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MA Governor Wants More New Tech
turnitover writes "Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century,' Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made a public call for more innovation in technology, reports eWEEK.com. He urged more investment and development and, yes, a move to OpenDocument, as reported previously on Slashdot." From the article: "Underlining the challenge, Romney said leaders of one technology firm in Massachusetts anticipated that 90 percent of its skilled labor would be in Asia in 10 years. He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia."
Yes, the US graduates fewer PhDs in math and physics. I'm trying to be one of them. But the quality of the US PhD programs are what brought me here (I'm not USian). You can graduate a million PhDs from a degree farm somewhere but if they haven't had the same level of education they aren't going to be as influential. I'm not saying that asian universities are bad, just that there needs to be a deeper insight into this than just raw numbers.
Perhaps you should compare the base population of "greater Asia" to the base population of the US... then the figure would seem incredibly skewed towards the US.
"Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century,"
Wouldn't a better analogy be, "the England of the 21st century". After all we do have troops in the same cities around the world (Baghdad, Kabul) as Britain at the turn of the 20th century. We did take the position of world power from the British. Much of our common law is based from British law. But hey, the sun never sets on the British Empire....
Make education possible for everyone at costs comparable to Asia/Europe/etc and you will have more PhDs.
But will people pay the taxes to do it?
The reality is that people simply don't want to pay for anything. They expect services from the government yes, but in the end, for a lot of things, they'd rather pay no tax than have some services.
Even if the US slips behind and loses its position as the worlds biggest economy and/or science nation, Americans will still not reform their education system. This is because in the end, beneath all the rhetoric, all the patriotism, all the pride, all the manifest destinies, there has been only one true constant in America. The Buck.
And more correctly "My Buck". And no american will fork it over without a danm good reason.
May the Maths Be with you!
"Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century"
It's only cryptic if you don't understand that France is a former world power that has been permanently eclipsed economically, technologically, culturally, and militarily, and it has an almost obsessive desire to act as if it is America's nemesis, complaining almost reflexively of most of America's moves on the international stage.
That's not to say that the French aren't nice people, nor that I wouldn't love to hang out on one of their topless beaches, nor watch Paris's nightly display of lights, but in the realpolitik world, France doesn't matter! Thus their desire for a strong, core European Union, which along with Germany, they hope to dominate, to unite Europe as a strong and meaningful entity on the global stage.
You will know that the US is screwed when it seeks to create a transnational government with Canada and Mexico.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Science, math, and engineering education and professions are disrespected by the educational system (we'd rather fund our sports teams), the government (your scientific results don't support our politics), businesses (your work is critical to us but we can't pay you more than your overseas competition), and media (entertainers are cool, geeks drool).
I doubt this will change until it's too late.
Moderation in everything, including moderation.
I live in MA, and Romney has been one colossal pain in the ass.
The man is a calculating, cold, arrogant, mean, power-brokering son of a bitch.
Please help metamoderate.
Except along the way he was accosted by a bum who asked him if he was running for President or not (I'm dead serious) and was nearly attacked on one of the subway platforms by a woman who was in the news for keeping about a hundred cats in her house (a fair number of them dead, and a bunch of the dead ones in several freezers.) MBTA and State Police took care of both problems.
Adding insult to injury, a reporter asked him how much the fare was, and he said "a buck". Except the MBTA has been $1.25 for over a year. The MBTA comissioner became enraged when reporters made something of it. "The governor can't be aware of everything". Except it was a MAJOR issue in the eastern end of the state- the rate hike affected commuter rail, bus, and subway customers.
It pretty much proved that not only did he not give a shit about issues that affected citizens in his state, and that he could barely be bothered to take the subway for one stop- he didn't even pay for the fare himself.
Please help metamoderate.
What's more, it's not even tax deductable. By the time you get to the point where you even have enough after-tax income to pay for the schooling, you have enough income to be disqualified for the tax breaks -- the ceiling doesn't go up with number of dependents.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Just because they exist doesn't mean they aren't boogiemen. A boogieman is something you have an irrational, and unnecessary, fear of. I'd say terrorists fit that description for most Americans.
Sure terrorists do lots different of things, but the chance of them happening to you, or even anyone you know, is fairly remote. You are much more likely, in all probablity, to get into a car accident this year.
Should terrorists be stopped? Yes. Do they have to be mentioned in every political speach for the next 10 years? No. Did they have any real relevence in this speach? No. They were just being used for the knee-jerk fear the word evokes.
'Sensible' is a curse word.