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US No Longer Technology King
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum the US has lost the leading spot for technology innovation. The new reigning champ is now apparently Denmark with other Nordic neighbors Sweden, Finland and Norway all claiming top spots as well. "Countries were judged on technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available and the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness."
It appears it's mostly based on that... but then we all know this country sucks there in regards to Europe and Asia. As soon as the FCC stops sucking up to the big telecom corps and opens up the spectrum, the game is on again.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I for one... aaaaahhhhh, nevermind.
I'm sure the RIAA and/or MPAA and/or Microsoft are to blame for this somehow.
Since the eighties, when Japan began to take over U.S. role on technology, and U.S. started to focus more on services, this was something predictable. Sometimes people forget that there is no way to be prosper doing each others laundry
When a society decides that corporations are priviledged citizens, corporations decide that profit and Tax Evasion matter more than Education, how can the country NOT fall behind in technology?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
At least we know how to make missiles and $1 million terrorism response vans in the USA. Thank God for our advanced technology.
In some respects that's not too far from the truth, but at the rate we're losing those freedoms I figure they'll eventually stop hating us.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
One small think they left off -- marginal tax rates. High rates like Sweden positively drive innovators away.
If anybody doubts that we have lost our edge in the technology arena let me ask you one question:
Name one complete sub-assembly inside of your computer which had the majority of the R&D and Fabrication done in the USA.
Of that sub-assembly (assuming you have named one), which components are utilizing NEW technology developed here in the USA.
I would like to know why the USA (given a dedicated effort) could not take back the crown of technology power house without doing so by stifling our competition over seas.
There has to be enough room in the future technology development for us to foster and train our citizens to come up with new concepts which will not rely on foreign brains, labor, or money to develop, market, and sell.
Until the US fixes its priorities we're going to continue to fall. Perhaps the US can keep buying talent from other nations, with H1-B visas, but unless the scientists are given fruitful environments they simply aren't going to come up with anything new or revolutionary. What encouragement do the nation's thinkers have to keep improving their ideas when the laurels and rewards are going only to the people who manage them like a column of assets? It's plain demoralizing to continually refine a product for a year only to see executive support lost and funding slashed. Graduate students and post-docs, while they provide a significant source of intellectual labor, cannot compete with happy and eager experienced scientists in other parts of the world.
Extreme levels of government regulation, oversight, interaction, and micromanaging are probably a significant contributor to the death of American technological innovation as well.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The first thing I would critique about this (amongst many others) is that it is a ranked list. At least in the BBC summary, it doesn't describe the objective rankings of the countries.
For example, if it was on a 100 point scale, the US could have slipped from, say, 99.9 to 99.8, and that would have been enough to slip from first to seventh. Or maybe the objective score would have been a much larger slide. Maybe the US objectively climbed, but just not at the same rate as the other countries. Being that all ten of the top countries have the same mature technological apparatus, I am imagining that whatever shuffling took place in the ratings was rather minor. The actual differences between technology adaption between the US and Iceland might be almost indistinguishable.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
My wife has been mentioning this for years: it seems like the 'owners' have been cutting back on educational funding, industrial infrastructure, etc.
I am starting to agree with my wife, given evidence like: Bush family buying massive amounts of land in South America, Dick Cheney primarily investing his own money overseas, etc.
I believe that people with real power in the USA are "cutting loose" the middle class and lower class. I write about this in my blog a lot: the best thing to do is to invest heavily in yourself: education, personal learning, pay off debt, invest, and save.
Isn't it a global marketplace now? Who cares what 'your country' is doing. Just be the best you can be in your field and you'll be fine. Life will go on even if you can't wave a big flag saying your country is better than somebody else's. Be proud of what *you* can do.
Imagine a beowolf cluster of you hating slashdot!
I live in the Sillicon Valley and we use to be the big Tech center, after the Dot Com burst people began shunning Technology based companys. Now the big focus in the area seams to be BioTech companys. They are quickly out pacing the IT companys in the area. But thanks to short sighted politicians there are to many bans and restrictions in this country on this type of technology.
Something like only 20% of the availble stock of Stem Cells are still viable but the government makes it illegal to harvest more. Maybe I missed something, but every article I have seen on the process seams to make it appear no life is destroyed getting the stem cells. Its simply the old Science vs. Religion debate and the Religious Zeolots are winning and running the country into a sad deluded existance.
I read that part as well and the most prominent thought in my mind was to wonder at what level that focus on innovation is being counted. Sure, the US purports to spend lots of money on some of the important things but very little of that actually makes it to the level of the researchers who would actually do something with it. Most of the venture capital is perpetually recycled back to the upper levels of people who invest it thanks to the "sophistication of financial markets".
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
You might have a machine that solves any problem you give it, but if nobody has access to it, it may as well not be there.
(IANAL)
Like software, Education and Immigration should be free and open. Providing innovation a fertile breeding ground.
I think that the cost of Education in the US has a big impact on this too. Sadly, a college degree has become a status symbol in the US for "upper class" citizens. A lot of people can't afford a student loan that is sometimes more than their mortgage!
A lot of European countries offer good incentives for people to study, including paying a state allowance for university students.
I'm not up to date on European immigration policy, but I'm sure it would be much more relaxed than the US when it comes to skilled labor. I couldn't imagine it being any more tighter.
Well, that's my 2 cents worth anyways...
Maybe Iran testing nuclear weapons? Just a thought, who knows...
While US companies are judged solely on profit, this trend will continue because it is the most lucrative way to bring something to market.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/ 5819/1646
1 3/750
Two powerful champions of biomedical research blasted the White House's proposal to cut funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 and invited research leaders to vent their own frustrations at a Senate hearing this week.
Another story last month
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/58
*Research Rises--and Falls--in the President's Spending Plan*
Just as he has stayed the course in Iraq, President George W. Bush has stuck to his guns with his budget proposals. On 5 February, he sent Congress a 2008 budget request for science that favors a handful of agencies supporting the physical sciences and puts the squeeze on most of the rest of the federal research establishment as part of an overall $2.9 trillion plan that clamps down on most civilian spending....
I am an American citizen. But, I am perfectly willing to accept that the USA has lost the technology crown. No problem, if another country has earned the crown, I say "good for them."
But, is the "World Economic Forum" just another one of those USA hating jack-off organizations? I read TFA, as far as I can tell, they are just making this stuff up as they go.
India is in 4th place? Ever been to India? A huge percentage of the population have never used anything as technologically advanced as a toilet. I mean not even an outhouse - they go right outside.
The word is "pantywaists". It referred originally to a child's undergarment.
~ Leilah
Dark fiber isn't useful for pushing out broadband. The dark fiber is just extra fiber that was run alongside lit fiber (because the incremental cost is very low) when they were installing the backbones. If the backbone owners find that they need more bandwidth, they'll use that dark fiber. There's no lack of bandwidth on the backbones; it's with the "last mile" connections to homes and businesses, which requires some type of new infrastructure to be installed.
Maybe this issue is the one that will spur a major rethinking of prohibitive American IP laws. If you can't innovate, guess what, you get left behind. (Unless you're Microsoft, but that's another rant)
I'm curious as to what kind of IP structure Denmark has, as well as the other top tech countries, even China. Do all these governments get their IP laws dicated to them by big money corporations?
I don't buy this playing with numbers. If there was any merit to this the large population centers in the US should have had much better Broadband access. New York alone contains more people than all of Sweden and Norway combined. I am sure New York City takes up far less space than Norway and Sweden combined. So why don't cities like LA, New York and Chicago have at least as good broadband penetration as nordic countries? From what I read they don't.
no. plain old no.
research was initiate LOONG ago indeed, yes, and the concept of a network come to fruition at the clinton presidency.
but if it was not clinton adm. that was in office back then, internet would be shaped to be and remain a governmental, inter-university, or at most big-buck (you know, at&t, time warner and the like) playing ground just like tv and radios were made to be.
it was very fortunate that at that point democrats were in power, and clinton appointed that black guy (i forgot his name) to the related functions in regulating the predecessor of internet.
Read radical news here
'What country has landed on the moon?'
38 years ago.
'What country invented the transistor, and later the microchip?'
Over 50 years ago.
'What country harnessed electricity, and set up the first electric lights?'
You'd be surprised. But that was over 120 years ago.
'What country set up the first assembly line, and mass produced the automobile?'
Again, 100 years ago.
'What country split the atom?'
63 years ago.
Now.
Which of the wealthy industrialized countries has the highest percentage of poor?
Which has least progressive taxation, ie rich pay higher percentage, indeed, pay taxes at all.
Which has lowest average wages.
Which has declining participation in the wealth generated by labor.
Which has worst ratio superrich to general population.
Which has giant trade imbalance.
Which has largest debt.
Which has biggest tax breaks for wealthiest people.
Which has collapsing real estate market.
Which has no manufacturing capacity for its own markets.
Which has worst schools.
Which has largest percentage of permanent poor.
Which has poorest representation of science in government.
Which has most money wasted on military and spy networks.
Which has religious belief that markets cure anything.
Which lost a major city and told its people to go to hell for being poor and stupid.
Which has the highest per capita spending on health care with the worst per capita coverage. Add: Which has businesses taking 30 percent or more of the health care expenditures as admin costs and profit.
Which has worst sex education, teen pregnancy rate and STD infection rate.
Which has worst newborn death rate.
Which has collapsing science funding.
Which has had science infiltrated by the operatives of a political party.
Which has a population so uneducated and unimaginative that they only finished 1/4 of a space station and forgot to build a shuttle to get to it. And can't understand why that would matter.
Which economy is about to explode, sinking belly up?
Which nation is exceedingly wealthy and well educated because they nationalized their oil fields, keeping all the profits? That would be Norway.
Which countries tax high, have excellent labor representation in business decisions, has excellent health care at reasonable cost, low poverty rates, lowest teen birth rates and STD infection rates, and now lead the world in tech development? Why, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and all the other countries mentioned.
Apparently the people of a nation taking control of their futures through their representative governments do better than those who abdicate their control to be ruled by corporate business. Who would have thought it.
One thing i think that has been overlooked in this discussion is the number of amazing institutions. If you compare the number of elite research institutions in the United States to anywhere else the US does extremely well. While this is certainly only one factor in a nations "technology ranking" the amount of research these universities generate and the highly educated people they churn out is undeniable a huge positive force for the US.
In Korea only old people welcome overlords...
The nordic countries all have long, cold winters. Most people spend this time in front of their PC playing games and surfing porn. This creates huge bandwidth demands and drives innovation. There is also much of the competitive spirit in these young lads, and the challenge of having the most porn spurs them ever onwards. Of course, to avoid getting in trouble off their parents, they spend a bit of time here and there inventing new CPU designs, producing innovative mobile phones and other high-brow stuff, but in the end it's just porn.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Uh...you do realise how big your government deficit is, don't you? The US is getting money from other countries, not the other way around.
As has been pointed out many times previously on Slashdot, it is the Last Mile that counts. Putting down a few thousand kilometers of fibre in rural areas isn't that expensive. What costs is connecting each and every user of the network to the hubs.
This is where European cities have a big advantage. Most people live in apartments with sometimes hundreds of families living in the same block of flats. The cable companies can just connect the whole building to a hub and draw the cables inside the house. In the US, where most people live in their own houses they have to draw the last mile outdoors. That means digging up roads and doing a separate installation for each household they want to connect. Of course that is going to be much more expensive.
That and subsidies. The Nordic countries try very hard to bring high speed access to everyone.
Football Odds
...as long as it remains Plow King.
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
Well an issue is what makes something American. If Intel manufacturers and design all their chips outside of the US, are they still an American company even if the HQ is in the US? Now this is not the case at the moment. But just food for thought, because a lot of research by these companies are not done in the US. E.g. whole lines of microprocessors by intel were developed in Israel. A lot of research centers exist in China and India. And what are the American universities best in? Educating or doing research? As far as I know the rankings are usually based on research. A number of universities in the US today are being blamed for neglecting education in favor of research.
Does giving food and shelter to a homeless count as "meeting every need"? I don't expect government to brush my teeth. But I sure expect it to keep law and order, build roads, and fulfill a number of other important needs of a country. If the US is so free, why is every drug illegal even soft drugs? Isn't it peoples own problem if they screw themselves up? Why should government tell me how to live my life? Why is prostitution mostly illegal? Isn't sex between two consenting adults a private matter and not a matter for the government? Mind you I wouldn't do any. But I don't see why it should be the business of government to interfere with if anybody else wish to do so. With social freedom it simply seems to be a lot of limits in the US. Another example, why can't you consume alcohol when 21? If I drink alcohol on my own property under 21 why should that be any of the governments business?
There's an even better answer. To wit, "How do you know there was a Jesus? Were you there?"
There is no historical evidence supporting the actual existence of Jesus. The earliest mention of Jesus is in the context of remarks made by Josephus, a man born about 7 years after Christ's supposed death. Then there is Tacitus, who was born about 55 AD. There are a couple more that come at about 80 AD and 100...110AD and then as the Christians gained followers, more and more mentions. The key thing, though, is that there is no mention anywhere in the records we have from 0 to 30 AD of Mr. Christus, and no mention by anyone whose personal timeline crossed that of Mr. Christus.
"What about the bible?" I hear the apologists winding up to ask. Well, what about it? There are no books of the bible that are any older than 300AD. The earliest documents we have - the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Alexandrin manuscripts - come from 300AD or later; they are supposed to be copies of earlier works, but as no such works have come to light, and of the 5,000 or so documents that went into the mix to be used as a basis for the bible (compared against one another and so on), these three are by far the best ones and the most used... we can pretty much limit the scope of trust to literally hundreds of years after Christus was supposed to have lived - in other words, the bible is actually less authoritative than either Tacitus or Josephus, and as I pointed out, those fellows never even knew the man.
A lot of people take the actual existence of Christ as a given, and then proceed to argue about his divinity. However, examining the history, it turns out there is no reason to even presume the man existed. We know there was a group of people - Christians - who were being a pain in the government's rear by the end of the first century AD. That's all we know.
One more step down the ladder - the argument that "because there were Christians, there must have been a Chirst." I point you to Scientology. Must there have been a Xenu? I point you to Mormonism. Must there have been golden tablets, an angel named Moroni? I can even point you to the wall of your veterinarian. Must there have been a "rainbow bridge"? I could go on (for pages!) but I think I've already made the point. These types of organizations are known to arise for reasons entirely aside from the claims that underlie the mythology. There is no need to assume truth because an organization arises based around certain ideas; quite the contrary. The ideas themselves are what need to be looked at, not the organization. And in the case of Christus, it turns out that there are no more convincing records of him than there are of Xenu.
As the claimant, the burden of proof falls upon the Christian. Presently, there is no historical evidence that backs up their claims; that pretty much cuts the feet right out from under any argument they might make. Much more to the point than the flood. Floods are known to happen. Divine children aren't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yea, all the whiney stuff about losing our tech edge... really man, get over it. How about something that really counts, like high scores on Grand Theft Auto? We rule dude. When it comes to whacking cops and hos and stealin stuff, we are like so totally NUMBER ONE! We are the numero uno video game nation! The USA is also top of the heap in pizza, and drinks with cool names like "cocaine", and shopping malls. And stuff like SUVs and MP3 players. You Euro-smack talkers ever look and see where your iPod comes from? Silicone valley usa, dude. And where do you think Star Wars came from? France? Sheesh. They're not even allowed to use cameras anymore. Where else can you see American Idle or a Billy Ray Cirrhosis show? Huh? Not London hon. No way. Cause we are just too bitchin.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
They're rejection Christianity and Science!
The country is *literally* going to hell in a hand basket!
I always knew we were going to hell, but I was hoping for a ferrari, or maybe a hover craft. But a hand basket, I never say that coming.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I've always found it interesting that when an article comes out about how the traditional leaders in cellular and wireless technology also have governments that have ALWAYS had strong funding of communication technology, that this is first a surprise and second some indictment of the US in general.
Not only that but the Euro-wienies and elitists from other countries come out of the woodwork and try to lecture people in the US on topics ranging from government to their general superiority. What the actual reality is is that the US still performs more research and development (in dollars) than every other nation on earth combined and the US also provides more breakthroughs in science on whole than all the rest of the world combined and there are more scientists devoted to basic research and development than any other country on a per capita basis.
Yea, we know Bush is a fvcking retard, yes we are going to be rid of him in 2008 and possibly even sooner. But NONE of that has ANYTHING to do with basic research and development. Yes, the US has been exporting a lot of basic manufacturing. No, that isn't relevant to the US lead in Research and Development because even if we don't build it, we invented it, our engineers perfected it, our banks finance it and all the executives and most of the white collar jobs are in the US. Ever seen an article where China complains about being only basic manufacturing with no higher level sustainable jobs?
Do you realize with high fuel prices China's advantage as a basic manufacturer will evaporate when their wages move beyond slave rates, in that high fuel and transport costs will hurt all globalization in basic blue collar jobs. And for all the European's trash talk, lets not forget that 90% of the worlds hot zones these days, including Iraq, Palestine, and Iran, tie back to what European colonialization (primarily British) for the previous 300 years has done to the world.
We now have a President who is "Born Again", and recognizes Christ as his personal saviour. His old Attorney General, John Ashcroft, a devout Assemblies of God member, used to anoint himself with oil. We have many members of Congress, both in the Senate and the House, who are ordained ministers in their churches. Some are LDS Bishops. I would venture to say that the percentage of devout Christians holding office in various levels of government in the US exceeds that of the general population. Which oath do they hold to? Their duty to country, or to a church?
You've got people who firmly believe that the US Constitution states that the USA is a Christian nation. I've got in-laws who used to believe that I was damned to Hell because I was raised Catholic and not a member of the Church of Christ.
We have a member of the Texas House who firmly believes that the Earth is the center of the Universe, and that we never landed a man on the moon, and that satellites are held in orbit by magnetism, not gravity - because Newton's Laws are wrong and he can prove it. http://www.fixedearth.com/geosynchronous_sa.htm (I had to post that link because it's a hoot. His proof is that a LaGrange point is where gravity stops because it's where it balances out. Give the man a Nobel!)
We had an Army General (2 star?) who fervently believed we would win in Iraq because his God is greater than their God, Allah. Someone forgot to tell him they're one and the same. Jehovah, too.
These are the people who've been running this nation for the last dozen years or so. Their's are the people who backed a "Crusade" in the Middle East, thinking we'd set them "free".
Oh. And that CUNY study? Does it take into account that many black Southern Baptists are becoming Muslims? And the biggest immigrant groups in the US today are Hispanic Catholics (and Protestants) and Muslims from the Middle East and SE Asia?
Just because the percentage of people identifying themselves as Christians has gone down (how accurate is that study) does not mean that the number of people who identify themselves as religious has gone down. Or that the percentage who identify themselves as Born Again has gone down.
I don't need to cite references. All you need to do is get out of your ivory tower (sorry, that actually sounds religious!) and look around. Wake up. You're missing an entire country out there!
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
For example, take Coke: Coke consists of water, a couple of cents of sugar (bad-for you stuff), caramel, caffiene, CO2 many of which are toxins. How do they make people drink the stuff? By advertising and marketing and creating an image.
Um, no. This isn't correct at all. People drink Coke for the same reason they eat too many Twinkies or doughnuts: it tastes good. It's as simple as that. If it tasted like crap, people wouldn't drink it. They might try it once because of some advertising, but people don't usually continue to eat or drink stuff that doesn't taste good, unless it gives them a drugged sensation (e.g., alcohol).
If you made an argument that people drank Coke rather than a competing cola drink because of advertising and marketing, you'd have a much better argument, but I'd counter with the argument that people choose a drink they think tastes better, and that different colas (branded or generic) have very different tastes. Pepsi, for instance, is much sweeter tasting than Coke.
As for toxins, I don't think there's anything in Coke that's a toxin. Caffeine is not a toxin; it's a drug. Just because something's not entirely healthy doesn't mean it's an outright poison. Caramel is just cooked sucrose, sugar isn't bad for you per se (it's the quantity versus your energy expenditure that's important), and CO2 is downright inert.
ipods are much the same really. They are a result of extremely good marketing (and I include ergonomics in marketing).
This is quite fallacious in my opinion. Ergonomics is not an element of marketing, it's an element of design, and actually falls under human factors engineering (part of industrial engineering in most schools). I don't think human factors engineers would appreciate being called marketers.
Human factors is what makes a product usable. If something's hard to use, it's simply not as functional as something that's easy to use. Suppose you had a race car with a crappy seat with no side support, no lumbar support, and in general very uncomfortable. The driver of that race car wouldn't perform very well compared to drivers in cars with well-designed seats, and the team would lose the race. There's no marketing there; it's performance, and it's human factors.
They are not particularly good in terms of sound quality and break often (a huge number of in wanrantee failures).
Most people don't have hearing good enough to discern minor differences in sound quality (especially with earbud headphones usually used for portability), and how often they fail is only relevant insofar as how the competition compares. I imagine most MP3 players (esp. hard drive ones) have a lot of failures because of their complexity and portability. Cellphones aren't known for their ruggedness either.
Sure, branding within an economy adds very little value within that economy. If a Coke costs $1 or $5 does not really matter within the USA. But on a global basis, branding is increasingly becoming a huge USA export earner. A Coke sold in Australia, for instance, which is made and bottled in Australia results in some money going back to Coke USA.
For this example, it's pretty simple, and I discussed it above. It's about taste. Coke made and bottled in Australia isn't just some generic cola with a Coke label slapped on; it's the super-secret Coke formula made to their specifications, so that it's the same product as what you buy in the USA. People apparently like the taste, so they buy it.
Anyway, back to the original point, as you say, ipod is made in the same factory as the technically equivalent YinYangMP3. So why would you spend $200 for the ipod and not spend $100 for the equivalent YinYang? Because of the branding.
No, at least in this example, it's because the YinYang is not the same product as the iPod. The YY has some buttons instead of a scroll wheel, has a different user interface, and doesn't work with iTunes (not that I'm a fan of iTunes, but many people are
I think this on should be marked 'Informative' -- it illustrates the American Way. As an American, I completely understand this. What's bad, is where assholes take this kind of attitude. With guns.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
And someone always argues along these lines. Yet Canada has a larger percentage of rural population, similar geography, and has a higher percentage of broadband use.
Whoa, whoa. You were doing ok until here, where you slip up. It is perfectly reasonable to assume, given the existence of early Buddhists, that there was a Buddha. Was he in fact in possession of all of the traits they attributed to him? Probably not, from a skeptical outlook - most likely, he was just a very smart, insightful and charismatic individual. Likewise Jesus. The scant evidence does not prove he exists, but the simplest explanation is that such a person - not necessarily a divine one - did, in fact, exist. Don't mix up the existence of the supernatural Christ with a human Jesus. Don't compare the existence of the human Jesus to the existence of Xenu, these are completely different issues.
Scientology - there was a Ron L. Hubbard. Mormonism - there was a Joseph Smith. Religious movements nearly always start with a powerful leader figure. As skeptics, we would view those people as ('merely') exceptional human beings, not divine or supernatural as the adherents of those faiths would. But let's not deny the likely existence of the individual itself.
No. Let's retarget your comment, and see what happens:
You are conflating characters in a story with the authors of a story. There is no such relationship that automatically arises; that is only the case when the story is a history, and my entire point is that there is no evidence that confirms the bible's role in telling about Jesus as a historical one. Jesus did not write the bible (or anything else, even according to the bible.) The only conclusion you can draw from Jesus' presence in the stories in the bible is that since these are claimed to be tellings of history, then the reasonable thing to do is go searching elsewhere in history to get confirmation. That confirmation has, to date, not been forthcoming. This leaves the status of the bible as history unconfirmed. No matter how you want to cast Christ's role - human, hybrid, divine, alien - all you have to go on is what the bible says, simply because that's all we've found. The fact that the bible says something is not enough to come to the conclusion that said something represents a factual retelling of history. There are many books, many claims of divine and supernaturally powerful figures, many claims of humans who figure in those stories. This is the actual situation from which you pull your assertion that it is reasonable to presume there was a Christ.
People make up stories. You simply have to factor that in.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
True, but if Paul (or whoever) invented the son of God bit, and the miracles bit, and the resurrection bit, then inventing the actual person seems trivial. If I tell you that I took my penknife and chopped down 4 trees, whittled them into a huge ladder, and climbed up to the clouds to take a ride, I doubt it's wise to assume that I really did have a penknife just because that part of my story is plausible.
Damn, you got me. There goes my secret identity as superwhittlerman
I live in a rural area about 20 miles away from a major US city. When Verizon hooked up fiber to my house about 18 months ago, it took a crew of 6 men all day to go from the pole at the road to get the fiber to my house. They had 4 pieces of heavy equipment.
And they had to spend that much time at the 9 houses on the same road as me. So 6 men spending 9 days gets 9 families connected to fiber.
By the way, "analysts" are now criticizing Verizon for spending so much time and money to get that last mile hooked up. What the chances that anyone else would invest that much in infrastructure? Especially now, since the money guys are now skittish about spending big to get fiber back to homes?
I think one of the previous posters said it best... people who criticize the US don't understand the scale of what has to be done here.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
From the article:
That comment says it all right there. This has nothing to do with technology innovation and everything to do with the members of the World Economic Forum and their collective opinion of the current US administration.