cuba has nearly cured cancer the USA is arguing over Evolution and Intelligent Design. We need to focus our energy on the next wave of science. Otherwise we'll fall far behind India, China and I hear even Russia is bouncing back. I wish them luck but I know they don't need it.
I hope my children don't end up delivering drycleaning in Singapore but realistically I don't hold out much more hope for their economic futures if they stay here.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
"US has ranks second to last among developed nations for foreign aid as a percentage of the economy"
First, it IS NOT the job of the government to give out our money. It is up to the citizen
to donate on his/her own.
Second, Who cares what the rest of the world does? I did not vote for their leaders, nor they
the united states. They have no say in our government and we should have none in theirs.
There is no legal or moral justification to take tax money from a citizen of this country and give it to a different country. You want it done, donate it on your own.
FWIW I am not a christian and did not vote for bush.(He is IMO the worst president since FDR).
I also donate to local charities I believe are worthwhile.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
While Christian-Judism has influence individuals, they rarely played a part in our society. In fact, most of our original forefathers worked very hard at preventing the church from controlling the government. After all, they had the history of Europe to look at. As the church there became influential, they went into the dark ages and society stagnated. For a modern day example, simply look at Afghanastan, Pakastan, or Iran.
Eisenhower added "under God" to the pledge, but to be honest, I think that it was a mistake. In addition, you can find some of Americas most backward time occuring due to the church interferring (prohibition comes to mind). About the only time that I think that they really helped was the abolisionist. Interestingly, it was regular protestant northerners (lutherns, Anglicans, ) as well as mennites, etc , rather than your baptist southerners who really pushed it. IOW, the church really did not come aboard until late in the game.
No, I think that allowing the church to interven is the mistake. And yes, most of our fore fathers were very opposed to it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
People are uncertain about sience and technology, so they move to a comfort zone. If a good level of education is not provided to everyone, then we will have two groups of people: those that understand technology and those who think that it is some sort of magic governing our toys. Maybe Terry Pratchet was right and there are imps inside our cameras painting pictures?
The other thing that gets me is "Intelligent Design", as a competitor to evolution. Sure evolution has not been proved 100%, but the only premise for wanting ID seems to be as a way of separating us from the animals and trying to say that we are the chosen ones - sounds like what the Jewish population in the old testment felt with regards to everyone else, instead now it expands to a larger religious group. I ask myself, if God acts in weird and ownderful ways, why can't he have made us in his image, through playing around with evolution? I m not against having both taught in schools, since it encourages people to evalate different view points, but am against removing evolution from the curiculem.
Another thing with evolution is that some people say it is not possible, because there is no way you can go from something as big as dinosaur, to something as small a mouse. Given that mutations can happen in short time periods, and this happened over a million years, and that all things start off small in an egg or a womb, I would have to say that the biggest issue is a failure of imagination. I should note that many reptiles sizes are directly related to the amount of food they eat (eat more, get bigger).
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
There were problems long before Bush Jr. was elected (or whatever). Great American science came about because of the massive cold war dollars that were spent in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, and now people aren't willing to spend that money. Any other reasons for the decline are, in my opinion, just sideshows.
Most Science is funded by corporations. US corporations are performing reshearch at a rate that is about 734% of the rest of the world.
The News is a PR game.
Get a free ipod.
People here watch Fox News for all of 5 minutes (if even that) and declare them a tool of the administration. I regularly watch both Fox News and CNN, and occasionally the network news broadcasts. I don't think any of them are largely biased one way or the other. Yes, Fox News has all the conservative talking heads. And CNN has all the liberal talking heads. However, the talking heads shows are NOT news. They are interpretation and discussion of news. If you watch and compare the actual news reporting, you will be hard pressed to find the (perceived) bias. It's funny because I don't think Bill O'Reilly is all that biased. I am a fairly liberal guy (though not quite as far left as most Slashdot readers) but I find myself agreeing with him more often than not.
My god... lots of pent up emotions being unleashed in the slashdot assylum today.
Wake me up when our GDP goes below 10 trillion.
O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Test 1 2 3 4
It doesn't explain why Asians raised in the US, using English, beat us the same way on math tests. I speak Japanese, and really don't think it is that different than English on such a basic level as you imply.
The US can't be Number One forever and consistently. Big deal. The fact is that things like the the World Wars and the Cold War are responsible for the push for math and science in the last century. You needed engineers to build stuff to compete. Eventually, you will have "won", like we did when the Soviet Bloc collapsed, and the intensity will wane.
While some fundamentalists are loud, annoying, and frequently seem to be living in a different reality, for the most part, they really have little effect on the scientific establishment. Everyone knows what Evolution is, and everyone knows about stem cell research. The real people in favor of the more wacky restrictions are in the vast minority of not only Christians, but of even fundamentalist Christians. There are plenty of evangelical Christians I know of that are in science and technology, and certainly a crapload of more "mainstream" denomonations.
If you are relying on completely seperating Church from State (if that is even possible) for your solution to reversing this trend, you're in for a nasty surprise. Bush and his alleged conservative Christian "controllers" are simply a side-show distraction from the real issues we have to face. It is true that it is tempting to blame the more extreme of these clowns for the aliments of our research and tech sectors but personally, I think that this decline is more due to a reversal or subsidence of the forces that allowed us to dominate in the first place. I mean, the people who actually don't believe in Evolution or certain scientific theories weren't likely to become scientists anyway, and Federal money has hardly been shut off from science. Not taking global warming seriously or blocking some funding for some stem cell research is hardly going to threaten a well founded dominance by itself, either. We have to look inward for the deeper causes of those issues if we want to see if we can reverse this trend and stop trying to create effigies we can blame.
I thought the left-wing meme was all about how America has too much wealth. How we are too priveledged or too smart.
What Bush is doing to ruin science should be praised, because it will allow other less fortunate countries to show off some scienctist strength, right?
Don't tell me you are obsessed with America remaining the undisputed ruler of the free world in science? Can it be slashdot?
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
/.
Oh, Thomas Paine, Thomas Paine!! Poster-Child for "When Forefathers Go Rogue!" Pretty much booted from The Club with that "Age of Reason" thing. (Look it up.) Simply *NOT* what the Heads-On-Currency Crowd had in mind for this country, pure and simple. You can argue that Da Boyzz were wrong when it came to the whole Higher Power thingee, and that's fine, but then you're picking and choosing your Constitution Framer-y Goodness, and that makes you no better than either of the Left/Right Extremists.
Still and all, the Ol' "Thomas Paine Cry" remains a pretty effective argument for the average high-school-level civics of most Americans, cuz most of us think we kinda sorta remember him as being part of that whole Ben Franklin scene, so what he wrote must be in synch with the thinking of the Forefathers, right? Right? Good one. But ya needs do better on a large public forum such as
Grade: C+
Ladies and Gentlemen. The above post is why I'm against euthenasia. The old person you smother today, could be the insightful poster of tomorrow.
BTW There's one thing to keep in mind about the complaints about religion. At least with their pressure, science was forced to discover a way that satisfied both sides. In the absense of religion the easy choices will always get picked.
The article got one thing right - unless you have a limitless passion for science, there is no reason for an American student to become a scientist.
If you become a PhD scientist, you will not get through your now essentially-mandatory post-docs until after you are thirty years old. Depending on your field, you can then expect to start at a salary of $60-80k.
On the other hand, a typical lawyer is out of school at age 25 and already makes a higher salary than the PhD will. Yes, they have a larger debt but it is only about a year's salary. Also, the lawyer does not have to worry much about someone from China or India replacing him at a third the price.
Economically, it does not make sense for a bright young American to choose science. We should not be surprised when few do.
The US subjugates science to belief? Unlike Europe, which rejects the 300 million person, 10 year experiment with GM foods. But ID kooks don't make you go blind. It's OK; you can assuage your post-colonial concience with a check to OxFam. Maybe they'll send you a thank-you note in braille.
I am a scientist. This isn't blindness, but observation. I'm prepared to worry.
When Europe, collectively, has as many top-notch CS schools as can be found within commuting distance of San Francisco Bay, I'll start to worry.
When any country in Europe has as many Nobel Lauriates as can be found at Stanford, I'll start to worry.
When any success in a European undergraduate program ceases to be defined as admission to a US grad program, I'll start to worry.
When Europe starts to produce inventions of consequence (the last one was, I believe, the radio, while the US came out with nuclear power, computers, the internet, magnetic storage, long-distance air travel) I'll start to worry.
When European culture starts to produce inventors, achievers, dreamers and entrepreneurs en masse, I'll start to worry.
In the mean time, good luck with your English lessons and H1-B application. -Will
There's a good article over on the BBC about the decline of science and technology in the U.S.
I think most technological advancements in the U.S. came about as a result of large wars. Technological advancements in electronics, aviation, ballistics, space travel and satellite saw huge increases as a direct result of World War II and the Cold War (I'm tossing the Vietnam War in as part of the Cold War).
And we've always distrusted science. This isn't the first time around for a legislated solution to the 'question' of evolution. The Scopes Trial happened in the mid 1920s.
Nuclear energy in American today is also a reflection of the distrust in science (stemming from ignorance or not).
Maybe Americans have always been distrustful of science. The lack of defense spending in the past 20 years could explain the slow down in technological advances as well.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
To make matters worse, Nixon took us off the gold standard to hide what he had done with the dollar (illegal minting).
This may be part of the reason Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard but another part is that France had a hand full of dollars and demanded the US exchange them for gold. Nixon gave them the gold then removed the gold standard. What's really galling about this was that the US helped France to get out of Viet Nam in the previous twenty years. While I think it was stupid to get rid of the gold standard it would be difficult to reinstate it because the US would have to have on hand enough gold to exchange a lot of dollars for gold which would drive up gold prices. On the other hand if gold and thus dollar prices went up then the US economy would get a boost as imports would rise in prices and exports would drop in prices.
FalconShould there be a Law?
::
::
What we are really witnessing is the takeover of humanity by the corporations:
The mega-corps dictate terms and conditions regarding employment and subsistence of the citizens to governments with impunity, if the local yokels, be it county, state or an entire nations governing body make waves, well... the source of employment can move to localities more malleable to the forces of "progress"
Truthfully, how many of us reflect on the fact that the very shiny, very cool, very indispensible objects we caress (talking to geeks here, normals please ignore), are tainted by being assembled by people working in what we ourselves would deem sub-human conditions regarding pay, working-hours and job-security?
(... sorry to be such an insensitive clod to those working for outstanding game production outfits)
Let us name as examples predatory corporations of the present time such as Monsanto and Microsoft while keeping a clear head, realizing that such entities are hostage to their own success and must forge forward with ever-increasing vigour, swallowing and/or disrupting targets that can affect the bottom line.
While such virulent behaviour is acceptable to many, the history of human achievments does show a prevalance of individual invention over large-scale research.
As the workforce in other locations reach the lowest common corporate qualification so must the corporations migrate the actual jobs available in the enterprise...
The actual catch #22 is the fact that the established entities do their best to smother or assimilate anything new so by the mere fact of progressing any project must eventually become evil... or what??? please do tell
# ~: no sigs today
First... The Us was far more 'Christian' during the 40s 50's and 60's, the time of it's greatest advances. Second... Lawers, Singers, Sports and Business management are the big things today. Science is not a player in the career stakes today. Third... Corporations run America more than anytime in it's history. They exist to make money not fund science. Science can feed from the crumbs off the corporate table. Forth... In the mad house thats patents have built, whatever I may discover is bound to be already patented ten times over with an army of lawers to back them up. Whatever isn't patented is copyrighted or otherwise protected under the DMCA. Lastly... Ignorance is king! Look at mass entertainment and news. Life beyond third grade education simply isn't required and such today is considered a fringe demographic. Religion the cause my ass!
Did someone on the playground tell you all that about India? Discrimination based on the caste system has been on the decline for over 100 years. Lower caste citizens are in the majority, and so have more representation in government. People can rise from poverty no matter what their caste, and there are certainly higher caste living below the poverty line. India has a first rate university system with some of the largest universities in the world, and plenty of Indians are educated there, not abroad. India does suffer from poverty, about 25% in 2002, putting it 96th on the list of countries with the most people living under the poverty level. Then again, the US was at about 12% at the time, putting it at 116 on the list. India currently is the third fastest growing economy in the world.
Please, try to find out actual facts to support you arguments. I don't so much like the way the anecdotes pulled out of your ass smell.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There are those who thrive and succeed with guidance and orders, with someone telling them what to do, with a fearless leader: Communists, Catholics, slaves.
There are others who thrive on anarchy and chaos, on rampant individualism, with a government that can be drowned in a bathtub: Protestants, Americans, terrorists.
China has made the most of the 20th century. The rise of Communism and Socialism has allowed China untold opportunity to provide its people with an environment in which they naturally thrive. Large scale projects and complete sociological overhaul have allowed China to go from primitive isolation to world superpower in just a few generations. China is now reaping the benefits of this realignment of their natural interests and their socio-political structure.
Unfortunately for us, however, the West has followed suit. Beginning with the introduction of Socialism, straight through 50 years of the cold war and into the "war on terror", we have done more to emulate the enemies of individualism and freedom than to compete with them. We have modeled our society after one that is incompatible with our natural best interests.
As a result, the West has declined. The foremost product of rampant individualism, technological advancement, has suffered. We have spent the 20th century getting-by, exploiting our natural wealth with 100-year-old inventions borne of a time before rampant collectivism made its way to our shores. Most notable technological advances of the past 100 years were the product of Germany's last ditch struggle against this same collectivist horde.
As a result, we long ago lost our technological superiority. We are well on our way to being displaced as world hedgemon. Colonies and territories are in revolt. Allies are allying with our enemies. The West is under invasion by those who breed without remorse. And the entire human race is again under threat of mass extinction due to the triumph of collectivism over sustainability.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Wasn't Galileo branded a heritic by the Vatican, and Darwin?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Time for americans to live in third world status. No Medical care - unless your rich or a ward of the state. No education unless it is in church, err.. uh, public school. No money unless you work 12 or more hours a day. Great future people, Thank's
...It's the attitude that says this:
The single biggest negative perception about the US that I experience here in Europe is the collective ego represented by the way the US government conducts itself, and the comments made by so many Americans in many an Internet forum. Here are a few claims I've seen in the past week alone:
Now here's an alternative version, as seen by the devil's advocate:
Seriously, this isn't meant to be a troll. That first list really is the impression a lot of Americans I've encountered give, and the second list is certainly how the US is increasingly perceived here in the UK.
The problem for this discussion, of course, is that being a world leader in scientific research depends fundamentally on three things: attracting good people, getting them in touch with everyone else's good people, and funding them well enough to do their thing. Pissing off the rest of the world and destroying your economy from within probably aren't the best ways to achieve any of those three critical things. Yeah, I'd say the US is pretty much toast for a while as far as leading the world in scientific research.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you pay me to get a CS degree, then we'll talk.
Going to college takes alot of time and money on my part, and then I am not garunteed a job when I graduate and suddenly in debt thousands of dollars.
Fix that, and you'll get your full tech majors.
HALF the effort we American capitalists make!
So in other words, you think the people in the UK should work harder to cover up studies about multimillion dollar drugs, spend more time selling barges to each other, and otherwise screwing things up so they can be Just Like Us?
We need look no farther than the incredible trajectory of the religious movement titled "Intelligent Design" to find a suitable example [Another would be embryonic stem cells]. To equate a religious belief, "Intelligent Design", with evolution, a scientific theory that has withstood the test of time and provides abundant examples in our world, is the height of unscientific thinking. Indeed it is Faith {and by that I mean Christian Faith} at its penultimate moment of hubris.
I deny no man his/her faith, but to confuse faith with science will prove fatal to our future. Similar enforcement of faith destroyed the ability of Soviet scientists to do good work; any science whose ideas appeared to conflict with the tenets of Marxism was crushed and its proponents killed or sent to the gulag. Russian science suffered immensely. We in America cannot afford to make the same mistake.
The intrusion of Christian Fundamentalism into science and politics has resulted in such ludicrous situations as one in which an American spy attempted to convert her French cohort to Christianity {instead of minding her business gathering intelligence). We need to get a handle on the fundamentalists in our government before they ruin our country. It is sad that it may be necessary to purge them from their positions the next time a Democratic president next comes to power, but the fundamentalists are far too wrong-headed and "pointed in the wrong direction" to leave in place - they must be removed.
And what's so bad about that? Without the pretense of religion, actions must be held accountable largely to reason and reason alone.
You cannot kill in the name of God if no God exists.
I'm a control systems engineer, which means I design electrical panels, program automation, and start up these kinds of systems. Think big machines with motors and hydraulics, etc. If there's a bug in my code, steel crashes and smoke comes out of the equipment.
When I'm onsite, I'm one of the lucky engineers because I get paid a straight time overtime rate (divide my salary by 2000 hours per year, and they give me that much for each overtime hour while I'm on the road for 2 to 4 months a year - not time and a half, just straight time). Many of the other engineers doing a similar job do not get this.
Meanwhile, when I go onsite to a unionized factory to install this equipment, I need to have a union electrician with me all the time. This is because I can't plug in my laptop because I'm not qualified, so I need to have an electrician do that for me, or at least be present when I do it. Also, I can't use an electrical meter to measure voltages in MY machine that I'm installing for them, so I have to get them to hold the meter and probes for me.
98% of the time I don't need these services, so the union electrician sits beside me reading a newspaper. I don't have a problem with this because generally they're nice guys, and they are skilled, but here's the kicker:
They didn't have to get a 4 or 5 year electrical engineering degree. They can't do my job, but I'm actually overqualified for their job... and while he's sitting there reading the newspaper, he makes 50% to 100% more per year than I do, even though I'm paid respectably based on salaries quoted on salary.com for my area.
I like my job, but the financial incentive clearly tells me I should have gone for the 2 year college course to be an electrician and gotten hired to a union shop.
That's where the science and technology edge has gone. An average American in a factory makes $22 to $45 an hour, and you wonder why the country can't compete with India and China for manufacturing jobs?
I can go online and hire 2 or 3 Indians to play my MMO game for me for a total of $1.50 an HOUR to power level my character. If there was free trade in the world, the western nations would be SCREWED.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Newton was a Christian, but he lived and worked in the time of the Renaissance, when the people of Europe took back their religion from the clutches of despotic priests and began to think again. And Darwin lived and worked when the power of the Church was even less than it was in Newton's time.
Your ignorance is rather humourous.
My Dad is an engineer that contracts for several organizations, one of them is the government. Recently hes been running around like a madman trying to get money to fund research.
When the democrats were in power and there was no war, there was plenty of money, such is not the case anymore.
I'm a professional, successful scientist, working at a world-class scientific laboratory, doing my best to make an impact on basic energy, climate, and materials science. I'm also a conservative Catholic Christian, exactly the type of person that most of the people in this discussion are railing against. If you followed all of the bile, you'd think that being a scientist and being a Christian were completely incompatible. I have never believed so. In fact, I consider them inextricable.
And it would seem that my colleagues find the positions compatible as well. I don't have the statistics readily at hand, but I believe that something like 75% of scientists believe in God.
(Discussions like this just make me tired. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to keep up a conversation that generates much more heat than light.)
Yea, it's rather ironic that one of Citibank's biggest stockholders is a Saudi prince.
the Spanish Empire under the Inquisition
When Queen Isabela demanded that Jews, Sephardim and Muslims, Spanish Moors either convert to Christianity or leave the Iberian Peninsula suffered a massive brain drain. It was mostly Jews and Moors that were educated in the different kingdoms of Iberia, most of which become Spain.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Congrats on your +5 Insightful, despite having many wrong and overly biased points.
America is always at some kind of crossroads. And you know what? It usually comes out pretty okay.
Talk to anyone in their 70s. They will all say the political climate today is INSANE. That politics around Vietnam were nowhere near as corrupted as things are today. We have religious right senators talking at Baptist Conventions on Sundays during the services, for peats sake, trying to build an extreme view of religion into the goverment. Our President, despite turning the world into a terror-filled place takes the longest vacations in US Presidential history. He should be impeached, but our own congress is too scared for their selfish reasons to stand up against this guy. Bush's actions have killed more Muslims/persons than Bin Laden, or Saddam. This will never be reported in the US news, though the entire world knows this. It's true- add it up. Why do you think everyone hates us? The conservatives are against abortion but don't mind at all killing 10's of thousands of Iraqi women and children, almost 2,000 US soldiers, or anyone else. I have yet to understand how that is in any way 'morals.'
The point being, this is a conservative country. Get used to it. It's always been that way, going back to its founding - remember, this country exists because people needed somewhere to go to practice their religion. The freedom to not practice religion was added later.
You couldn't be more wrong. Read the Declaration of Independence sometime and get back to me. This country was formed by persons RUNNING AWAY from crazy rulers/dicators like BUSH. LIBERAL. How more liberal can you get other than leaving across the Atlantic Ocean to get away from over-ruling leaders? If you read this document outloud on a public news station, you would probably be arrested under the Patriot Act. Read it- though I know no conservatives believe in this document, sadly enough.
Any sincerely religious person should be horrified at the prospect of this. Maybe those who aren't are merely using religion as a path to power?
"god is, by defenition, outside of the scope of science."
:)
But science is not outside the scope of God.
"the question of the existance of god is theology [think sub-division of philosophy]."
The question of God's existence is philosophy.
The question of God's presence is theology.
Philosophy and theology are subdivisions of basic human consciousness, which may be a node under God's existence (depending on your personal beliefs).
"the only people that i see bringing god into scientific debates are fanatics trying to prove god's existance through non-scientific methods and logical fallacies while claiming it as science [eg intelligent design]."
Your statement itself is a series of logical fallacies. "the only people that i see" (Hasty Generalization), "bringing god into scientific debates" (Begging the Question) "are fanatics trying to prove god's existance" [sp] (Appeal to Ridicule), "through non-scientific methods and logical fallacies" (Biased Sample), "while claiming it as science" (Circumstantial Ad Hominem).
"this does not make it science."
Nor does your argument stand up to its own accusations.
"evolutionists have no opinion on god from a scientific point of view."
"Evolutionists" maybe (if you are defining the term recursively to suit your own definition). But someone who believes in God is certainly entitled to believe that God constructed the universe through all manners of evolutionary process. A good scientist will acknowledge what he can know and can't know in terms of what's scientifically observable. However, many great scientists over the years have in fact openly expressed faith in God, and belief in science (as far as its methods of observation and proof are concerned in the observable world).
i.eat.zeroes.for.breakfast
In the early half of the 20th century the U.S. was relatively isolated from the rest of the world. While the infrastructures of most of the countries in the world were destroyed by World War 2 none of the destruction reached the US. As a result America became the leader in technology development.
The rest of the world has been a relatively peaceful place for the last 50 years. So now the rest of the world is catching up. It doesn't mean the US is doing worse, the rest of the world is doing better.
I just undid all my moderations in this thread to reply to you.
The port of Tripoli was blockaded by American ships and bombarded, but not taken. When the bey saw the Americans were too much for him a new treaty with Tripoli was drawn up and signed on June 4, 1805, which called for no further tribute. The treaty of 1796-97 had been annulled by the war. The treaty of 1805 does not have the passage: "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," but its Article XIV is practically the same as the previous treaty's Article XI with that omission. Like the treaty of 1796-97 however, this later treaty also showed the government of the United States to be impartial in matters of religion--that it had no established religion, and that the question of religion and religious opinions was not to be considered in national affairs. It showed that it was not the policy of the government to compel those within its jurisdiction who are not Christians to act as though they were.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Really, I watch cnn because I like it. I watch specials on the History Channel because I like them. I read slashdot because I like it. But when some adult comes in and whines "Do we HAVE to watch cnn/some show about history?" I change the channel, thus preventing me from learning about the world around me. It's frustrating; Knowledge is power, power is too misplaced, so I want to return balance to it.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
it's done.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
To Representative Hiestand the discrepancy between the Arabic and English texts of Article XI invalidates the authenticity of this Article and what it says about the United States not being founded on the Christian religion. But it should be remembered that it was the Barlow version which was read by President Adams and the Senate and ratified by them. The American government, if not the Tripolitan, agreed that the government of the United States is not founded on the Christian religion.
o li.html
the version ratified by Congress and signed by the President was the version WITH Article XI
and the link
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/1997/june_july97/trip
sorry
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
It's more than that, just take a look at the shit music they listen to these days. I mean God, if these kids actually thought for themselves instead of letting the RIAA mindrape them, well why would they bother to think for themselves when it's so much easier for someone else to do all the thinking? You know it's kind of funny, but I think the Baby Boomers had some of the same complaints towards us X'ers, too, and it goes farther than musical tastes.
I am a scientist working at a university and my salary comes entirely from research grants. Thanks to the Bush administration's bad attitude towards science, my funding will run out in a few months. I have written new grant proposals, applied for government research jobs and teaching jobs, but so far have had no luck at all. There are so many people out there right now who are in a similar situation, and many of them have even more experience than I do, so I really don't have a chance at competing with them.
The article commented about visa restrictions preventing talented people from coming to the U.S. to study or do research. I just don't see that at all. In my field, there are tons of foreign post-docs working in the U.S., and many them decide to stay here after their post-doctoral appointments are done. Ironically, I have been told by many people in my field that I should look for a job overseas, since I can't find one here. Instead of trying to cultivate the talent that is already here in the U.S., our government's policies and the hiring practices of many institutions are bringing in foreign scientists while American scientists are being told to look to other countries for employment. In principle, I'm not against bringing foreign talent to the U.S. to help with scientific research. I just don't think it makes sense to do this on a large scale when U.S. scientists are struggling to survive.
I've also heard the complaint from many industry leaders that they can't find Americans with the right technical and scientific skills to fill job openings, so they need to bring in foreign talent. I've started looking into industry jobs, and I'm beginning to realize that computerized resume searches may be partially to blame for the apparent lack of qualified applicants. Most of the job descriptions are so specialized that I don't think there would be anyone in the entire world who fit the job exactly and would have all the right keywords in their resume. It doesn't matter if corporations look for employees in the U.S. or in other countries if they aren't willing to invest in training their staff. The executives and upper level managers of most corporations probably don't have a lot of technical experience themselves, and yet they expect a prospective employee to show up at their first day of work and know everything there is to know about the corporation's products. This is unreasonable and impossible, given that this type of information is often proprietary and available only to people who already work at the company.
I think that there are plenty of talented scientists, engineers, and programmers in the U.S. but the policies of our government and the practices of large corporations make it nearly impossible for us to actually find work in our chosen fields. Until we fix these problems, the U.S. is going to get further and further behind the rest of the world.
> Vint Cerf and others are going on record to
> voice their concerns about the current
> administrations recipe for 'irrelevance and
> decline.'
The decline has been going on for a long time
including throughout the Clinton administration.
So was Cerf and other "concerned" members of
"academia" voicing their great "concern" over
the state of affairs then? Not likely. Besides,
when you see the light you will begin to under-
stand that the Democrats and Republicans are
both the enemies of a free, prosperous, and
healthy United States. Both parties betrayed us
a long time ago. America is getting what it
deserves because most Americans keep embracing
the garbage that both the Democrats and
Republicans keep dishing up.
1. LDS tends to consider itself a Christian Church. While some of us may disagree, we probably shouldn't spout it as a fact.
2. Capital punishment isn't exactly absent from the Bible. It is even proscribed as a just punishment in several cases.
3. Turn the other cheek has to be one of the most misunderstood phrases from the Bible. You are taking something completely out of context historically and in the work in which it appears. It doesn't mean to sit there and take abuse, it means to force your abuser to fight you like a man, rather than just backhand you like one would a subordinate.
4. The Bible teaches that those who work hard will prosper. Have you actually read it?
Sorry, but all those mean things that the Republicans said about Joe Wilson and his wife were true. Valerie did recommend her husband for the trip. Joe reported back findings to the CIA that seemed to indicate that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. And later on, Joe deliberately contradicts his own findings in his infamous newspaper article.
t .pdf
Go check out the report by the bipartisan Senate Intellgence Committee:
http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/US%20Repor
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
What's even funnier is how dumbass Libertarians think that they can do better, all the while not realizing that they are ideologically closer to communists than anyone else.
Here's the cycle of Aynrandistan:
1) Corporation A gains monopoly in A, B, and C.
2) Corporation B gains monopoly in X, Y, and Z.
3) Corporation A buys corporation B and gains monopoly in A, B, C, X, Y and Z.
4) Goto (1)
evolutionists have no opinion on god from a scientific point of view.
:)
For now. But I think evolution will be the best way, in the next few centuries, to come about as close to god as science can take us.
True, science cannot take us directly to god. The function 1/x x->infinitiy cannot take you to 0. It can go arbitrarily close, though.
Look it up. Honestly, *none* of the founding fathers were Christians. At best they were "deists", which is really a polite way to say "atheists", because deists believe that while a god exists, it does nothing and everything works by natural law just as if no god existed.
What has happened to the Americans.. the quintessential rationalists ??
I can't believe they're stifling science now. It's so easy to see that ID is wrong. Consider this:
If there was a designer, he certainly can't be compassionate.. why the heck would he design genes that cause only some people to be born with horrendous diseases like muscular dystrophy, or hemophilia. Were they born sinners? Then why would he be so unfair to only them? Why would he design genes that lead innocent people into terrible degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. I have seen absolutely devout people live and die miserably, simply because they inherited bad genes, and I've seen people who lead a life full of vices live happily and die peacefully, simply because they had the right genes. Certainly doesn't look like the work of an "intelligent" designer, who is fair to all.
Well, but as an Indian, I think I shouldn't worry about it. As matter of fact, I'm all for teaching Biblical biology in American schools. And why stop with that, why not Biblical mathematics. Check this:
A little known verse of the Bible reads
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about. (I Kings 7, 23)
The same verse can be found in II Chronicles 4, 2. It occurs in a list of specifications for the great temple of Solomon, built around 950 BC and its interest here is that it gives p = 3. Not a very accurate value of course and not even very accurate in its day, for the Egyptian and Mesopotamian values of 25/8 = 3.125 and 10 = 3.162 have been traced to much earlier dates.
Holy Jesus !!.. imagine those atheistic math teachers teaching pi = 3.1415926535897932384... and corrupting innocent American students.
And why stop at that.. why not Biblical Physics..Biblical paleontology (I heard some one built a biblical dino museum.. glory to them)
Let those non-Christian infidels from India and China learn things like pure mathematics, modern physics, and the cursed e* word.
After all Jesus is coming (in the summer of 2008 to Pat Robertson's Church ). I'm sure American's don't want to be left back in the line to see him...and don't let him catch your young people reading D..a..r..w..i..n (may his soul burn in hell).
I hope you get message I'm sending.
And so, it begins.....
HTTP/1.1 400
... but only maybe how to market things...
2 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml
Given the US came about software patents thru small squablings in court rooms and not public awareness and feedback and is now considering changing patent law to allow first to file to get patents on the works of slower to apply or those not wanting to patent their work...
From a British point of view, maybe this is a good thing, just make Science and Technology rewards attractive in the EU to get the talent to move there.
Isn't that similiar to Einstiens move away from his homeland, the motherland? And what was then accomplished to end a war amd establishing the winners...
Bush in many ways is a little hitler...
He doesn't seem to understand the words of Benjamin Franklin or FDR, which was to the effect - a country willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security neither deserves either nor will it have either...
Science understands the concept of not being able to prove a negitive..... So Bush wanted Iraq to prove it had no weapons of mass destruction....
Science and Bush just don't mix.
Technology??? Bill Gates and anti-trust.... A first and formost marketing company named Microsoft, second focus being law and something like playing chess in business, willing to sacrifice its own, take a smaller hit if it brings a bigger return. Not even is innovation a third priority of Microsoft, but rather buying it from others and calling it their genius..
What did the US government get in exchange for letting MS off the anti-trust hook, with only a public slapping of the wrist?
It should be obvious. The knowledge of how to well mislead the public at large, for what ever purpose it might... Anthrax used to get the Media VOICE inline???? Probably! Though Richard Jewell was blamed for the Olympic Park Bombing in Atlanta, they did eventually find the real guilt party..... But the Real party guilty of the Anthrax letters to the press..... Seems to have dropped out of public sight...
The most terrorism I have seen has come from the Bush Administration. How terrorising is it to see such power out of control, abusive?
The only science Bush seems to know is the science of marketing his will..
Do a google search on "Trillion dollar bet" to see the probably excuse for the WTC...
When is it not about money?
Do another party wrong, expect revenge?
The real solution to world problems is found @
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod0
Remove the excuses....
Which only leaves one question:
Why are genuine solutions NOT happening?
Science knows how to do it. Politicians Don't!
whether they're teaching the latest right wing religious doctrin or the latest left wing politically correct history. When you institute public schools, the govt decides the curriculum. When you institute public schools, you also make it very difficult for private schools to compete since public schools are largely tax payer funded, and therefore much cheaper. Therefore, having a public school system gives the govt. free reign to indoctrinate most children into their belief system.
Vote for Pedro
At least with the Clipper Chip, you still needed to go to court, get a warrant, and proceed via due process. Plus, no chip I ever saw, got us involved in a quagmire in the Middle East. So, yes, I did prefer the Clipper Chip people - they got us in a HELL OF A LOT LESS TROUBLE. But then I guess, people who don't recognize relativity of maginitude when talking about bad things are condemned to be stupid.
That is all.
Most of their big words, as well as the ones that are are simply represented phonetically, once had a Chinese character (kanji) associated with them. Modern words (usually taken from English) are represented with phonetic characters.
Chinese and Japanese can usually get the idea of each other's writing because most kanji have the same meaning(s) in both languages, and despite small changes, the actual form of the kanji are close enough to guess. Most words are formed as a combination of two kanji. For example "gin" (money) plus "kou" (go) = bank. It isn't always this simple but this is the basic process.
The biggest difference I think this makes in the language is that synonyms tend to be similar, because they will contain the same kanji in different permutations and order. In English, synonyms are usually completely distinct from one another. I don' really see a connection to mathematics.
My point is that, on the value of religion at least, Tom Paine clearly ran counter to the Founding Fathers.
Not to all of them. Thomas Jefferson, who was a deist and Freethinker not Christian, said religion is a private matter. Notice that Jefferson also used "nature's creator" when writing the DOI, Declaration of Independence. As far as the "God" of the Old Testament, he writes "a being of terrific character -- cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust".
FalconShould there be a Law?
""god is, by defenition, outside of the scope of science."
:)"
But science is not outside the scope of God.
irrelevant to my statement and is another field of discussion, as i pointed out.
""the question of the existance of god is theology [think sub-division of philosophy]."
The question of God's existence is philosophy.
The question of God's presence is theology.
Philosophy and theology are subdivisions of basic human consciousness, which may be a node under God's existence (depending on your personal beliefs)."
which is not a scientific argument [see above].
""the only people that i see bringing god into scientific debates are fanatics trying to prove god's existance through non-scientific methods and logical fallacies while claiming it as science [eg intelligent design]."
Your statement itself is a series of logical fallacies. "the only people that i see" (Hasty Generalization), "bringing god into scientific debates" (Begging the Question) "are fanatics trying to prove god's existance" [sp] (Appeal to Ridicule), "through non-scientific methods and logical fallacies" (Biased Sample), "while claiming it as science" (Circumstantial Ad Hominem).
"this does not make it science.""
while you may not like the way i stated it, the fact remains that god is outside the field of science. you can shoot the messenger all you want, but faith and science are different beasts.
""evolutionists have no opinion on god from a scientific point of view."
"Evolutionists" maybe (if you are defining the term recursively to suit your own definition). But someone who believes in God is certainly entitled to believe that God constructed the universe through all manners of evolutionary process. A good scientist will acknowledge what he can know and can't know in terms of what's scientifically observable. However, many great scientists over the years have in fact openly expressed faith in God, and belief in science (as far as its methods of observation and proof are concerned in the observable world)."
irrelevant to my statement [see above].
whether or not an evolutionary scientist may or may not hold a personal religious view has nothing to do with their scientific opinion ["...from a scientific point of view"]. the minute they introduce god into the discussion, they are no longer espousing a scientific argument.
and i will also take a moment to point out that i did not say people weren't entitled to hold any religious belief(s) they might choose. evolution and faith are not mutually exclusive in the individual, but they are different fields.
in summary, you chose to play a lot of word games while actually saying very little that was actually pertinent to my original post.
good night.
sum.zero
One area is the protectionist movement that is afoot that will doom us. This idea that we can lock down the borders both to immigrants; illegal or not; as well as trade wise. The idea that everything will be A-OK if we just quit importing so much stuff.
/. appealing buzz-words. No wonder why it got rated insightful, it caters to the horde here.
Well it doesn't work that way. Isolationism/Protectionism doom economies fast.
It is easy to blame Christians simply because Bush; who is openly Christian; is not in favor on Slashdot. But it is this type of ignorance that belies the real problems. Bush and Christians aren't the reason America is losing its lead in technology. It is the age of selfishness that is. The age of entitlement, the age of me.
The second major area is the schools.
Look at our schools. They are no longer areas of learning, they are bastions of political correctedness. We are no longer looking to educate we are looking to mollify hurt feelings. We have educators who actually support not failing students because it hurts their feelings or because they are part of one ethnic group or another. We no longer reward achievement; in fact we have big disincentives. Class valor dictorian is no longer one person it is many, again because we don't want to hurt the feelings of those who weren't the best. We spend more time worrying about mascots than the students. We spend too much money on administrators and grief counselors rather than improving education. We have more rules to protect bad teachers than to promote good ones!
We cannot be the best if we don't expect of our children. We cannot be first if we tell them its okay to come in second place because we will fix it so second place is the highest you can achieve.
We don't need to get back to winner takes all but we sure in the hell need to get back to at least having winners.
Your post is a catch all of
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Well the debate certainly got off of science and onto politics and religion in a hurry.
The religious leanings or lack thereof of the Fed Govt must be a minor factor in the decline of the scientific ecology in the US when stacked against low wages (compare to real estate agent, stockbroker), total lack of job security, poor image (who has the best image on tv: rapper, lawyer, medical worker, or geek?)
No, the young people in the US know what value their society really places on scientific achievement and the answer is not much. Religion has nothing to do with it.
Our failing is not due to the "right wing" or religion. Religion and science are not incompatible, Newton and Einstein come to mind, the Vatican operates a world class observatory that is highly regarded, hell the Dean of the Chemistry department at a California state university that I attended was a Catholic priest. On a more practical side do you think that among all those scientists and engineers from the 40s-70s who gave us our tremendous lead there was a lack of churchgoers?
You could also argue that the "left wing" has done quite a bit of damage to the US educational system as well. Catering to unions and administrators at the expense of kids in the classroom, relaxing standards (my California HS required only one year of math to graduate), failing to push the more able children to attain excellence, social promotions, being overly concerned with a child's feelings and self image (if they are not performing at their ability they should be scolded), etc. I've talked to various older members of my family. In the 40s and 50s the local high school had two tracks, one college prep and one vocational, both had plenty of appropriate math and science classes. I once applied for a job at a lumber supply yard, they gave me a written test with simple math problems involving fractions. I turned it in and asked if this was a joke, the manager said he wished it was, he said most recent high school grads can't figure out 3/8 + 3/16. That didn't happen much in previous decades when kids were required to take one type of math class or the other.
The real solution to our education problems is simple, don't let immature and lazy kids make life altering decisions. Make them take lots of math and science classes. At least they'll have more options when they graduate and not be locked out of certain paths due to a bad decision when they were 14.
"Newton was a Christian"
Isaac Newton was a Unitarian, thanks very much. Like his friend John Locke. Please get your facts straight before accusing others of ignorance.
Have there been bad Christians? Yes. Have there been good ones too? Most definately. You can't point to any group that big and say they're all the same, just like you can't do that with blacks or women.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
I think we're pretty much already there. Not everywhere, but certainly in many places and that may be the dominant social trend.
It will be increasingly difficult to maintain economic superiority when we've almost completely off-shored our manufacturing capability. A great deal of the US economy today is centered around brain share products. We don't make anything tangible.
It's a bizarre and unholy union of religion and big business that's slowly turning us into the largest third world country on the planet.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
when the US caves and begins universal health care. The doctors will suffer, because their salaries will be determined by govt. healthcare payouts. The govt. will cut these payments as much as possible to keep taxes low.
Vote for Pedro
While we'd be in trouble due to lack of Chinese parts they'd be in trouble due to lack of US purchases.
The world economy these days is was too intermingled to allow simply cutting out a large player like the US.
Did you know that China is currently in the middle of an oil shortage because of internal price controls?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
anti-semitism was already ripe (which is really ironic, considering that the Arabs are also semitic.)
Ah, I'm not the only one who thinks that an Arab being antisemitic is ironic. To me that word is used incorrectly. Both Jews or Hebrews, and Arabs or Muslims, are descended from Abraham who was a Semite. Arabs, Muslims, are from Abraham's first born, Ishmael, whereas Jews or Hebrews are from Isaac, his second.
They rejected the Jews out of hand when they were actually a gift, not an invasion. Nazi propaganda still circulates in the Middle East.
Something not many people know is that at first the NAZIs encouraged European Jews to emmigrate, signing two agreements with Jews. The first, the "Haavara Agreement", had German Jews settling in Palestine. The Rublee-Wohlthat-Abkommen, the second encouraged Jews to settle anywhere outside of Europe.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I had a teacher that pointed out to my class in high school (I forgot who this teacher was please forgive me?) he noticed that generaly the US swings between conservative and liberal about every 50 years. For a while we will be all uber conservative and after getting tired of that we swing back to the liberal. Think about it what we did to form this country was incredible, saying to the king (supposedly in contact with god) that he could spin on this here mid digit till he squiled like a pair of pigs on honey moon. We said the people will rule, not the upper class but all people will have a fair chance to have their concerns heard. We chose to go with that for a while and then decided to experiment with being conservative the very thing that made us hate the UK so much. Our time is no different people who grew up liberal now feel that it is dangerous to be too liberal and that it will destroy us. This and last generations sexual liberality has made it risky and near deadly to have "casual sex" so we decided that maybe it is not so much a good idea to run up every skirt we see and first get to know the person first. But we cant just try to back out of it slowly we must first destroy all hazards and then once that is done we now are rather conservative. The next generation or maybe the next after them will feel safe enough to persue expressing liberation that our country was founded on and most likely take it too far because more than likely it will not be sex but some new idea or activity different than the others before because we now know the dangers from experiances from the past. This is unfortunatly america, in constant swing too unsafe due to little forethought and too much safety from over reachion often for the wrong reasons. what is the next fad liberation for us? I dont know we are only now realing in over reaction from the last. I do however fear that I am entering the reaction fase and will have to live with the constraints we will now impose on our selves for the childrens sake so they will never have to worry about the mistakes we have now made. But I do think it is in america's nature to experiment and test the limits of what is considered right and wrong and only later think what we could have done to make us safer. I can only hope that america will choose to forego ultra conservatism and consier us all. For my sake and the children's.
Regardless of the merits of the article, the submitter needs to be aware of the difference between an editorial and an actual article. This is a weekly opinion column, i.e. a soapbox. This is very different from the BBC actually producing an article on the subject.
the amazing part is that ho chi minh wanted a democracy in there. He only turned to the chinese because America would have nothing to do with him or backstab a friend. Overall I liked Eisenhower, but this was one of his bigger mistakes.
And before Ho Chi Min asked from help from the US Mao asked as well but the US turned him down which left him only one option, Russia.
Overall I liked Eisenhower, but this was one of his bigger mistakes.
Agreed. And what ironic is that it was Eisenhower who made the state about being wary of the military industrial complex. It was his actions in Viet Nam that strengthened it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you read between the lines on this, you would get the impression that we can only be scientific leaders if we were a religious country. However, American technological leadership peaked in World War II, and at that time we were distinctly a religious, racist, and sexist country.
With that in mind, I think we need to rethink how and why we teach science. Teaching young boys that science is "cool" is a recipe for boredom. Those of us boys who do well in science all realize at some level that science is a tool for domination. However, that message is not being taught because it is considered politically incorrect to dominate.
Therefor, I propose that:
a) we segregate men and women in public schools.
b) we teach men that as American citizens they are the vanguard of a vast commmercial empire and that science is one of the tools for our dominance.
I guarantee that within a generation, we will be at the top of the world, again.
This is my sig.
"I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus--very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its Author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great Reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were He to return on earth, would not recognize one feature."(as above, vol. 14, pg. 385)
Ok, thanks for that. I don't recall having come across this before.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Hey, don't forget: loud is the new good.
The article perpetuates the myth that government is the engine of innovation. It isn't. The reason the US has been at the forefront of innovation is because we have (or used to have) low taxes and low regulation.
I don't think anyone would dispute the incredibly destructive effect that the baby boomers (and the echo booms) have on the economies of the world. Alternating between labour surpluses and labour shortages is unhealthy. Massive surges in the number of retired people, massive surges in the number of people in the public school system and in postsecondary schools, etc. The world's infrastructures are meant to handle stable or gradually increasing population sizes, and the baby boom and echo booms mess it all up.
So, I took a look at the website you've been touting on several posts. There's a book by Stuart Kauffman "The Origins Of Order", which clearly satisfies the requirements of the prize. Since other titles of Prof. Kauffman are listed, I can't see how they could have missed that one...
TOOO shows how auto-catalytism of peptides (tiny tiny molecules, 2 amino-acids or more, occur in non-living natural form etc.) could have formed the primeval building blocks. He provides a testable model for it. The test works. He uses the results to validate his model and then demonstrates the implications of those results.
One of the fundamental theses within TOOO is that of interconnection and interaction. A massive neural network without any connectivity is completely useless, make it highly connected and you end up with a brain. The same principles can apply to the evolution of life itself - interaction is the key, not any static properties.
TOOO then also addresses the limits that evolution must work within, and how even the simplest of these sets of peptides can become complex and integrated. He shows that order and chaos can be harnessed by evolution in a similar fashion to mutation and sex. He shows these are complementary approaches.
So why hasn't he won your prize ?
As for Logically, God exists and life has meaning, or He doesn't and it does not. There is no in-between for a binary condition., well that's not a binary condition (it's total bollocks as well, but leaving that to one side...)
There are four states for any two binary orthogonal values A and B, they are {A,B}, {A,!B}, {!A,B}, {!A,!B}. The only case your assertion holds is in the degenerate case where A=B (at which point A and B are not orthogonal)
For example, I do not believe in god (so god does not exist, at least for me), but my life has meaning to me.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Intellectually bankrupt. 'A pox on both their houses' is fine if you've just been stabbed, but comparing Republican education policy to Democratic education policy is beyond stupid.
Science and knowledge are not 'a point of view' or a 'perspective' that needs to have both sides taught. Superstition and myth do not have equal standing with reason and rationalism.
Here's a clue; one of these parties wants to teach religion in science classes. One of them doesn't. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Mind you, these are only the last death spasms of organized religion as we know it. No, not the belief in God. But organized religion is dying out and it is spasmotically flailing about as best as it can on its last dying breaths. An entity as large as it is, will take a bit of time to do its last flails.
See
this site for numbers of Nobel Prizes, 1902-2002:
UK - 100
Germany - 77
France - 49
Sweden - 30
Switzerland - 22
all more than Stanford's 17.
Energy: time to change the picture.
(though the Christians were wildly intolerant when they started the Crusades).
Yeap, even Pat Robertson is calling for Chevez's assassination. Another so called Christian minister calling for murder.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The printing press was invented for one purpose only: To spread the Word.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
I saw Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn give their 2005 ACM Turing Award Lecture yesterday at UPenn. The thing that amazed me most was the demographics of the audience. There were enough 40-50 something men there to give me the creeps (OK, I'm guilty, I've been in this field too long, myself). But three things stuck out: the relatively small number of American women, the relatively larger number of Asian women, and the large number of Asians in general.
At work I lead a team of four developers, two men (Americans) and two women (Asians). It shouldn't have come as a surprise, but my workplace (and the lecture crowd) isn't representative of what my past experience has been. I guess I need to get out more. Anyway, I find it quite interesting that Vint Cerf's name and the demise of Americans in tech, science, what have you, are in the same sentence, since I had my epiphany at his lecture.
I tried today to converse (remotely) with one of my Asian staffers but it was polite banter and I didn't pursue the apparent majority of Asian students. She did observe that American interest in tech was waning due to outsourcing - agreed; but it doesn't explain the explosion of Asian students of CS/IT in this country. I will definitely talk with both my staffers some more, as they are wonderful friends.
The lecture was great, by the way!
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
You can't blame the west's decline in science and technology on right-wing politics. Quite the opposite, actually. America and the rest of the western world are showing a stagnation now because the Cold War is over; we don't need to rush to out-innovate the Soviets anymore. Furthermore, we're presently in a period of declining indistrialization. Major industries are now contending with the heavy burden of index pensions, and government has much of its funding tied up in socialist-style programs that never really worked, and prevent from reinvesting in high research spending industries like private industry, the military or space programs (this is far more true here in Canada than in the states). What I'm really arguing that our twentieth-century boom in science is planing out right now as a result of lack of motivation and because of experimentation with socialist models of economic development that have been proven not to work. From my high arctic perspective, I'd say that Bush's government is actually doing quite well in bringing about a resurge in R&D and industrialization before the end of the decade. There is new competition in the Far East to keep up with (though thankfully, much more peaceful competition than the Soviets), and the American public seem to be sophisticated enough to not become dogmatic about their philosophy (eg: science need not be atheistic, it need only have merit). Veritas totam superavit
Between managed care and lawsuits, we're losing doctors.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
"since private Catholic schools teach the theory of evolution"
Sure. With a wink and a nod.
Or do you think Jesuits were ignorant savages?
"Outside the media drumbeaters, even the leading evolutionist experts agree that life has the appearance of design."
Can you name the leading evolutionary experts and can you give me a link? What your saying is interesting and bears further study. I'm hoping that you can send me links to the leading evolutionary experts agreeing in the manner you describe.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Would YOU like it if somebody blew up Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore was carved in the Black Hills which were unconstitutionally seized land from the Great Sioux Reservation! The Great Sioux Reservation originally incompassed much of the northern midwest states by treaty. But as more and more land was seized by white settlers the Sioux were driven onto smaller and smaller reservations. There was one treaty after another that was broken.
So to answer your question I'd rather see Mount Rushmore returned to the Sioux and for them to decide what to do with it themselves.
or burnt the original copy of the American Declaration of Independence?
I'd rather have people know that Thomas Jefferson wrote the DOI on hemp paper and what other terrific uses could be made of hemp, aka marijuana.
FalconShould there be a Law?
> I think you'll find the business attitudes of people like Carly Fiorina et al, the dot com boom and bust, and the overhyping of nanotechnology probably had a lot more to do with it. Research needs cash and after the tech crash, 9/11 or any other tipping point existed for the economy, I think you'd find that research just wasn't a dead cert anymore and people pulled out their cash in droves.
I think the will to fund deep R&D faltered long before then. Even the feds aren't interesting in funding much of anything without short term military applications any more.
Sadly, most of our scientists who would have been doing deep R&D thirty years ago now spend all their time writing grant applications so they can maintain a trickle of cash to keep their grad students productive.
> Science and research in teh US is more closely linked to the economy than religion.
It's linked to both, and to a lot of other things as well, but it's hard to deny that Bush's ban on stem cell research and adovcacy for ID is anything other than appeasement for the religious conservatives who helped put him in office.
The castration of environmental science, OTOH, is obviously appeasement for a different group that also helped put him in office.
> As far as evolution versus creationism goes, I've never seen any reason why they can't go hand in hand, although I fail to see how you can take either literally unless you were there...
That's a lame excuse for evolution denial. Or do you think it's never possible to figure out what happened if you didn't see it? If you are home alone with your dog and you hear a lamp fall over behind you and see the dog bolt past you from behind, do you find yourself wishing you had seen it fall so you'd know whether the dog did it?
The arguments "no one was there", "maybe God made the fossils to fool people", and "you can never know anything for sure" are the surest signs that creationism has exhausted every last possibility to provide a theory consistent with the evidence, so that its proponents must now fall back on nihilism, omphalism, and bad theology to support their views.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
... I respectfully have to disagree.
This is not because Europeans are inherently smarter. Rather I attribute it to three facts:
1) Non corporate media is dominant (i.e. more news vs. sensationalism)
2) European countries are much smaller i.e. Europeans have lots of 1st hand experience with foreigners and foreign countries.
3) Class struggle has shaped much of Europeans societies. Even hobos on the street know whom to vote for is in their best interest and in fact do vote
to such statements and attitudes is "Keep on thinking that, and stay out of the field. It keeps my salary high!"
Most definately.
That is most definitely not how to spell 'definitely.'
And anyone familiar with Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson knows full well what they thought on the subject.
Opponents of religion in American life always trot out statements by Paine and Jefferson, which is rather ridiculous. Paine was run out of the U.S. as a radical, and died unlamented in France. Jefferson was considered radical by the likes of George Washington and John Adams, as well as most of the "founding fathers". Jefferson wasn't invited to be part of the Constitutional convention for that very reason. Jefferson was severely criticized for his attempts to separate government and religion in public life during his time as president; his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists was an attempt to justify an unpopular policy, and represented his very personal take on the language of an amendment he didn't write. His predecessors Washington and Adams did not hesitate to proclaim days of tranksgiving and national prayer, and later presidents did not follow Jefferson's practices. Nor did those who actually played a role in drafting the 1st Amendment (unlike Jefferson) agree with his rather radical interpretation of it. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson engaged in a long correspondence on these matters among others, and those who wish to have an original understanding of the U.S. Constitution would do well to read a little more widely regarding the history of the early American republic.
In fact, many U.S. states had established state churches for decades after the U.S. Constitution was enacted. Massachusetts was the last to end that practice in 1833, and even then, state governments freely mixed the Christian religion and government in many ways. The idea that this is somehow violative of the U.S. Constitution is an idea of very new vintage indeed, certainly not older than 1947, and as a practical matter of more recent vintage than that.
If you are going to argue that an original understanding of the 1st Amendment requires a strict separation of church and state, you will have to do better than Paine and Jefferson, neither of whom had anything to do with the drafting of that language, one of whom wasn't even a citizen of the U.S. at the time the 1st Amendment was drafted, and both of whom were considered radical anti-clericals by the vast majority of the Founders and U.S. citizens of the time. Washington's and Adams' more conventional views of religion and the polity are far more representative of the thinking of the time and far more useful for the purposes of analysis.
Car salesmen and bankers have a name for people like you - "suckers". They make their money off of people who don't understand things like compound interest.
I've also had contractors try to take advantage of me by selling me 1000 sq ft and delivering 700, hoping I didn't know math.
Take one of those "get rich quick through real estate" seminars. Many of their techniques rely on suckering other people who don't understand the math part of money.
If you operate under the assumption all are equal you completely drain motivation out of struggling to achieve in life and you give everyone a free pass to be practically worthless because you tell them they have inherent worth by just being alive.
Well now that depends. It's true if you're talking about equal outcome but you're wrong if you're talking about equal opportunity. I believe everyone should have the opportunity, then it's up to them if they secede or fail, or at least that's how is should be.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What an incredibly misleading article.
a l%20R&D%20Spending%20Chart.pdf
a l%20Non-Defense%20R&D%20Spending%20Chart.pdf
The US is not sixth in percentage of wealth spent on R&D, as the article says, when defense and corporations are factored in.
Ironically, many of the things the author listed as examples of US inventions/improvements on inventions, came from defense spending: the jet engine, computer, radar, jumbo jet, internet, lasers, and GPS. None of those things would either exist or be what they are today without US defense spending. You would think giving those examples, he would factor in defense spending into some of his funding stats.
He is also being disingenuous by including complaints about Bush, and then only including statistics from the '06 budget. If you look at the budget from since he took office, both defense and regular R&D have increased absolutely incredible amounts.
Here is Federal R&D Spending with defense included:
http://www.ostp.gov/html/budget/2006/Charts/Feder
Non-Defense Federal R&D Spending:
http://www.ostp.gov/html/budget/2006/Charts/Feder
Obviously, the second one is what the author was looking at. That tiny little decrease after 5 years, under the Bush administration, of very high increases.
How the hell can someone write an article, much of which blames the president, without even mentioning an approximate 40% increase in federal R&D during his administration?
... Dubya's crowd, I'm afraid this has been going on for much longer...
Back in the 50's and 60's there were research organizations throughout corporate America -- even a number of basic research departments (yes, that's right -- BASIC research, not just APPLIED research).
And corporate America had at least one eye focused on the big picture, making plans beyond the next quarter and being more concerned about the welfare of the company than their bonuses and severance packages.
Over the intervening years, we have seen not only basic, but applied research departments closed down in all but the largest companies. Emphasis has shifted to the current quarter (never mind the next quarter, we'll deal with it next quarter).
All that Dubya can take credit for is using the Religious Right to pummel the weakened science establishment. And the most likely reason he has chosen to attack the scientific establishment is that they ARE weakened and do not represent any sort of political (or other) power in contemporary society. Dubya picks his victims well.
The fault is in our society, and its view of science. Why we belittle the importance of science, and ignore the methodology of the scientific method, I know not, but it is manifested in the declining fraction of college and university science graduates for a much longer time than Dubya has been a factor.
Dubya is more the symptom of the problem than the cause.
I am greatly amused by the old conservative saw of the liberal media. There was a time when the media was liberal, but not anymore. Journalism is dead in America. Thank God for the internet.
Yeah, Europeans have a reputation for being cosmopolitan. While Americans have always been more self-absorbed. It's part of our culture... We don't need no durn furriners, this is Amurica!
"The current interpreation is very different to this intention, of course."
4 826941/qid%3D1124855236/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/10 2-0387518-0390541?v=glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/068
"Liberal and conservative constitutional arguments--"original intent" versus "unenumerated rights," and so on--are very stale, but Yale Law School professor Amar and attorney-writer Hirsch aim to change that by attacking the assumptions of both camps in a populist interpretation of the "grand corpus of democratic rights" contained in "the Framers' Constitution." Other scholars, Amar and Hirsch argue, undervalue sections of the Constitution, scrutinize each section in isolation from other sections, and focus on "the Madisonian dilemma" (majority rule versus minority rights), without recognizing those rights the document grants or acknowledges that belong, not to individuals, but to "We the People." They discuss these rights in terms of four "boxes" (ballot, jury, cartridge, and lunch), presenting constitutional readings so different from recent decisions that For the People is sure to give Court TV's usual suspects apoplexy. A healthy challenge to conventional wisdom, with significant implications for public policy, from how we change the Constitution and state statutes and who serves on juries and in the military to what a constitutional government owes its citizens. Mary Carroll"
Tell them Jesus was a liberal Jew. :)
Science and religion are opposites in one regard. In religion you believe and then the proof comes. In science there's the proof, then the belief. Which requires the greater leap?
Can you provide me with some information on this matter? I can find nothing on google concerning the US loosing doctors. On the contrary, the information points to the opposite - we are importing them like mad, even from other first-world countries like the UK and in particular Canada. Anecdotally, I have never heard of a doctor leaving the US, except for short-term humanitarian-type work.
Anyone care to comment on this?
Link
Second, name them, please. To the best of my knowledge only Jefferson did that, although most of the founders would be very out of place in most christian churches today.
I don't know as I can name all but I can name another besides Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine:
Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion
Ah, here's more:
Many of the leaders of the French and American revolutions followed Deism, including John Quincy Adams, Ethan Allen, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and George Washington, many others.
Here's another page that lists more:
FalconThe Christian Nation Myth. That's nine listed here but I do believe if I spend more tyme I could get more names.
Should there be a Law?
Private schools do not have the demographics of public schools. Aside from the debate on measuring students and baises in testing, there no fair comparision:
demographics are different for kids, parents, income, etc. There are fewer private schools, they can reject anybody and are not as diverse. Culture in america about education is different.
Other countries are getting better. Education is not a product, you have fixed limitations.
The deviations are getting smaller, making the rankings less relevant.
In America a political war for education is being waged. This is hurting the students enough that I expect it to show up in such testing. If you look into it, you'll see there are high-ranking ones who are bent on destruction of the american public school system.
Making it suck, marketing it as sucking, making it costly (or appear so,) and creating lose-lose situations ("leave no child behind") are the best way to get people to give it up.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Where did you get your PhD?
Nowhere, I'm still working on my BS. I just read a lot and at one tyme I was taking Chinese, spoken Mandrin Chinese along with Chinese ideograms and the pinyin Romanizatized writing. The text we used for language was "Read And Write Chinese". Although it was years ago when I was taking it I still have the book on my desk.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It is truly sad to see the death of centers of excellence like Bell Labs, Xerox Parc...
Once more, most of the astronomy, architecture, mathematics and other scientific advances attributed to the Arabs weren't invented by them. I researched it a while ago and was surprised to find one by one that nearly all of these things were either invented by Europeans, Indians, or by non-Arabs within the Islamic Caliphate. The Renaissance happened because of Greek refugees arriving in Italy after the Muslims destroyed Byzantium - that's why the renaissance began in Italy.
The cold truth is most of what we've heard about the Arabs inventing everything was the product of 1950s Arab nationalism. It's largely a fiction that European and American journalists and intellectuals adopted unquestioningly.
In fact, during the colonial period he was a member of the Church of England, and had been baptized as such.
Once doesn't mean always. Though I was technically, and still am, Roman Catholic because that's what my mom is when I was little I considered myself as having converted to Buddhism, and now I'm agnostic.
Just because everyone else hates your religion or lack thereof doesn't mean they have the right to force you to change your beliefs.
That's right but many feel they can make others follow their rules by making them laws. That's where I draw my line, as long as somebody isn't harming another then let them do what they want. And if they do harm to someone then charge them with that harm.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The current 'President' is, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured, I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You are all missing the point.
Remember Luke 4:5-8
" 5The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7So if you worship me, it will all be yours."
8Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'"
and
John 18:36
" Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."
Giving the Church secular power isn't wrong because it pollutes the secular world. Giving the Church secular power is wrong because it CORRUPTS THE CHURCH. Jesus said so.
The problem in politics is that The so-called "Christian Right" isn't really Christian. They have sold their souls to the devil to pursue political power. That is why they are an embarassment to Jesus, and bring disrespect and contempt on the true Church.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
The U.S. is doing just fine in science and technology. The number of top-notch research universities in the U.S. alone is a good indicator when held for comparison against any other nation.
Sure, a lot of those graduate students are not U.S. citizens. But what most other nations (and their citizens) fail to understand is that the U.S. succeeds because it is an aggregator, not in spite of it. When a German sees a German student doing brilliant work at MIT, they focus on that person's German-ness. "Look," they say, "a German is doing brilliant work." But when an American sees the same thing, they focus on where the work is being done: the U.S. When the German is ready to work, it is likely they will go to work for an American company or university. And even if they return to Germany, they bring back American language and culture to Germany, while leaving the fruits of their work behind in the U.S., in English, as institutional knowledge. It's like a factory where foreign nationals come into the U.S. to drop off years of their best-quality work and research.
Anyone performing work in the U.S. is helping perpetuate the U.S. success in technical fields. And because the U.S. is a melting pot state, rather than a nation of people with a latent tribal identity, we're happy to take anyone who can help us keep moving forward. That is the base strength of America, and one not likely to change. In fact the Bush administration is fighting for more open immigration policies right now.
Einstein was born a German and did his most groundbreaking work as a German. But he died an American, and the U.S. implemented the greatest geopolitical advantage from his work--the nuclear bomb. That's a good metaphor for science and America in general.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
which is putting a huge downward pressure on wages for scientists and engineers. When I look at the big companies in my field (chemistry), virtually none are expanding their R&D in the US. At best, I am competing for jobs opened by retirements. On the other hand, if I wanted to work in China, there would be no problem at all. All the big companies are hiring and expanding.
This is not a problem for lawyers or doctors.
I agree that the market will work to even out the wages, but our R&D system is going to take a huge hit before that works its way through.
America has NOT always been a country where corporate rights daily expanded exponentially over individual rights
I think that we are about parallel to the 2nd or 3rd century AD of the Roman way, burning the candle about 2x as fast, 700BC-476AD vs 1500/1600-? and comparing histories and evolving cultural parallels.
Mod parent insightful, you political pandering douchebags. Even if you don't agree with what he says, the truth is still there. Has the modding system degraded this much?
A very similar conversation happened in one of the classic Dilbert strips. The punch line is the PHB saying "We like them bright but clueless", and one of the engineers saying "I fee sorry for people like that".
The Founding Fathers were also slave owners, and built a nation on the destruction of indigenous people as well. So it looks like the Founding Fathers were as human as present day man, and as flawed. Maybe if they had built on christian principles, instead of pooh pooing them. There wouldn't have been a civil war, and we'd be living peacefully with the Indians.
Or three "dads" and a mothers. As long as a person isn't harming another then nobody should be able to tell them what they can and can not do!
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm not even sure if this is worth making an attempt. Scanning this incredibly long thread it's obvious that most of the comments left on this topic are hate filled, so the chances of actually getting to a good discussion of facts are probably slim and none, but we'll see. Some topics cannot be properly addressed in sound bites, and I hope that's not what I'm doing here.
First I think the term "religious" is both over-used and equivocal. (as is the term "faith", but that's another subject) It seems that most often when someone refers to something as "religious" the context of their statement is referring to someone who professes to be part of Christianity in one of it's various forms. While that may be true in some circumstances I think it would be better to use another definition of it: "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to..." A better application of the concept of being religious would be a person who is faithful to their worldview. In other words everyone has a system of beliefs, and if they hold to them they could be said to be religious.
Now I can hear the first objection. Someone has caught on that that's implying that all systems must be belief systems when all along they thought they believed in cold hard facts. Well that may be, but I'll get to that.
On a side note... I can't figure out why there always so much hate America, blame everything that's bad on us, and give us credit for nothing that's good. Its perfectly understandable that someone probably said or did something stupid in your experience that gave you a bad impression, but hey guess what people aren't perfect. People do stupid things. Does that mean we're going to hate everything about everybody? A lot of people in America for various reasons hate California. I on the other hand can't think of a more incredible place, but then doesn't everyone love where they're from? When did it become a crime to be patriotic, or speak highly of the accomplishments of your fellow countrymen? Don't you do the same? And guess what... when someone from another country shows a little enthusiasm towards their country we tend to look at it a little oddly through the bias of our experience in our own country just as you do. So everyone just needs to take a deep breath and lighten up a little.
I really don't want to waste a lot of time off topic though.
If we're going to determine if ID is good science or not then shouldn't we have a clear idea of what good science is in the first place? It's easy to say this new fangled idea is bad, but is it?
How about Darwinism? Is it good science? Well... maybe. I suppose any belief system can have supporting arguments picked apart, because after all their only purpose is to confirm or deny the accuracy of the primary argument or a portion of it, and as a stand-alone argument it may appear incomplete. However if we can point to conclusive evidence then the debate is over.
Has the belief system that's being taught as fact today in our school, Darwinism, produced this irrefutable evidence? There are two major hurdles that are still unanswered. How does macro evolution explain the necessity of abiogenesis in it's theory and where are the missing transitional forms?
People have attempted to point to transitional forms in the past, but even the best attempts at this are left with gaping holes in the fossil record. For example if you were going to say that fins turned to feet because of evolution which is a gradual process, then you can't show a fin in one specimen, a second specimen that's half and half, and a third that's all foot. Such drastic changes could not be considered evolution. In order for a life form to evolve slowly from one form to another you would see an extensive fossil record where a feature such as a fin changes in very small increments with each new birth. (eg. 99%fin/1%foot, 98%fin/2%foot, 97%/3%, 96%/4%, etc..) We don't see this in the record because such changes would render the item that was evolving useless until en
Franklin said in his autobiography that deism, though may be true, wasn't worth much. He was a deist in his youth, but by the time of the Constitutional Convention he was not. Only if you define 'deny divinity of Christ' as did not subscribe to any particualt denomination does Franklin (or most founders) fit. His autobio is avaliable on Guttenberg, it is worth the read.
Washington: To be a vestryman in that episcopal church, he signed a document stating that he accepted the Episcopal doctrine. If he didn't believe it, Washington of all people would not have signed it. That doesn't mean that he liked or agreed with the 'ostentatious display(s) of religious zeal' that others had. these quotes should put to rest any deistic ideas about washington. A deist doesn't call on God for aid, protection, or call him "the Divine Author of our blessed religion" etc...
Jefferson: He had decided that none of the current denominations were correct, and as such stripped christianity down to what could be proved (in his mind) In a way, he did not 'accept' the divinity of Christ, but it was more of a rejection of the current churches than anything. He at least believed Christ lived, and that his teachings were the best ever. To the christians of his time, and of our time, he was not a normal christian. On the other hand, I could pick and choose quotes from him that make him look totally christian, just like the link you gave made him look atheist. Neither are the truth.
The founders were not fundies like there are today, that much should be obvious. (and the fundies don't like it much either!) On the other side, most were not deists, at least not by the definitions given in your link. (and the anti-christians of today don't like this!) Both sides want the Founders to support their own agenda - The founders would have found both agenda's repulsive.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Isaac Newton was a Unitarian, thanks very much. Like his friend John Locke. Please get your facts straight before accusing others of ignorance.
Your remark does nothing to discredit the GP's statement, just shows it to be less precise.
The fact that Unitarians reject the notion of God being a Trinity doesn't mean they are not Christians.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
After reading this opinion column I see more frustration in British glory, and distaste with a politcal leader, than lose of American edge. The fun part about this article is that it reminds me a of that people often only see in thing that which they had already believed.
Beware the observant.
There appears to be a pattern over the course of history and across the borders of countries: science follows brains, technology follows science and (probably) wealth follows technology.
Building a link between wealth and brains is one of the levers that sustains this cycle and keeps it in defined geographic boundaries, because it attracts/binds brains.
On the opposite, there are levers that can disrupt the cycle and lead to a geographical shift of brains. Beside the effect of wars - as described in previous contributions - the significance of religion (not religion in itself) can be a repulsive factor for brains.
The current level of technological penetration in a developed country is by no mean a valid predictor for future growth, even less than current wealth. Technology has become opaque for most of its common users (how many of our kids who passionately use a GSM phone does in fact know how such a phone works?): learning to use a technology is often based on imitation, not on understanding. Meanwhile mathematics and physics are more than ever at risk of losing their role as "princesses of science" in favour of fuzzier/softer disciplines. In this context the foundations to further develop/extend our technological advantage are shrinking.
Sitting on your/our laurels will not help on the long term, even less if the bedding of a sound scientific culture is endangered.
Fight massification. Be the wolf, not the sheep.
Zero was invented by India long before the middle ages, so was the decimal system. Arabs simply introduced to the world.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I'm guessing if your girlfriend got out of China, someone had to be rich, really smart, or really lucky.
:).
I live in the industrial heartland of China, teaching future power plant employees. I've taught just under 300 so far and I can assure you that a *lot* of them are lazy and dumb as bricks (Did you know the schools charge higher tuition to students who fail the entrance exam -- guess which ass they'd rather have in the seat
What I hope I'm saying is that it's dangerous to assume that trends seen in the few that make it out of China (and Shanghai almost counts) hold for the rest of the population.
(p.s. There is construction all over campus here too -- because the stuff they built 2 years ago is falling apart already. I love my school.)
My list of multiplayer
You can spend U.S. currency anywhere in the globe without exchange (for now at least).
You can buy oil with dollars.
You can buy steel with dollars.
You can buy soybeans with dollars.
You can buy cattle with dollars.
Damn it, in Buenos Aires (Argentina) you can go to the market and pay with U.S. currency.
Or you can pay ANY restaurant in any EU capital.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
While Americans have always been more self-absorbed. It's part of our culture... We don't need no durn furriners, this is Amurica!
Which is rather hilarious considering that the large majority of Americans are in fact from foreign origin.
at least, not when it concerned foreign citizens.
in Chile and here in Brasil the CIA helped stage military coups (74 and 64 respectively) transforming what where democratic republics in bloody, raping/murdering dictatorships.
As Deep Throat once said, "follow the money".
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
It was invented by Frank Whittle, a Britisher.
t engine.htm
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blje
This is intended as constructive criticism, something that might make you reconsider yourself if you take the opportunity to do so. Introspection and reflection aren't bad words.
Who would be remotely interested in talking to someone (like you, probably involuntary, portray yourself as) who is obviously closeminded? I wouldn't waste much time on anyone rabid no matter what kind of extremism they flaunt (why do you think the Dean-scream was such a turnoff to most people?).
Rabid shouting (and I was thinking of your post rather than Dean here) isn't talking nor does it instill a confidence in your intelligence. People simply need to curb their totally unfounded and insurmountable belief in their own excellence be they christian, liberal, communist, islamist, buddist, libertarian, democrat, or republican - whatever beliefs or ideologies they subscribe to (yes this goes for me as well - I know it's not always easy).
In case anyone should wonder this is not just an American phenomenon, nor western, it's typical of every humans everywhere but many find it shameful enough that they try to avoid doing it, even on the internet.
Btw Jackie Chan is great.
Please note the use of "devil's advocate" in my post. I wasn't expressing my personal opinion. I was describing how (IME, obviously) the US is increasingly portrayed by outside critics. In the context of this discussion (the future of science and tech in the US), perception is what matters, for the reasons I described before.
In reality, there is more than a little truth to most of the claims on both sides of the argument. My point was that certain people only seem to acknowledge one side of it. This naturally leads to other people acknowledging only the other side, and thus to the silly limit we reach where everyone's position is extreme.
That said, it is fascinating that more than one respondent to my post has failed to read it properly, completely missed the point as a result, yet still leapt to the defence of the US. And they picked probably the worst thing to challenge as well: while the US may or may not be the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism as I often hear claimed, it's record in this area certainly is atrocious.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The US military is currently on the edge of being over extended and cannot in practice be used to enforce national policy without some major changes. Right now, it's just not able to take on extra activities without leaving the country "undefended".
The US has been losing it's edge in technology research for a few years. The IT industry has come to a standstill pretty much since 1998 and won't move until MS and others stop being a bottle neck. Recently, Rice was the first foreign minister to blow off the ASEAN meeting, indicating that the US may be preparing to cede the entire Asian economic region over to China. For manufacturing, everybody including the US has already moved over to China.
Dollar hegemony and inertia look to be what keep things going this long. The dollar, however, would become irrelevant if the cost of oil were tied to the Euro. I recall Saddam Hussein including among his threats shortly before he got raided.
If current policies are allowed to continue much longer without intensive corrective action, it may be time to say that it's over for the US.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Translation: We're upset that political hacks are getting to control others and tell people how to live their lives instead of science hacks.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
In this world there are two types of countries. The ones that are powerful enough to screw others and the ones that aren't. Whenever a nation gets powerful, it screws someone. When a formerly powerful nation loses it, it gripes about the powerful ones.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Liberalism is all about personal freedom. Personal liberty. The people in the US calling themselves liberals, aren't. They're socialists. Socialism is a dirty word in America so they redefined liberal to fit.
HTH.
Deleted
Interestingly, if you listen to some of the most deeply committed Christian fundamentalist religious types in the U.S., they tend to conclude that the U.S. will soon be irrelevant. They read Revelations and, in their interpretation, find all sorts of references to modern states like Russia but nothing about the U.S. Since the U.S. isn't in prophecy, they are forced to conclude that it will, by the end of the modern era (i.e., with the coming of the imminent tribulation period), be somehow rendered meaningless and impotent. Generally, they like to think that this will be because such a huge portion of the U.S. population will be caught up in the Rapture that the resulting chaos will leave the U.S. marginalized. For whatever reason, though, it's clear to them that approximately by the time Christ and the armies of God are loosed by the Almighty to kick the Antichrists butt, the U.S. will be just a footnote to history.
Wouldn't it be a kick in the head if the *real* cause of the decline and fall of the U.S. actually turned out to be listening too much to religious leaders? You reap what you sow, indeed.
The "flamebait" moderations of the parents prove the point - "global warming" is dogma that must not be questioned. Dogma is a religious concept, making "global warming" a religious belief independent of factual evidence.
Casting this as a religious thing is political baiting (propaganda) too. Science has been on the decline for the past 30 years. NASA has been worried about this for years. We whip everyone elses ass (many people think) so we don't need to think about studying or something maybe. Well they are catching up and catching up fast. Look at the rising star that is China.
The real blame falls in the left's court. They control the NEA and it is the left that has the political agenda - push everything left in the schools. That means gay propaganda, womens "studies", all of those BS courses at the expense of knowing stuff. Just check out what the NEA lobbies for in Congress. NEA gets money from the PTA by the way so don't support the PTA. Classic, the left accuses the right of doing exactly what they are doing.
Let's be real clear about what's going on in the U.S.
The folks in the White House are mostly not religious at all. They are interested in wealth and power. Period. They want to rule the world. (Yes, be very afraid.) But for them, religion is mostly a diversion, a way to distract the masses. It's also a great way to enforce discipline. They will use religion as it suits their needs.
Don't forget that Hitler did the very same thing. He claimed to be fighting a Christian war against the godless Soviets; and making the Jews pay for persecuting Christ. Hitler gave many an impassioned speech praising the great Christian fatherland.
The rank-and-file American religious nut cases, on the other hand, do want a theocracy (even if most of them can't spell it). But their aims and the aims of the Bush White House are not the same thing. The end result -- the decline and fall of the U.S. -- will, however, be the same. Let us hope that this latest period of American insanity (we've had many) doesn't bring the whole planet down with it.
I guess you can chalk it up to the tyranny of the majority, my friend. What can you do, really? Perhaps a little more immigration could help balance out the demographic bubble, but how long and how screwed will we collectively be before that happens?
Just hope for a big inheritance then?
If you think that gasoline prices in the USA hovoring at $3.00 per gallon is painful, just wait until OPEC switches to the Euro from the dollar.
...
The Dubya regime has been anything but frugal or conservative when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Their tax reform^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorporate welfare program (I include the Iraqi war under this heading) has been largely funded by Federal Reserve bonds purchased by foreign governments. When these same governments stop buying and start selling their US Treasury bonds, a new "Great Depression" will settle upon the American landscape. The nexus of very high interest rates, high unemployment, $10 dollar per gallon gasoline, and the continued push of the neo-Con(artists) to strip away the social welfare net will result in (1) a "fire sale" of US companies, resources and land to our foreign creditors, and (2) a social revolution.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our new Euro-rich Chinese/Indian/OPEC overlords
why the venting of anger over Bush administration policies? Education, knowledge and it's application have been valued less & less for decades, both by atheists as well as religious citizens. Likely Republican influenece will be gone in next election as backlash, but the U.S. of A will still be in decline. Discipline, hard work, long term thinking...ow, sounds painful, let's instead bitch about the numbskull in the White House.
There may be genetic variations in innate mathematical abilities, but the method of teaching math makes a great difference as well.
Some of the most recent curriculums like the TIRK methods are actually very good. They encourage the student to be problem solvers and explored multiple ways to solve a mathematical problem.
Something fascinating happened when the teachers were trained in using this method. Many of them realized that THEY THEMSELVES never really understood the math concepts. They just did it by rote. This shows that a simple emphasis on "Rithmetics" doesn't help nurture engineers and scientists.
The problem occurs when the teachers are not trained in how to use the curriculum and don't understand mathematical thinking themselves. As a group, there is the additional problem that most primary school teachers are female and they were never encouraged to become proficient in math in the past.
The whole geek-jock stereotypes is damaging to the educational enterprise. Perhaps we need new cultural role models to create mass interest. Where will the next scientist-hero-celebrity come from?
Hey Will,
Are you so truly fucking clueless and uninformed as you appear to be, or are you just another lame troll?
America 1st! America Best! America Invented Everything! Eurotrash Sucks!
You are such a fucking ignorant, arrogant retard you make me truly fucking embarrassed to be an American.
I am a recent graduate in both engineering and science (mechanical and astrophysics) and I am stuck in a mind-numbing engineering job. A lot of my friends who graduated in engineering and/or science are in the same boat. We sit every day at a desk wasting time and getting paid for it. We are performing tasks that we could've performed right out of high school, with the proper training. I am in the same position in my company as someone who graduated from a 2-year drafting school. Call me an elitist, but I think that I could be putting my degree to better use. There is very little math, science, or even creativity in my field, as far as I can tell. Advanced positions all involve more management, not more engineering. So to people saying that there aren't enough science and engineering graduates, I ask whether they really think we're utilizing the ones we have. The only time I feel like I'm actually using my brain is when my friends and I are building something on our own time. Are there any opportunities to actually use my brain like I had to in college? The US isn't only suffering from a lack of technical graduates, it's suffering from a lack of applications for them.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
The concept of Zero probably originated in India some centuries before Arab mathematicians. Trading routes at the times being what they were, Arabs picked up on it before the Europeans.
Yes, the Arabs fell into religious zealotry with the rise of Islam, but it was largely the Romans who destroyed many more centers of science and of learning, such as by the burning of the library in Alexandria, than did the Arabs. Militarism is not always the great "accelerater" of science as it is so frequently protrayed in contemporary media. It merely skews what kinds of science are done.
Religion, with its mysticism and fanaticism has played a role in creating backwardness during all ages. It certainly does appear that tomorrow won't be any different from yesterday in this regard for many tomorrows to come. Churches are big business in the US nowadays, especially in the South. Keep in mind such income is tax exempt so it is even difficult to assess exactly how big the industry actually is.
The rise of the Christian Right is largely due to shifts in theological thnking. It used to be that Christianity had to do with upholding religious ideas such as ennunciated by Jesus in his statement "A camel shall pass through the eye of a needle before a rich man will enter the kingdom of heaven". Such notions are now regarded as quaint, in contemporary "Christianity". Many of Jesus' ideas on the relation between wealth and religion, have been openly abandoned in favor of more lucrative direct marketing by TV envangelists who now openly discuss wealth creation as a "virture". Religion is now openly marketed like any other commodity as can be see by online and TV advertising of bibles, religious paraphenalia, and direct involvement in the political kickback process through so-called "faith-based initiatives".
The theological shifts have become so profound that not only are the biblical teachings of Jesus becoming largely irrelevant to the business of modern Christianaity, but even older "Judeo-Christian" teachings of the Old Testament are becoming obsolete. Is now even fashionalbe to make open, public calls for murder, if it may save money, such as has been recently advocated by one of Jesus' replacements, Rev. Pat Robertson. Likewise, leaders such Karl Rove and George Bush have made a mockery of the commandment that "thou shall not bear false witness", to the point that no one in the hierarchy of Christian religion even attempts to stand up for such outdated ideas.
Of course recreating the political environment of Spanish Inquisition, which contemporary political-theologians are eager to do is not as easy as it once was given the pervasive success of scientific thinking and its impact on modern economies. Nonetheless, they have acheived some sucess toward this goal. In such a political climate that they strive mightily to create, its hardly surprising that use of reason and science in public discourse are fast falling out of favor or migrating to other places, where logic and reason are held in higher regard.
Atheism states that there is no God. Agnosticism refuses to make a decision without evidence. Or perhaps you're referring to what the Wikipedia article describes as Weak Atheism, which is the disbelief in the existence of gods. Lots or terms...
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Bullshit. Ignorance feeds on ignorance. Intollerance feeds on intollerance. Agression feeds on agression.
Buck the system. Think for your self and educate the ignorant, while there is still time. Stess the value and imporance of logical, rational thought and the freedom to experiment, that represent the cornerstone of science.
Pope John Paul II was probably a nice guy, but his beliefs arguably have caused more suffering than anyone else in the 20th century.
His religious tenets on birth control in general, and condom use in particular, are indirectly responsible for the slow, painful death of millions of people, as well as the hunger and suffering of millions more.
I think Jesus would have wanted people who already have more children than they can feed, and people in countries ravaged by AIDS, to wear condoms. Although maybe only if they were Jewish, now that I think about it...
I was glad to see him go (*), although his replacement scarcely seems better.
(*) The Pope, not Jesus. I'm not that fucking old!
...if you just fucked off and died quietly in a corner somewhere.
I think you've just blown what pittifull amount of credibility you had here with your "USA! USA!" rant.
Take a few weeks off, get some perspective, educate yourself about the world (you know, that place outside the USA) and sign up with a new user name when you have something useful to say.
"The fact that Unitarians reject the notion of God being a Trinity doesn't mean they are not Christians."
Dude, seriously, stop embarassing yourself.
Reasons why Unitarian Universalists are not / Unitarians historically were not Christians:
1) UU's don't require belief that Jesus was the son of God
2) UU's don't even require belief that Jesus even existed
3) UU's don't require belief that God is a Trinity
4) UU's don't require belief that God even exists
5) UU's don't require belief in sin
6) UU's don't require belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible, or any other self-proclaimed holy book
7) UU's don't require belief in heaven and hell
8) UU's don't require belief that any church, including our own, has a monopoly on the truth
On the other hand, "Christians believe that God is a unity in Trinity, that is to say that God is one being "subsisting" in three divine persons, namely the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son (sometimes called the "Logos"), who pre-existed eternally with the Father, but became man at one point of time. The vast majority of Christian denominations (including Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and most forms of Protestantism) hold to the statements of the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed (in the form of the Creed of Constantinople, 381) as summaries of the essentials of the faith."
See also here, where I discuss related issues. Please educate yourself about what you're going to discuss before you discuss it.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
You've got a thing for "one" that I just don't get. ...with the planet that we live one.
before the USA built their own ones...
from TFA:
the nationally well-regarded Union of Concerned Scientists - a non-partisan body
"Well-regarded?" "non-partisan??" What a crock of Brown Sticky Stuff. The UCS is well-known for their left-wing advocacy -- and also well-known for ignoring any science that contradicts their preconcieved beliefs.
Of COURSE the UCS is unhappy. They HATE pres. Bush and will do anything, including sacrificing their integrity, to try to make him look bad.
This is nothing more than another pathetic attempt by the left-wing Press to try to discredit a Repugnican -- nothing new here, folks, move along. Funny how none of President Clinton's political manipulations of science never got any press....
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
1) Common Sense, actually. History is logically-consistent but not common-sense-consistent.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
If you don't believe science can be politicized, you probably are not aware of Soviet History...
;^)
To put it literaly, in Soviet Russia, genetics inherits from you! [pun intended]
Lysenko's theory of genetics was that your environment could alter your genetic constitution so that you could pass acquired traits to your offspring. This was in contrast to the Mendel theory where inherited characteristics were in-born and not affected by environmental change. Stalin loved this idea as it fit with his political agenda of "re-educating" people...
As a result Soviet biology was set back god knows how many years... Perhaps in god-less soviet russia, maybe they didn't care that god didn't even know
Are kids being taught ID? Not in public schools (except perhaps as an example of cargo cult science) - not anywhere in the U.S. Do we have crappy scientists? Sure, who doesn't? But we also have a lion's share of the world class scientists. That a large proportion of scientific conferences are held in English reflects this.
Certain politicians' willingness to play to them notwithstanding, I think the theocrats re losing.
"The impossible often has a certain integrity that the merely improbable lacks" - Dirk Gently
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/ab olition4.htm
The Tao is actually the set of laws common to all - things like not murdering and stealing, but also with some duties. The link above gives a listing and comparison, but the entire text of the Abolition of Man is available.
The problem with the original comment is that he confuses his opinion for truth, whereas his views on evolution (we don't have a mechanism but we know absolutely we weren't designed), the environment, or even economics (is Keynes or Mises right? Interestingly, Misesian sites have better economics and doubt darwinianism) are dogmatic statements, and not something which can be empirically verified.
Remember the full title of Darwin's work was ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVORED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE OF LIFE. Shall we talk about races, and eugenics, and maybe the Nazis had the right idea? Get rid of our soul and a lot of things become easy.
Science is not dogma, but many here seem to confuse the two. Or treat scientists as a priesthood.
For the chapter titled
p ?id=CH001
"How the Monks saved civilization" from
How the Catholic Church built western civilization by Thomas Woods
here is a link where they will email it to you
http://www.catholicchurchbook.com/offers/offer.ph
As an aside, monks had to do various things (e.g. chant the liturgy) which required them to be literate and otherwise well educated unlike most peasants. Illiterate copying letters? Haven't you heard of Augustine and Aquinas or Albert the Great and the university of Paris?
Divine right of kings? I think that was protestant more than Catholic as the kings were often excommunicated, and the Church/State was the original check and balance.
You can also find further discussion (no one thought the earth was flat, Henry VIII probably delayed the industrial revolution for 300 years by his persecution, etc.) you can go to lewrockwell.com and look for the Thomas Woods archives.
Of course really studying accurate history might interfere with various prejudices and bigotries.
Paine was a deist, true. (almost the definition of deist..) I rarely think of him as a founder but...
Many don't consider Paine as a founder, perhaps because he wasn't active or participated in any of the conventions yet his writing, such as "Common Sense", "electrified" the colonists to fight for freedom. He also served in the Continental Army. This is when he penned "The Crisis" from which comes the saying "These are the times that try men's souls."
His "Franklin" autobio is avaliable on Guttenberg, it is worth the read.
It's available on the project? It took a few minutes but I found it. However I'd rather get it in book form to read as reading more than a page or two on a monitor hurts my eyes.
Thanks for the link to Washington's quotes.
Jefferson... In a way, he did not 'accept' the divinity of Christ... He at least believed Christ lived, and that his teachings were the best ever...
Therein brings up what a Christian is, is a Christian someone who believes Christ was divine and the "Son of God", or someone who believes he was a great teacher? Most people I know hold to the first. As do I, which is why though I believe that if he lived he was a teacher, I don't consider myself a Christian (also notice "if he lived"). The same with the Buddha and Lao Tzu. So because I neither have knowledge nor faith, I consider myself agnostic.
The founders were not fundies like there are today, that much should be obvious. (and the fundies don't like it much either!) On the other side, most were not deists, at least not by the definitions given in your link. (and the anti-christians of today don't like this!) Both sides want the Founders to support their own agenda - The founders would have found both agenda's repulsive.
To me it's not important what the Founding Fathers were, what was and is important is what they said and more important is what their actions were. Basically their words and actions comes to religion being a personal and private matter with which government shouldn't interfer.
Falcon
Again thanks for the link to the quotes.
Should there be a Law?
As an American I cannot speak from experience, but I do know that moving in the opposite direction (I am doing research in Japan) was a major hassle as well. I do know that the State dept is addressing this issue and it has gotten better in the last year.
a terrible problem here. I haven't heard of people leaving the country, but I have heard of many doctors moving from state to state, leaving states which leave them unprotected against the worst lawsuits. Of course, the fact that your father CAN retire at 59 says something about the salaries of doctors.
The worst fears of the US have been proven true, we have no friends, we only have other countries who feed, like parasites, on us and then sunder the relationship when it no longer proves convenient.
And the worst fears of the rest of the world have been born out, that the US is a big bully that will do whatever it wants, if has to lie then it will, if it has to invade another country it will. Many people now look at the US as a danger.
Where are all those WMDs the adminitration said they knew exactly where they were? Powell even showed the Security Council photographs of mobile chemical weapons labs, where are they?
It will be interesting to see what happens when (not if) China decides to grab Taiwan
I hope "China decides to grab Taiwan" never happens militarily. If Formosa decides to unite with mainland China that's one thing but China using armed force is totally another. Formosa, Taiwan, had already been invaded by Chinese when 2 million Chinese Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek invaded and subjegated 20 million Formosans. 28 February 1947 is still the date to be remembered by Formosans, as Taiwan's Holocaust. This massacre led to many years of repression.
FalconShould there be a Law?
First off, George Washington had little, if anything to do with the political mechanations of the founding of this country. He was a military general, and only slightly more successful than his British counterpart. He was made president after his success, because of his success. His primary dealings with the governmental body that drafted and delivered the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States was basically -- we are starving, send more food; we are being depleted by desertion, send more troops; we are out of ammunition, send more weapons; we are cold, but we are alive and will hold on 'til spring. The end. He was, however, a devout religious man; that much is a documented fact.
Adams, by contrast, was a lawyer. His interest in Constitutional law showed no favor whatsoever for the common man. I quote: "In [A Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States], he made the controversial statement that "the rich, the well-born and the able" should be set apart from other men in a senate." This is a man to whom the people of the United States should refer on matters of the Rights of Man?
No thank you. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson all the way.
-AC
Your spelling of 'time' as 'tyme' seems rather oldfashioned. Especially with 'sometyme'. Is it a dialect, or what?
"Tyme" is an Old English spelling so in a sense it is old fashioned. I ran into the spelling while in high school, I'd go into the library and would grab one of the 20 something volumns of the OED, Oxford English Dictionary and start reading it. I found the spelling of time as "tyme" in the OED and have used it since. Usually but obviously not always when I use a word with "time" in it as with "sometime" I use the "i".
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yeap, there is a dispute between not only China and Vietnam, but also Taiwan about offshore oil deposits in the South China Sea. Here's a good case study of the Spratly Islands Dispute.
The loss of American blood and treasure in foreign conflicts was presaged by the warning from President Dwight Eisenhower regarding the USA's "military-industrial complex".
Yet Eisenhower set the stage for the Vietnam War.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I beg your pardon!
As a matter of fact, the GGP caused me to spend about 8.5 hours straight of reading up on the subject (as the history of religions is one of my pet interests).
Rather than start another factflood, let me suffice to say this:
1. Your reply, although it purports to address the relationship of both Unitarian Universalism and Unitarianism with Christianity, ends up addressing only Unitarian Universalism.
2. The UUA admits to there being a historical link to Unitarianism, and refers to Unitarianism as a form of Christianity, right on their own website.
3. Your final remark about Christians is a gross generalization, as there were (and are) Trinitarian (see my previous post) as well as Nontrinitariandoctrines, all identifying themselves as Christian.
In the spirit of Universal Unitarianism, I wish you Peace, Love and Respect.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
America already has problems selling manufactured goods to the rest of the World. Many American brands are almost unknown in Europe and Japan because they are seen as energy inefficient, lacking features, poorly made and not tailored to that market - cars with steering circles the size of Rhode Island, suspension that Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have rejected and fuel economy that makes you wonder if there is a hole in the tank, top loading washing machines, *BIG* CRT televisions - that sort of thing.
Yeap, you're right. America's energy standards need to be improved a lot. Those top loading washing machines use more energy as well as water. And refirgerators/freezers are design wrong. Instead of the freezer in combo boxes being on top they should be on bottum. And the pumps and compressors, which generate heat should be on top. By having them on bottum as most models in the US do you're having to use more energy to cool off the inside seeing as how heat rises. That's why I like refrigs like Sunfrost, which are properly designed to be energy efficient.
*BIG* CRT televisions
I'd prefer a big flat screen that can be hanged on the wall.
Falcon
Oh, btw I realized I reversed the order when I talked about a strong currency. A strong dollar lowers the costs of imports and increases the costs of exports not the other way around as I previously said.
Should there be a Law?
I thought it was saying the USA helped France to get out of there... In a way you can argue it did, but really, that was not the purpose, and in fact the US aid only prolongued the French involvement.
I did say the US helped France leave Viet Nam. That wasn't the purpose of going there though, the US was going to "take control" of the situation and stop communists from taking over. And I agree that if the US hadn't helped that France would of left earlier than they did. Acually France wanted the Paris Peace Accords and Geneva Convention, which would allow the north and south to vote to "reunify" to succede. Reunify, I'm sitting here thinking this is an inappropriate use of the word. Much as until Mao united China, there wasn't really a united Viet Nam. The country, as it was all around the world, is populated with many different tribes. Here's a website of different tribes of Asia, Asia-Hilltribe.com
FalconShould there be a Law?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
What has happened to the Americans.. the quintessential rationalists ??
I can't believe they're stifling science now. It's so easy to see that ID is wrong. Consider this:
If there was a designer, he certainly can't be compassionate.. why the heck would he design genes that cause only some people to be born with horrendous diseases like muscular dystrophy, or hemophilia. Were they born sinners? Then why would he be so unfair to only them? Why would he design genes that lead innocent people into terrible degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. I have seen absolutely devout people live and die miserably, simply because they inherited bad genes, and I've seen people who lead a life full of vices live happily and die peacefully, simply because they had the right genes. Certainly doesn't look like the work of an "intelligent" designer, who is fair to all.
Well, but as an Indian, I think I shouldn't worry about it. As matter of fact, I'm all for teaching Biblical biology in American schools. And why stop with that, why not Biblical mathematics. Check this:
A little known verse of the Bible reads
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about. (I Kings 7, 23)
The same verse can be found in II Chronicles 4, 2. It occurs in a list of specifications for the great temple of Solomon, built around 950 BC and its interest here is that it gives p = 3. Not a very accurate value of course and not even very accurate in its day, for the Egyptian and Mesopotamian values of 25/8 = 3.125 and 10 = 3.162 have been traced to much earlier dates.
Holy Jesus !!.. imagine those atheistic math teachers teaching pi = 3.1415926535897932384... and corrupting innocent American students.
And why stop at that.. why not Biblical Physics..Biblical paleontology (I heard some one built a biblical dino museum.. glory to them)
Let those non-Christian infidels from India and China learn things like pure mathematics, modern physics, and the cursed e* word.
After all Jesus is coming (in the summer of 2008 to Pat Robertson's Church ). I'm sure American's don't want to be left back in the line to see him...and don't let him catch your young people reading D..a..r..w..i..n (may his soul burn in hell).
I hope you get the real message I'm sending..
A Muslim is a person who follow the religion of Islam. So nationality, ethnicity, etc. has nothing to do with being Muslim or not. It's determined by what you believe.
Yeap, that says it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
By which definition? According to the only published definition accepted by practicing Christians, God is an entity that sets bushes on fire, parts seas, and issues clearly-stated orders for whole cities to be put to the sword. It all sounds perfectly within the scope of science to me, and if these ID folks can shed any light on why this crazy shit doesn't seem to happen any more, I for one would be interested to know.
Our present engines are the equivalent of Windows 95: http://www.renewamerica.us/bb/viewtopic.php?p=5000 2 . Inertia? Inertia plays a part: http://tinyurl.com/ack2u . I wonder. If we did convert to such a gasoline-less engine, How many days would it take to balance the National Debt? Hhmmm. How much farther could our military march without needing for a fuel supply convoy in tow? How much of a reduction in all forms of cancer, emphysema, chronic asthma & lung diseases, should we expect from doing away with fossil fuel pollution? Interesting questions.
It is easy to become cosmopolitan if it only takes a couple of hours drive to cross into another country. And that is the reality for most Europeans.
To some extent your country is just too large for its own good.
Right. That'll happen any time now...
Moron.
Fuck it
Oh get a life. This is the BBC one of the most left news media in the Western world. Harold Evans is famous for his left of center views.
So obviously the article knocks Bush who is hated by BBC journalists. Even right wing friends of mine living in the UK are starting to turn against the US because of the incessant BBC propaganda.
The purpose of the article is to make Bush look like a mad fundamentalist which goes down well in anti-Bush circles.
The truth is that science is alive and well in the US. Research continues apace and compares favorably on a per capita basis to Europe and the UK.
Excellent link to the book! Thank you!
Your description of The Tao I entirely agree with and see no contradiction with my own understanding from the professor's work.
I did indeed give my opinion as I am right now. Everything is opinion. Objectivity is the claim of "the me" for "me" when arguing with "the you."
Evolution? I mentioned not the topic. Thou puttest words in mine mouth. A changing of the gears have we. Would it shock you if I said I entirely believe in the concept? Or, perhaps I should quote Gandhi who, when asked what he thought of Western Civilization said, "it would be a great idea...."
Get rid of our soul and a lot of things become easy.
Now that's a quote....
We, and all we are, are dogma. I'd rather cite Pink Floyd's Eclipse here....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
One should not legalize all crime just because one crime exists and is ignored or overlooked.
All laws wherein there's a victimless crime, such as drug use and such, should be struck from the books. These laws create a criminal wherein there isn't a victim. If a person harms someone else then charge them with that harm. For instance if a drunken driver, most any driver really, causes an accident that results in harm or death then charge and prosecute the driver for that. The same with driving under the influence of a drug. Or with relationships outside of the main stream.
It sounds like part of you did not wake up from that Coma. Were parts of the brain that were responsible for these feelings damaged?
I've almost always believed in freedom, liberty, and small government, live and let live. On governemnt, law, and politics my outlook is similar to Thomas Jefferson's.
Either way, one will never find a reason to live by way of worldly means (selfishness, lust for the flesh, worldly pleasure, or material things). Peace and happiness come through feeling good about one's self as a person. Doing good works and helping others is a great way to start feeling good about yourself as a person. Then you will start to realize what love and life is all about.
Excepting selfishness I'm not particularly into the material world. Selfishness isn't a problem itself, what is a problem is greed and what people will do to satsify selfishness and greed. Doing and being the best you can is selfish. Here's an example of a post of mine on another article, about Job satisifaction. My first sentence is "An unsatisfactory job may be fine for you but I want to work at what I love."
Truth will find a way to expose itself no matter what one believes.
Spent years seeking and praying and have yet to find the truth, spiritually that is. Prior to the accident I strongly believed in the spirit but I'm almost at the point where I believe there isn't any spirit, soul, or whatever, that all there is to life is the body.
Falcon
Oh btw feelings, emotions, have increased since the accident unlike memory and cognitive skills which presents difficulty.
Should there be a Law?
I always hear people claim how the Vietnam war was a waste and that we should never have gotten involved. That is a fine position, but do you hold the same for th Korean War? Was that a war that was worth getting involved in? You need to realize that the Korean War and Vietnam were very similar, yet resulted in two very different outcomes. Is the moral of the story don't get involved, or don't get involved unless you can look back with 20/20 hindsight and only jump into the wars you know you will win?
I may sound a little like Ayn Rand, but thien again many libertarians and other lovers of freedom sound like her as well. I don't know much about her outlook, some of what I know I agree with while I disagree with other parts. When it comes to liberty I pretty much agree however she didn't like altruism, being selfless. She didn't see that it of any benefit, I totally disagree, it can both economically and emotionally be beneficial. In this sense, being of benefit to the giver it's not really selfless but she didn't see it that way. As for charity, it depends on how it's done, I'd rather teach a man to fish than to give him one. I believe it's more important to help someone become selfsufficient than to offer temporary assistance, say feed him/her once or twice.
FalconShould there be a Law?
USA is the third happiest country in the world
http://www.sq.4mg.com/NationHappiness.htm
Slashdot = Sarcasm
My friend says that America has become strong through tax investments in science. But that's all changing now. Science apparently isn't good for a quick profit. If the devolutions win, then we'll all lose. http://www.cafepress.com/americanvalues/779781
Especially in the areas of women's health. Who here has heard about microbiocides? We should be pushing a large amount of money into these to prevent the transmission of disease here in America, and around the world. http://www.microbicide.org/
The bottom line seems to be that an educated populace is not easily manipulated by politicians. Can anything else explain their behaviour?
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
Libertarians (or the pro-drug legalization special interest group) tend to have a more anarchic "one-size-fits-all" view of what freedom means. They seem to forget about freedom of assembly in the broadest sense (the freedom to live in a society of like-minded people with like-minded laws).
Where's democracy and freedom where drugs are involved? I seriously doubt most have had a vote on drug laws and in the states that have most voters have approved medical marijuana. Then when one patient who depends on marijuana for her health sues the feds the USSC rules states don't have the authority or right to decide for themself, that only congress can. They didn't even cite anythng in the Constitution that precluded the states from making the decision or that the federal government had the right to make it.
Fact is is that hemp, aka marijuana, had an important roll in history of the USA. Thomas Jefferson, who grew hemp, once proposed that there should be a law requiring farmers to grow hemp. But he couldn't follow through with it himself because he knew that such a law would be denying farmers their rights. It wasn't just TJ who grew hemp, many of the Founding Fathers who were farmers grew it as well. Even the DOI, Declaration of Independence, had something to do with hemp. TJ wrote the DOI on paper made from hemp.
The only reason hemp was made illegal was because it posed a threat to the wealth of some rich and powerful people. Even after hemp was made illegal, via the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the federal government encouraged farmers to grow hemp during WWII. The government made the movie "Hemp For Victory" for this reason. The cords of the parachute that George Bush Sr used when he bailed out of his plane when he was shot down over the Pacific was probably hemp.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Excellent post, and a pleasure to read. Thanks for contributing. I made a smiliar attempt but I got a little out of hand. :)
... I can't believe this name wasn't already taken!!!
No I don't, I hate some of the policies and actions taken by the government. There's a big difference.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Very Poetic.
Lewis was a top-notch English specialist, but famously a bad philosopher and theologian. His argument is that reason is so special and important, so unlike any other aspect of the world, that it cannot be made up of the same stuff as the world.
His problem (though not one he had in his lifetime) is that we are now uncovering the detail of how reason and thought ARE made up of simple materials - so his position becomes untenable.
Great writing, though. Why is it the English are so good at English?
Usury is an absurdly high level of interest, not a synonym for interest.
In fact the Vix Pervenit that you referred to(Thanks Google) they point out that interest is fine so long as you have a contract set out beforehand. What they seem to be deriding is the practice of charging interest on informal loans such as when you give someone money to buy groceries when they are short.
"As a matter of fact, the GGP caused me to spend about 8.5 hours straight of reading up on the subject (as the history of religions is one of my pet interests)."
Good for you. Since ignorance about religion seems to be the rule here on slashdot, I applaud anybody of intellectual mind who considers religion to be worth studying at all.
"1. Your reply, although it purports to address the relationship of both Unitarian Universalism and Unitarianism with Christianity, ends up addressing only Unitarian Universalism."
That's because there is no modern Unitarian Church. In 1961, the Unitarian and Universalist Churches merged, hence UUism. Even before the merger, no Unitarian sect believed in the deity of Jesus. Belief in the deity of Jesus is a prerequisite of being accepted into a Christian church. That's why it's called "Christian", because they believe Jesus was Christ.
"2. The UUA admits to there being a historical link to Unitarianism, and refers to Unitarianism as a form of Christianity, right on their own website."
You seem to be genuinely confused. Nowhere in the linked page is Unitarianism referred to as a form of Christianity, and frankly, it'll be a cold day in hell when the UUA self-identifies as such. Can you please quote the passage from our website that led you to believe this?
The only connection that the UUA refers to between UUism and Christianity is here, when it says "Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;". Note, firstly, that this statement refers to the historical origins of our faith, not to it's present existance. Note, secondly, that this statement is referring to "teachings" rather than dogma or theology, and specifically only to those teaching which call upon us to love our neighbors as ourselves. In short, the ONLY part of Christianity which the UUA even acknowledges as an influence is three words - "love thy neighbor". It is also worth noting that this does not exist within the context of the 7 Purposes and Principles, which are the ONLY things UUs are REQUIRED to believe. In other words, you would be allowed to join a UU church without believing that our faith has historical roots in Christianity whatsoever (wheras you would not be allowed to join a Christian church without believing that Jesus was the Messiah). Thirdly, and most importantly, the teachings of Christianity drawn from by our faith are mentioned in the context of being WHOLLY EQUAL with teachings from Judaism, Humanism, and Paganism.
"3. Your final remark about Christians is a gross generalization, as there were (and are) Trinitarian (see my previous post) as well as Nontrinitariandoctrines, all identifying themselves as Christian."
Um, maybe you missed how the whole thing was underlined and linked directly to a wikipedia page. That's because this wasn't my remark, it was a direct quote from the wiki.
There are, in theory, non-trinitarian forms of Christianity. However, have you ever seen a Ebionite church? How about a Arian church? No? How about a Oneness Pentacostal Church? The fact of the matter is 99.9% of modern day Christianity is trinitarian. The trinity is accepted as dogma by the following denominations: Roman Catholic, Orthodox Christianity (Greek, Russian, etc), Anabaptists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, and the Church of Christ.
No, I'm afraid the only denomination which exists today that gives any credence at all to your assertion is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And you'd be hard pressed to find any mainstream Christian church that would ever agree that Mormons are Christians. One could not hold Mormon beliefs and be accepted into the congregation of a Christian church.
Again, I'm proud of you for doing as much research as you have. If you'd like to pursue it further, I recommend "A Chos
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Did you read their definition of interest? Vix Pervenit is relatively recent in the history of the Catholic Church and conscious of the greater financial activity of its day, and even it bans interest exacted for the sake of profit. Interest is only okay as a negation of loss. It mentions that there are people within the church who oppose even such interest.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
The question is did you read their definition of interest. The link you gave is their definition of usury.
But incomplete: there are 3 types of countries -- the ones which are powerful enough and screw the others, the ones which are are not powerful enough and whine, and the ones which are not powerful enough and send suicide bombers to blow up really big buildings -- consequently screwing not only thousands of innocend "screwer country" citizens, but also its democratic institutions (like the rights to privacy and due process of law)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The rise of the Bush-ites is a symptom, not a cause. The real problem is anti-intellectualism. As long as being smart is considered a handicap and not a benefit, as long as the smart kids are harassed and bullied and choked with stultifying boredom by the school system, as long as it's cool and accepted to respond "I don't know!" to a question and laugh like the idea of them knowing something is ridiculous and that they are PROUD not to know it because it means that they are normal.... As long as you have these attitudes prevailing, you will have an intellectually impoverished landscape where people develop intelligence in ferocious oppsition to, as opposed to because of, the shape of the society they are in.
Michael J. Bertrand, AKA Fruvous or FruFox My
how 'invading Afghanistan' counts as 'something good'?
Even though the news from there is tightly controlled it is obvious that the 'new government' is a mess, the country is back in the control of war-lords, and drugs output is through the roof. At least the Taliban did not interfere with people outside their own country.
The Afghanistan adventure only counts as 'good' for the US because there are no people left alive to complain about it.