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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.'"
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
They didn't invent zero, the Indians did and you aren't using their digit, you're using Indian digits. The Arabs just brought it to Europe and that's why it's called "Arabic Numerals". Just Google for it, or look up the Wikipedia entry. And as a non-European, I'd say you're giving too much credit to them for your achievements (assuming that you're a European/American).
Not quite. Duffbeer703 may be referring to the "dollar hegemony", a global dynamic put in place in or around the end of WWII, which refers to how countries need stockpiles of US dollars in reserve to buy petroleum in an international market. Therefore, and by a wide margin, the main United States export is dollar bills, of BIG denomination.
As of recently, most countries obeyed this unwritten law: Iraq switched to Euros back in 2001, and the interim US government immediately switched back to dollars. Iran recently began valueing a good portion of its' oil reserves in Euros. Same with Venezuela. OPEC in general has been flirting with the Euro as of late.
So it that context, Duffbeer703 is right on the money.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
"this country exists because people needed somewhere to go to practice their religion. The freedom to not practice religion was added later."
This is incorrect. The founding fathers knew first-hand the dangers of religious power, which is why the only mention of religion in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution was to make sure that "no religious test" would be required for public office. The first ammendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". And anyone familiar with Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson knows full well what they thought on the subject. For example, Jefferson wrote "no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
Most of the occurences of religion in the US government were put into place in the 1950's, a period of immense insecurity (Athiest/Communist Threat, etc.). Politicians in 1954 added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, and in 1955 added "In God We Trust" to coinage and paper money.
The founders, on the other hand, were quite careful in making clear that the United States was _not_ founded as a Christian country, or even as a particularly religious country, and that the freedom of religion clearly included, as Jefferson put it, "freedom of and from religion."
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
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George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli
Shame that is from Barlow's fraudulent translation. None of the existing copies of that treaty show that at all. See http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/5/9
BTW, it wasn't George Washington, but John Adams who signed that treaty.
Dammy
And no, I'm no a Christian, I am a Pagan.
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
you know whats missing in your post? government. You quoted the founding fathers but not in relation to the country which they created, but rather, in relation to their opinions/personal beleifs, with the exception of the last bit of washington , which i looked up for fun and found that he was speaking to native americans (the deleware) who wished to teach their children how to be more westernized/civilized. That is some mighty important political context.
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
/., like maybe actually citing something.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
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And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
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You are completely wrong. If anything, most of the founding fathers were Deists, believing in at most whatever form of "Natures God" they personally had. Paine was definitely in sync with the founding fathers and their opinion on christianity in relation to government, i.e. there should be nothing but separation. Look it up. You need to do better on a large public forum such as
Thirty years and countless books on the subject and not til today do I learn the US entered Vietnam for France. It's been a while though and apparently I'm not up on the latest 'Freedom Fries' school of historical thought.
It wasn't just to support the French that the US went into Viet Nam. Then president Eisenhower was afraid that if the Viet Namese, North and South Vietnam, were allowed to vote to reunite not only would they reunite but they would also become communist. Because of this dispite the signing of the Paris Accord of 1954 being signed by North and South Vietnam and the Geneva conference Eisenhower didn't want the election to happen. To prevent reunitification Colonel Edward Lansdale "carried out a campaign of military and psychological warfare against the Vietminh.(35)"
As for the crack about "Freedom Fries" I never did call them that. I was against invading Iraq without broad UN, Security Council support. I'm still waiting to see all those stockpiles of WMDs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Funny, I don't remember any liberal politics in my classes on circuit analysis, mechanics, electromagnetism, calculus, differential equations, tensor analysis, quantum mechanics, solid state theory, antenna design and analysis, electromechanical systems, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Perhaps you could explain to me the liberal bias inherent in a Greens Function or a multi-body gravitation problem? Perhaps hideous Communist ideologies are lurking inside Schroedinger's Equation?
Better yet, maybe you could explain something else to me. How does one go about parallelizing a finite-difference time-domain computational problem for an arbitrary antenna structure using conservative ideology?
Well anyway, you are probably right. After all, Rush Limbaugh says so and he went to college for like a year, right?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I agree with most of your rant. However, Newton was never even remotely atheistic. 1/3 of all his writings were spent on the subject of theology. Well, as I understand it, mostly biblical numerology.
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?
regarding illitirate scribes, I don't know if that was true as a rule.
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Certainly I know that manuscripts produced and used in celtic-monasteries have margin notes and other additions that are not the work of illiterates:
c.f. pangur bán: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/16
There was also the preservation of written works for their own sake. Many non-religious classical texts were preserved and duplicated in monastic settings, and this went some way to preserving these works during the interregnum following the decline of the Roman empire.
Though surely coming from your personal experience, I think some of your other comments come across as a little prejudiced and over-general. I'd be interested to see the evidence for your origin of copyright laws thesis. And as another poster commented, there's no indication that Newton was by any means an atheist.