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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Or did you mean to suggest that they did not mean it, simply by virtue of their being "Christian"? Their variety of Christianity was far more enlightened than what is often found in evangelical churches today. Here's another quote:
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,
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.
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
"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.
I'm not sure that you understand what bias is. Just because Slashdot often paints Bush in a negative light when it comes to science-related issues, it doesn't mean that there's a bias. Face it, there's not much you can say that's positive about this administration's attitude towards science, and if the /. editors were to balance out all of the negative Bush-related science articles with positive ones, that would be extremely biased in Bush's favor. (In fact, that is the essence of what is wrong with Fox News.)
Your comment is not insightful because one doesn't have to "bash" Bush when it comes to science and religion. Bashing Bush would be saying he's a monkey, and falls off his bike, and is a poopyhead for opposing stem cell research, even the kind that doesn't involve embryos.
Anyone who is unbiased sees a world leader imposing religious dogma onto secular public schools, and scientists doing legitimate and lifesaving research with aborted fetus tissue, or even pre-life-viable embryos in a labratory.
Slashdot has a story involving Bush because like him or not he's a world leader and what he says counts as news. If he says something objectionable, then it's the medias' responsibility to report it and explain why it's objectionable. In an open society you're allowed to use the media to respond, or say the media is wrong for saying Bush is wrong, but if all you can say is that they are "biased" and that somehow passes as a solid argument, then we're letting people like you off way to easily.
Tell us WHY critics of Bush's science and religion policy are wrong? You can't, because they are right.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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
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.
Somebody please mod this back down. If the poster wants to make an insightful comment he/she can give some information to support it, as the child posters supported their claims to the contrary.
[javac] 100 errors
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
destruction of classical civilisation http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/science.html
uhhhh.....no.
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.
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.
Bush and stem cells is probably a good example of religion and science interacting properly
Are you kidding? He crippled the entire line of ESC research for years. And every argument given for doing so was entirely baseless. The Christian Right simply wouldn't ever shut up about how it encourages abortion, even though the one has utterly nothing to do with another. As a result, the US has already begun falling behind in biosciences. He puts _faith healers_ on medical boards. Money spent on actual scientific studies of environmental problems gets thrown away because the guys at the top don't like the results. The latest crop of republicans are about the worst thing to happen to science and they are making religion look like a caricature of itself. To the rest of the world, the most powerful nation on earth looks like it's becoming a Christian version of Saudi Arabia.
The lunar missions ended because American leaders decided the money was better spent getting GIs killed in Vietman. The space program ultimately stagnated because US leaders made it a government monopoly run by a political committee. I see a solid week of news dedicated to ongoing technical problems with a single solitary shuttle (i.e., a third of our entire manned fleet) and I think, "We don't have a space program, we have a space hobby". And the reason people get pissed off with the expense is because it doesn't _do_ anything useful or even new anymore.
Anyway, it's not so much that there's a declining number of competent researchers and scientists. It's just that they are increasingly being told that neither they nor their work is wanted here. Fact is old and busted, faith-based-government is the new hotness. Average Joe is not just getting dumber, he's becoming more and more convinced that this is a virtue. Nothing could demonstrate this better than the studies showing that half the voting population would refuse to vote for a candidate for no other reason than because he was an atheist. I.e., competency and intelligence are secondary to whimsy and insanity.
Dyolf Knip
Ah yes. The ever so predictable jab at Bill Clinton from a republican. How convient that we use the past to gloss over the huge republican fuck up that is today present time.
Country is bleeding cash to foreign nations, country is insanely in debt, oil costs a fortune, christian religious dogma dictates public policy, record high unemployment, health care is unaffordable, we've off shored most of our manufacturing, stem cells are no considered babies, ass backwards tort reform, bullshit patriot acts by a republican government no less (the irony is fucking histerical)...
Oh the list goes on, and its retarded. There isnt a single GOOD thing that has come from this administration, other than perhaps "we invaded Afghanistan" but yet, havent gotten Bin Laden.
Our current goverment is a joke. They're incapable of doing anything AND that includes the democrats that are in office as well. They're lame and weak.
The republicans know how to fight, but they have no clue how to run a country. They certainly are good at giving government hand outs ot their rich friends though.
And that is a big issue.
So lets not talk about Clinton. Lets talk about the assholes in power RIGHT NOW.
I am but your post portrays a tremendous lack of knowledge about what science is.
There is consensus on the theory of evolution. It's the best theory for the data. Yet here we are debating things that the scientific community settled a while ago. And no you don't get consensus from the religious right - that's why they developed ID - creationism in sheep's clothing.
"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."
Competently address their arguments? What are their scientific arguments? What papers have they published explaining this idea and providing support for it? Why they haven't. More like steel cuts mustard. Why aren't they doing research, and finding evidence to support their position? The ID supporters seem to spend a lot of time getting their ideas in the classroom without a single shred of scientific evidence.
ID isn't a theory. It cannot be proven false, it cannot be subject to experimentation. That's the method of science. If you are going to teach ID, you should probably teach Intelligent Falling
Thalasar
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 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?
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.
What learning? Most monks were illiterate scribes who learned to copy letters without ever learning how to read.
The real intended role of monestaries was to keep anyone remotely intelligent away from the general public where he might go starting trouble by speaking out against the Church. If you keep all the remotely bright people lured away, and force them to dedicate their life to the Church in order to learn anything, you can control them: and control of the masses was and is the purpose of Christianity since it's inception.
It's hard NOT to blame the Christian for the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings: they perpetuated that statement for thousands of years. The founding fathers were literally traitors of their day; not only to their King, but to their God as well. God had appointed King George to rule over them, and god-fearing men obeyed. Only evil heretics like Franklin and Jefferson dared rebelagainst the divine goodness incarnate in royalty. Or so said the Christians.
They claimed it was God who appointed the Kings, and it was a heresy against God to argue against the Church.
Newton, Darwin, and Galileo didn't have the choice to reject Christianity: when you face death for being an atheist, it's not a good idea to argue against a God. In England, the early copyright laws were formed to keep unpopular writings supressed: pornographic, heretical, and atheistic statements were illegal, and you could be killed for it.
Even today, there are still laws against blasphemy on the books in the USA, Canada, and Great Britan. Even today, there is little freedom against this religion.
As a boy,I was forced to worship the Christian's God, in my public school, funded by the public's tax dollars. If anything should be free of the taint of religious brainwashing, it should be a house of education, but no, the Christians got there first.
Catholics in my province get special treatment under the law; Catholic schools get public funding, unlike any other religious school in the country.
It's unfair, but that's Christianity. Claim what they will, they're only out for the power. When your starting premise is a lie, it's not surprising that many of them learned to lie to themselves as well.
--
AC
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
Wasn't Galileo branded a heritic by the Vatican, and Darwin?
FalconShould there be a Law?
...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.
You demonstrate ignorance of the effect the Catholic Church on learning. You remember, the ones that put Galileo under house arrest?
If you think Christianity as practiced in the Dark Ages was good for science in general, you're pretty silly.
Yes, there were some Christians who were scientists. (Staggeringly enough, that's still true today.) But to argue that the Christian power structure was pro-science is absurd.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
My point is that, on the value of religion at least, Tom Paine clearly ran counter to the Founding Fathers. It's become a common (albeit no longer clever) ruse to invoke Paine's name when arguing against the "Forefathers Intended Religion to be Part of US Society" angle; Paine's name is meant to spook the Forefather-invoker.
Was Paine wrong re Religion? Were Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, et. al. right? A discussion for a different thread, and I've argued both sides in my days. But there can really be no argument that the Money-Head folks intended a prominent and positive role for religion in their new nation's development. The warping of the Constitution's 'Establishment Clause' which prevents the Feds from creating a national religion into something blocking local municipalities from putting up creches or ten commandments or magic groves in their public parks if enough townies want them is just perverse.
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
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.
The US has been fucking with other governments for 60+ years, and people like bin Laden and Saddam and places like Vietnam are its legacy
Yeah, and it pisses me off.
"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." John Quincy Adams
We've come a loooong way haven't we?
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
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!
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!
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.
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
----
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
----
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
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.
No argument that Christian Europe (and its American black sheep cousin) eventually became a technological and philosophical master of the world, but lets not glorify early Christianity as anything more, in the main, than nasty, brutish, and cruel.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
... 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!
Even if the things the Republicans said *were* true (something I dispute), did it justify breaking the law? Did it justify the risking of the lives of other operatives and associates that worked for and with the Brewster-Jennings cover organization? Or is it OK to break the law in the name of political expediancy if you are a Republican administration official? What a fscking moron.
That is all.
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?
"The ones who started the universities. Christians like Newton, Darwin and Galileo."
Well, Newton was a jew. Or should I phrase it this way so I'm not accused of using it as a pejorative, "Well, Newton was jewish."
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.
"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
Please learn what a straw man argument is. You might want to also learn about the other logical arguments, since you proceeded to use false predication and ad hominem.
(My anecdote about the nasal passages of gerbils - that is an actual line item in the 1996 budget inserted as a rider which would have allocated $260,000 to Illinois State. A straw man assumes a fictional situation. At least you could learn to use a term properly before using it.)
The point of my post - which you quickly moved to ignore so you could join the phillistine chorus of "straw man" is that Bush hasn't cut funding for scientific research at all. Actual dollar figures are still rising. The point the original author (who, unlike you, actually has some credibility) makes is that the Bush Administration is not increasing funding to keep pace with GDP output. What the original author doesn't go on to discuss is the Bush Administration has reallocated the distribution of Federal Grant money away from pure research, and towards applied sciences.
As a taxpayer, I feel I have the right to see my money going towards practical research with near-term realization, not abstractions of pure research. That is the government's "shareholder responsibility" - which you claim doesn't exist.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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
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.
You are completely wrong. If anything, most of the founding fathers were Deists,
Jefferson was a deist, and please see my post elsewhere in this thread re exactly what kind of deist we're talking about here.
As for the other wig-heads, well, let's just take a look at the woodshedding they gave poor Ol' Reasonable Tom Paine shortly after he went rogue:
Sam Adams (The Statesman, not the Brewer), wrote to him, "[W]hen I heard you had turned your mind to a defence of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished and more grieved that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the true interest of so great a part of the citizens of the United States. The people of New England, if you will allow me to use a Scripture phrase, are fast returning to their first love. Will you excite among them the spirit of angry controversy at a time when they are hastening to amity and peace? I am told that some of our newspapers have announced your intention to publish an additional pamphlet upon the principles of your Age of Reason. Do you think your pen, or the pen of any other man, can unchristianize the mass of our citizens, or have you hopes of converting a few of them to assist you in so bad a cause?" (William V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1865) III:372-73, to Thomas Paine on Nov. 30, 1802.)
and John Adams was similarly unamused:
"The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue equity and humanity, let the Blackguard [scoundrel, rogue] Paine say what he will" (John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, Ed., (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856) III:421, dairy entry for July 26, 1796.)
Later, in a letter to Jefferson, this Wingnut, Adams, wrote:
"The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite....And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: . . . Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System." (Lester J. Capon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:339-40)
And what about Ben Franklin, that skirt-chasing, France-loving, wine-tasting, electricity-discovering scientist? Surely he wasn't down with those evil, crusade-calling, inquisition-loving small-'X' xtians, was he? Let's ask:
"History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion. . . and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern."
Our Boy Ben, "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," 1749, p.22)
Benjamn Rush, Charles Carrol, and John Witherspoon -- Declaration of Independence signes all -- called Paine's work "absurd and impious"[1], "blasphemous writings against the Christian religion" [2], and Paine himself "ignorant of human nature as well as an enemy to the Christian faith." [3]
[1]Benjamin Rush, "Letters of Benjamin Rush," L.H. Butterfield, ed., (Princeton University Press, 1951) II:770, to John Dickenson on Feb 16, 1796.
[2]Joseph Gurn, "Charles Carrol of Carrolton" (NY: P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1932, p. 203.
[3]John Witherspoon, "The Works of the Reverend John Witherspoon" (Phila: Wm W. Woodward, 1802) III:24n2, from "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men," delivered at Princeton on May 17, 1776
They wer
Tell them Jesus was a liberal Jew. :)
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"
Wow, there's another Slashdot phenomenon: Factflooding!
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
regarding illitirate scribes, I don't know if that was true as a rule.
7 .html
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.
The Renaissance happened because of Greek refugees arriving in Italy after the Muslims destroyed Byzantium - that's why the renaissance began in Italy.
First of all, the people from Byzantium used the Greek language but were not Greek.
Second, way before Byzantium was finally conquered by the Muslims which founded the Ottoman empire, it was overrun by crusadors and they effectively destroyed the city and its institutions. The Ottomans just finished the job there.
Third, the contacts between Byzantines and Italians that resulted in the Renaissance were the result of the attempts in the later 1400s to rejoin the eastern and western branches of the church. Refugees fleeing to Italy contributed as well, but definitely did not kick it off.
Last but not least, after Byzantium was conquered by the Ottomans, they did take the big Sofia church and changed it into a mosk (one of the most amazing buildings of all time btw, study its architecture if you are interested), but they also did allow the eastern catholic church to remain in Byzantium and were a lot less destructive to the city, its culture and population then the crusadors before them.
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
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.
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.
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
omg, try to get off your oil trip for just a second.
ask any particle physicist where the discoveries will be made during the next two decades, and they will tell you: at the LHC (at CERN, in Switzerland).
if the US had built the SSC, we would already have discovered the higgs boson (or else whatever takes it place in TeV scale physics). even with b*sh as president. there would likely not even have to be an LHC. the LHC uses the LEP tunnel, which actually makes it significantly smaller and less powerful than the SSC would have been.
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
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..