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State of US Science Report Shows Disturbing Trends
coondoggie writes to mention that the National Science Board is concerned about certain indicators in the science and engineering fields for the United States. "For example, US schools continue to lag behind internationally in science and math education. On the other hand, the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies. The US also leads the world in patent development."
...we spending the most money, on the dumbest researchers?
When did we all conspire to repeat the meme that the engineering job market sucks? It goes beyond the usual issue--outsourcing(linked almost every time to India). There's the annoyance with people who haven't been putting together and programming computers since age 5. There's the frightening realization in the programming world that anyone can learn it anywhere. You don't grow your industry by discouraging newcomers. People who work with computers will expand the market. As we get more people into atheism and computing, the demand for those same people grows. Check out monster.com's tech board. Pessimists abounds there.
if I buy a copy of cold fusion and use it to set up a web based admin, production, scheduling system. Can someone come along and say the process we created is patented and that I can't use it?
Are we saying that Patent Trolling is the same thing as Developing?
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
This is a natural cycle of markets. (or greed, or laziness or whatever...) now the US is resting on their laurels, reaping the benefits of engineers past and eventually will pay dearly economically for this culture's unwillingness to churn out better engineers.... and 70 years from now you'll probably see another surge of ingenuity and wonder in western-hemisphere technology.
"Patenting the obvious, since 1994" :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This article http://www.phds.org/reading/elites.html always seemed good to me. It's been 15 years since it has been written now.
...a creationist museum in Texas is closing
Mod US science +1!
What use of a phone call, if you can't talk ? As in, what use of patents, if particular Software ones, if its the only one using them?
Talk to teenagers you know. I once did a presentation for a class about programming that was sponsored by my employer, Intel. Spread the word. Pessimists will be doing the same thing--you have to counteract them.
It seems to me to be the height of hypocrisy that business leaders (Gates and company) complain about a lack of scientifically/technologically trained Americans, and thus we need to increase H1-B visas. These same leaders then turn around and support republican candidates who don't believe in evolution and want to water down the science curriculum by introducing Intelligent Design.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Wait, you mean in a nation where whole chunks of the population teach their kids that the world was created by an invisible sky daddy in six days isn't leading the pack in science education? We'd better pray harder!
This is going to sound really cynical, but I feel inclined to say: No wonder current tech is not forward-thinking and is only innovating at a "comfortable" pace. You know, the kind of pace that enables companies to really milk as much as they can out of products without having to do very much R&D to improve the tech.
This is why we are still using countless seperate devices for our various everyday communication/information needs that can't communicate with each other, and why the concept of "integration" of the technological extensions of ourselves is largely overlooked. Oh, it's also why we pay $50+mo for, frankly, the most basic of cell phone and internet connectivity, for example. Companies that have the funds to do amazing R&D and amazing advances in the "human" aspects of technology aren't bothering, because they're rich as hell one way or another - they can crawl along at a comfortable pace with no problem (especially because "everyone else is doing it too").
Yeah, a bit of a tangent there, but I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately. You know, we 100% have the means for technology to be so much more, but it's as though no one cares.
today, the usa is where you go when you want to turn your ideas into personal financial rewards. however, the usa can't rely upon this fact for long, as china will become the top dog soon in the $$$ department. and so the usa must indeed focus on nurturing it's own brainpower ...and watch them move to shanghai
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is this truly a good thing. Are US patents even valid outside the US (ie international treaties that govern patents)? There seems to be a big difference between using R&D to come up with commercially-viable products and generating patents of ideas that may or may not be viable.
Consider:
That's what I hear from my freshman-sophomore math majors nearly every day. Sorry to pass the buck, but I suspect that HS math is either dumbed down or grade inflation prevents the kids and their parents and their parents' lawyers from complaining too much. So, they get A's in a "hard" subject, get lots of kudos because this must indicate that they're smart, and so some decide (quite logically) to choose math as a major in college.
Then if you get a prof who expects excellent performance for an A, average for a C, and F if you never did work enough to catch on, and then their world turns absolutely upside-down.
Should students study harder? Absolutely. And _13 years_ of public education ought to provide adequate training in how to study. If not, we'll get more of these "disturbing" trends.
And this did not need a study or a research to prove it. The schools have fat kids always trying to woo girls into getting laid; how do we expect them to do research? Maths? Come on! Most of the research industry is comprised of hardworking Indians and Chinese who probably get paid a bit less but are the sole reason for so many breakthroughs and patents Americans like to call their own! Most americans are not aware of their contributions, but well, face it.
At least it looks like there is some progress being made in revitalizing government support for basic research, although we will still have to wait to see if the damages done to scientific research in key fields can be repaired by the next Administration. Hopefully, people are starting to realize that the US doesn't exist in a magical opportunity bubble and unless we remain competitive at all levels of innovation, from basic research to patenting to bringing those developments to market, we are not going to hold on to our competitive edge. America is not immune to the global economy..it's that simple: the United States, like every other economically developed nation has to preserve its comparative advantage by ensuring that it retains a technological lead over its competitors. If we lose that lead, we slide in to economic stagnation and eventually outright decline. At the very least, maybe we'll get some leaders who actually listen to their experts.
That probably explains a lot ....
The compensation (interms of wages, costs of ongoing education, job security, and work hours) should fit the labor market. For the last 8 years they have been all out of wack and are not paying for itself in America.
Anyone who enters the Engeneering or CS Fields had better know what they are getting into. And I think the kids today do know, and that's why the best and brightest are not enrolling in those areas.
U.S. students don't underperform their international peers because the school system sucks (although, it does suck). They underperform for two reasons. One is demographics. The U.S. has a much larger lower class than do most other nations to which it is compared. Kids who grow up in poverty with terrible home situations will, surprise surprise, not shine when it comes to academic performance. The second reasons is cultural. If you look at kids not from this underclass, a disproportionate number lack the desire to acquire math/science skills, or, really, the desire to excel academically in any field. One possible contributor to this is that students in the U.S. needn't pass an exit exam in order to graduate high school and enter college. The other is general cultural malaise, but it's harder to define that in any exact sense. There is a "culture of achievement" present in some countries (Japan and Germany come to mind) that is simply lacking in the United States.
I think it is time to stop comparisons like "the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies", because they give a distorted view of reality. The main reason the USA comes out on top so often with this kind of statistic is simply because it is sound a large populous county.
For example, the USA wins the most gold medals at the Olympics. But does that mean the USA is the best at sports? No. If we look at gold medals per capita, then Australia easily beats the USA. If we add countries together so we have equivalent populations, then we get another picture - Europe would often beat the USA if it entered as a single country, for instance.
If you looked at R&D per capita, or R&D as a % of GDP, or any other more reasonable metric that just comparing countries of different sizes, I expect you would get a very different picture than the summary suggests.
Yep, lets just throw some more money at it! That'll make our kids smarter! As the Federal government rains cash down on the states, they are slowly taking away what has always been a decision of the local people: what the kids get taught in school. This obviously has tremendous implications (I'll just mention the word 'Hitler' here), and is just one more example of the Feds taking control of our daily lives. No Child Left Behind (laff) has been a travesty to the educational system, and has set a dangerous precedent. Want to cure low graduation rates in high school? Give them something to look forward to after graduation: college. Free. The dumb ones can even just get a 2 year degree, but this would give younger students something to work towards, where college is just for rich white folks [I myself am a poor white, and only in college because of the government was generous enough to give me full scholarship]. There is no doubt that manufacturing jobs are fleeing overseas, and many low-skilled service-sector jobs went overseas years ago. By educating so many more people at this higher level, we would have higher employment and more innovation - the one thing that has kept America successful. We haven't had much of that in the past few years.
Since we lead the world in R&D research, and Patents..... What would happen if I registered for a patent for "A Method of learning Maths and Sciences", followed shortly thereafter with "A Method for applying maths and sciences in R&D".
Think I could get some of that R&D Money thru licensing of my patents?
Half the graduate students in hard sciences in the US are foreign. They're the ones who shine. I don't mean second generation I mean foreign students on academic visas. If they stay in the US, yaay for us. If not? Oh well, the US is indigenously now a nation of retards.
My position has always been cutting funding to education. The problem is we have continually increased spending and gotten less in return. I recall a couple of years back when a high school senior in a tiny West Virginia town blew the national curve. I imagine his school district placed higher priority on learning and less on social engineering curriculums. Teachers need to make more, administrative services at school need to be cut. And these social education programs need to be shit canned. Spending can be cut, moneys prioritized (read, teachers!) and we can finally focus on what matters!
I think the declining quality of education in the United States has something to do with the cost of the medical system. Not enough doctors and too much demand from aging baby boomers and the like means that medical professionals are far better paid salary-wise than almost all other professions. In countries with better performing educational systems, health care is cheaper. Someone should do a regression on education performance vs health care expenditures per capita per year of life.
I'll be devil's advocate here and suggest that the average scores don't mean much.
Does it matter that somebody with the median score in high school math isn't particularly good at it, if he's working as a salesman or a mechanic?
Now, I could argue in a liberal arts kind of way that it does matter, because with a better grasp of science these people will be better informed citizens. But from a vocational standpoint, you want to know that if there are N slots for graduates with science skills, the top N science students are very good indeed. And since every job that requires science skills requires strong math skills (but not necessarily vice versa), you want more students to be good at math, but not necessarily every student.
The trend is towards business giving up on American science, engineering, and know-how in general. So why spend four years after high school gaining skills that aren't wanted? Why spend the money to increase student performance when we can enjoy the use of that money today, and it won't make any difference to their lives except maybe in some kind of woolly headed liberal notion of citizenship? If we were really concerned about the future of our students, it'd be like beating the Soviets in the Cold War, no effort to improbable of success to try, no cost to outrageous to bear.
It doesn't pay to be better than the rest of the world but get paid more as well. You've got to be a better value. Therefore by in the name of business efficiency, Americans deserve to see their incomes drop until they're on a par with India and China. When the few Americans who, despite economizing on our schools, have attained some level of scientific or engineering skill look like an incredible bargain, the jobs will come back.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Is the R&D figure still bigger than other countries when it's expressed as a percentage?
How much of the "R&D budget" is spent developing new weapons?
No sig today...
The study appears flawed from the outset. The United States do not employ a single unified educational system. Education is a state-by-state matter (with some federal money thrown in.) lumping together all the schools in every state for a single study is similar to lumping together all of the schools in Asia.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
what i see as most disturbing not only in the article, but in the responses, is that no one seems to worry about what is referred to as "basic" research anymore. basic research is the research you do to figure out what is happening in a system normally, figuring out how it's supposed to work. this is the first step in ANY major breakthrough, no matter the field.
but it's the least funded.
i work in basic research in the medical field. the NIH is currently funding between 9 and 10 PERCENT of the proposals handed to them. hopefully they are picking the cream of the crop. we don't lack the manpower. there are LOTS of capable people to do the work. it's funding. there is VERY little funding for research unless someone stands to make a great deal of money from it. the problem is, most of the important things we need to figure out are not going to make anyone a pile of money. they may, down the line. but it isn't that likely.
call me a socialist, but the government needs to get the act together and push their funding toward basic research, and let industry pay for R&D.
Study the competition (or, in more base terms, know your enemy...).
Hell, the US is GOOD at out-sourcing, even outsourcing education. Sure, foreign students from abroad attend some of the ivy league (lower-casing intentional) schools here, but many attend in Europe, too. Some even attend here, then SPEND their time in Europe after having had enough of the US, but are still in school and have too many friends here.
Plus, there are cultural reasons (corruption, leadership by cronies and elders who might not see the logic in empowering their local populations), or other reasons in regions where there's just not enough money and will to outright build new, world-class, competitive, lasting and door-knocking throngs of students. So, they ship them out or allow them to be recruited by US colleges needing cash infusion.
Do you KNOW how many Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Indian students HERE in the US come from families that put them up in $1,000/month apartments, send them to renowned as well as dubious schools or "academies" that cost $80,000 to $200,000 for maybe 3 or 4 years? LOTS. It's a churning industry, and they keep getting fuller and fuller. Recruiting or otherwise attracting well-off kids whose parents want the brightest futures for their kids. Not saying ALL Asian families are that way, though.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The problem also lies with legal immigration. As someone with experience in and published a thesis on control systems, I find it impossible to get a dream job without having at least a Greencard. The problem is applying for a Greencard will rob me of at least, at least 5K$ if not about 10K$ (all about the right lawyer, you see). After that, comes the waiting game. How long? About 4 years at least! Longer, normally. So you see, after a couple of years, I am thinking! Heck! Screw this. I am going home. After all research opportunities are much better than what they used to be a decade ago. This reverse brain drain (Trust me, the home country has been lamenting about brain drain for decades) is going to further affect the R&D scope here.
You can add monopolies to that. There has been a lot of "consolidation" among the R&D suppliers. The competition in some fields is virtually nonexistent. The worst part is that the attitude of the suppliers is changing accordingly. A friend of mine recently complained about defective product and asked for replacement. What he got was a "shut the f*ck up or we will sue you" letter from their legal department.
Here is how the pricing usually works: "It costs $1 to make this molded plastic thing. We will price it $108, and if you bother to ask for a discount we will sell it to you for $55. You don't like the price, well go somewhere else? Oh wait, There is no other place we bought them all."
Most researchers pay up, because they have to do their experiments or they will not get more grant money. Besides, the grant money are coming mostly from taxes and nonprofits, so nobody really cares how they are spent. As a result we do lower quality research that costs more. The only way to cut down costs in the public domain is to import junior scientists from abroad (I am one of those imports, and I don't mind;)) and to use as many grad and undergrad students as you can.
Texas found this to be the case 20 years ago. I attended the Plano Independent School District, and mastered algebra in the 4th grade (with the exception of matrix multiplication, which to this day I still do not remember.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I wonder when Bodies of Distinguished Scientists are going to make the switch from saying "the U.S. is losing its leadership in Science and Technology" to saying "the U.S. has lost its leadership in Science and Technology." Probably well after the point of no return...
Anyway, if I were a betting man, I'd be inclined to start a pool.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I'm sorry... Is this a troll? American freedoms "vastly outclass the rest of the world"? Centralized education is a mighty fist of the state? Have you been reading a bunch of captain america comics or something? Exactly how ass backwards do you think the rest of the world is? "Freedom" doesn't generate research, money does and America is a large portion of the world economy. That's about all there is to it. China is a rapidly growing competitor in research, are new "freedoms" there responsible for this? The USSR had a massive research infrastructure, was that due to freedom of any kind beyond the government having the idea that technological advancement is a good thing?
As for your second statement, centralization isn't the issue with education, the fact that a huge number of highschool students are coming out of american schools largely uneducated is. I should think the last thing we would want is to continue churning out increasingly economically uncompetitive students, whether that's done through centralized means or other (what do you even mean by "centralized"?) seems secondary.
The World is Flat talks about how the American advantage is having a broad education that includes history and literature and art. Is it really a surprise to find that half of the country does poorly in Math and Science when students are encouraged to immerse themselves in a diverse landscape of experiences including sports and music?
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Science is not anti-religion. We don't waste our time trying to prove religion is false.
Religion is anti-science. The religous do pick fights with existing scientific explanations, but in a non-testable "god did it" kind of way.
I don't hate the religious, I pity the ignorant. I see ignorance and lack of education as a more serious threat to this country than any foreign terrorist organization.
How does that compare per capita (or as fraction of GDP) to smaller, industrialized countries such as Japan or even Denmark? It is no big feat to spend a lot on R&D, when you have a big population...
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
It's not a paradox. Look, do we imagine that everybody is capable of being a first class brilliant scientist or engineer? Clearly not. Therefore, if you have a system where the difference between the best and the worst (in any field) is small, then you have a system which fails to promote the best. You have a system where everyone is at the "average" level, and the people who ought to stand out, don't, for whatever reason.
On the other hand, if you have a system where the difference between the best and the average is high, what does that tell you? It tells you the system works well to promote the best and give them the tools they need to produce. Fact is, there is a natural heirarchy of ability among human beings in any field. Most are at some ordinary level, and only a few are very good. If you don't see the natural ability heirarchy reflected in the accomplishment heirarchy, then something is wrong. Since it's impossible to bring ordinary folk up to the extraordinary level, what must be happening is that the extraordinary folks are being held down (which is fairly easy to do).
Compare to sports. The difference between your average high-school athlete and Olympic or world-class athletes has never been greater, and the very few at the very top are amazing. Do we look at this pyramid of accomplishment and say, gee, there must be something wrong with how we promote and train people in sports, because there are so few at the top? Because the average 35-year-old pick-up basketball player, measured on the same scale that includes the championship Los Angeles Lakers, sucks? Not if we have any brains, we don't. We realize that the better a system is at sifting and placing people according to their abilities and motivation, the more pronounced the heirarchy, the greater the difference between the best and all the rest. Only in some doofus Lake Wobegon mode of (non)thinking do we imagine that a successful system would look non-heirarchical, with everyone above average.
The fact that heirarchies of accomplishment are more evident in the United States than elsewhere is no proof that the mass of people are being held down. It may well be evidence that in the United States the best are better able to rise to the top, to find their natural level of achievement, whereas in other places considerations of social class, restrictive groupthink education, or cultural barriers to personal ambition and radical innovation tend to keep the best from ever showing their stuff and emerging above the sea of average folk.
Take note that a vast amount of US success is driven by foreigners. Which I find somewhat paradoxical myself.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Lets see, the more we regulate, the worse our education system becomes.
Most of the problems I see with my schooling, comes from enforced equality and government regulation of education.
It has nothing to do with religion, it's economics.
China, India and developing countries have quite regulated education, but they also have the drive to succeed. (It's called poverty)
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This doesn't invalidate my statement. I never said that other nations couldn't increase their output of R&D, only that ours are conceivably more productive per researcher. The USSR wasn't exactly on the forefront of technological innovation. As you may recall, they had to steal our stuff, make copies, and slap their own badges on it.
"As for your second statement, centralization isn't the issue with education, the fact that a huge number of highschool students are coming out of american schools largely uneducated is."
You're missing the positive correlation between centralization and a decline in the quality of the output; in this case, students.
Captain America isn't exactly an icon that an anti-statist would use to support their arguments. Wrong side.
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India, China and Russia have plenty of "real engineers" too.
I wouldn't count on PE's and EIT's not getting outsourced.
They're trying to outsource doctors and lawyers for crying out loud.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's not our freedoms, it's our vast piles of cash. And it's not our best and brightest--we import the best and brightest from all around the world. How many immigrants do you see entering our high schools? How many immigrants do you see exiting our doctoral programs? Much different proportion there.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
There's a demand for atheists? I knew there had to be jobs for philosophy majors somewhere.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
The comment said America was vastly more free than "the rest of the world", which presumably includes Europe. Exactly who is baselessly bashing who here? In what way do you think any western European country is not as free as America? How about Canada? Japan? Australia? What do you think freedom is exactly?
Gates isn't known for being especially conservative. He was actually a big supporter of the democratic party until all the anti trust stuff got started against Microsoft under the Clinton administration. Even now he contributes to a lot of causes across the board, including Obama's campaign. The only thing he wants that Republicans tout is a free market. Other than that hes basically a liberal.
that capitalism would not survive, because society can't handle the pace of change. A corporatist / socialist approach would be more likely. Note this wasn't advocacy (he was a champion of the "entrepreneur"), rather it was a projection of the trend he saw.
Given corporate welfare (car makers, airlines, etc.), lack of anti-trust enforcement, etc. there certainly is an element of this "statism" in the U.S., so you are correct about things being "slowed down" by certain societal & government forces.
Having said this, there often are good reasons to slow things down: it is arguable that "free markets" are not a natural condition for all aspects of economic life, and society "reacts" to to this by slowing the market down (see Polanyi's classic for more on this one). Society won't let capitalism completely trample its traditions & comforts, and that includes the existing corporate power structure and technologies
Of course, slowing technological & economic change down costs money. Eventually too much money. Look at farm subsidies. Or import tariffs. etc.
-Stu
I don't grok.
In his "Triumph of the Nerds" book over a decade back. I don't have a copy handy so won't attempt to quote, but the upshot was that your R&D, your patents, your general technological superiority, does NOT depend on how well most of your kids do in science & math.
They depend on how well your top 1% of kids do in science and math at the post-secondary, and especially post-graduate, level.
Not to mention, as others have posted, how many of the top 1% of people around the world flock to your nation to do their post-secondary and grad work, and stay to work in private R&D shops and startups.
Oh, and dropping a few percent of a $500B military budget on R&D, those tens of billions of government subsidy of high-tech research, they kind of help too.
So, frankly, you can ignore those poor students. Unless you want them as informed voters or something, or useful as everyday technicians, engineers, MDs etc - for that you might want to do some better science education.
At the Republican debate, when asked "Who doesn't believe in evolution?" FOUR Presidential Candidates raised their hands!
No wonder science and math education in the U.S. lags against other nations. No child left behind? If these guys are controlling the Dept of Education, I'd prefer my child be left behind to educate herself rather than taken along on the ride that's being offered.
"I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol."
Could you elaborate? What are CS majors getting into? I plan to major in CS :P
What cash? Our banking system is insolvent, and we have petro-tyrannies bailing out our major banking firms. We're about to enter a serious recession, and all the Federal government can think of is to come up with "stimulus" packages that empirically do nothing positive, and are probably harmful.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
>would-be oppressors
And you wonder why mainline Christians think you're morons...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Perhaps the right to smoke marijuana and have sex with
teenage girls doesn't really go all that far in promoting
economic progress...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Even if they aren't working in technology, they help by purchasing the latest technology. Especially as we get into transhumanism, the religious will be less important to the technology economy.
That's a nice view and all and it may even give you that fuzzy feeling in your tummy but unfortunately it doesn't have anything to do with reality. At all. The US's R&D success was accomplished and is maintained through a single factor: money. Lots of money. It has absolutely nothing to do with freedom nor other patriotic drivel. The US is a very rich nation that dumps loads of cash into research. If you happen to be a talented researcher who happens to like receiving recognition in the form of cold hard cash then you will find that combination attractive, specially if your current job doesn't offer you the research funding you need and your current salary is less than 2000 dollars a month.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Oh well, the US is indigenously now a nation of retards.
I'm a native-born American and most certainly *not* a retard, you ignorant clod!
4 out of 5 sky-daddies recommend censorship to followers confronted by mockery. The other one recommends stoning.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You never said that American researchers are more productive per capita. And if I'm missing a "positive correlation" between centralization and quality of student output, I'd say that correlation remains in your head until proven otherwise. IMO, the size of a school (particularly a high school) isn't a particularly critical factor compared to the economic and social background of the students attending, the quality of the teachers, the strength of the curriculum etc. Actually the USSR did lead the world in a number of areas for some time, and given they developed a lot of the same technologies as the West with a smaller population (if not budget), I would say there's a good case to be made that they were more productive per capita than American and other western scientists. There was of course technology they stole from the West, but there was plenty of home grown advancement as well.
...not just science and math.
First of all, to the people who blame this trend on I.D., give it a rest. Our education system has far greater problems to confront, such as:
1. Parents - more an dmore parents don't take an active role in their kids' education, and blame the schools for their kids' failure.
2. Basic literacy - more and more kids cannot even read at grade-level. And we expect them to understand concepts like evolution??
3. Critical thinking - thanks ot NCLB, kids are taught to take a test, not think for themselves.
4. Qualified/dedicated teachers - thanks to unions, teachers have little motivation to actually give a shit about whether or not their students are actually learning anything.
5. No Child Left Behind - the great unfunded mandate that promotes the fantasy that there is no such thing as a dumb, unmotivated kid. One-size-fits-all education only harms good students, and it sure as hell doesn't make the bad ones any better.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I question how this report measures the R&D spending of other countries? I would hazard a guess that Chinese and Japanese automakers (as an example) would not be quick to reveal the full extent of their R&D budgets. It would be in their government's best interests as well to under report this number to keep the US and others into a false idea of what they should spend to compete. Hell, if I was China/Japan I would under report it so that the US isn't inspired to ramp up R&D funding.
I also imagine that other countries might not have the same open-accounting rules for public companies...
Just a thought. Maybe North America is farther behind than we think. Hell... our automakers haven't exactly jumped onto the Green trend that has been glaringly obvious for the last 5 or so years. So if that R&D money has been going into bigger and beefier SUVs then that's money squandered as far as staying competitive goes.
Do you have a data source? I'd really like to know, truly.
It was my understanding that we started falling behind in the '70s or '80s, but had actually made some progress towards parity near the end of the '90s. Yes, we were still behind, but the decay had been arrested. At least, that was my understanding of reports at the time. That was a decade ago, though, so my memory could very well be faulty.
I'm actually interested in legitimate data sources.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Want domestic job security? Get security clearance. I bet a lot of the "real engineers" are working on things that cannot be outsourced for national security reasons...
Wages are just fine. My friend is getting paid twenty dollars an hour and he is an intern.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. The answer is simple, its not the government, its the parents. How can we hold the government and teachers 100% liable for the education of our children if we as parents do not get involved on a daily basis with our children's lives and education? I personally believe this lack of involvement is the catalyst for a series of other disturbing issues.
My wife is a teacher at a middle school, while lack of funding is an issue, the lack of interest displayed by a lot of parents is just down right scary. Seriously, if mommy and daddy don't care why should the child?
With a lack of involvement, and doing things such as using the TV and video games as a baby sitter, its no wonder why the test scores of kids here in the US are so poor when compared internationally.
From my observations, there are way too many kids who are extremely disrespectful to their parent, and will do anything to get there way. The parents of such kids, will do just about anything for the kids, and really just want to be their "friend". I call BS! Be a parent! If a kid mouths off to you don't hesitate to tan his hide! Now, I am not an advocate of "beating" kids, but I do support controlled and metered punishment. Spanking can and should be given when appropriate.
I better get off my soapbox now.
Not trolling, but has anyone done an analysis of the patent applicants that file from the US? I wonder if this USA expertise is almost entirely based upon an influx of expertise from other countries, rather than relying on the US education system
Yeah, I'm sure they're working hard at it... they also work hard at delivering my mail to my address, but fail this simple task at a non-zero rate. When they can put the letter in the box, such that the words on the two match up - ensuring a successful delivery, then I'll contemplate a governments' ability to herd a populace with evil intent.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Rather, more well-off, educated, cosmopolitan, etc. people both buy more technology and are more likely to be atheists.
But on the other hand - what is to be expected from a country ruled by the legal departments of companies.
Some Unused and Probably Unusable references to lawyers by Heinlein. Another more interesting is Mass-murder of all lawyers in 1965 in one of his timelines as it appeared in the book Number of the Beast (p.378).
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Does true innovation even exist? I constantly stumble across discussions of "true innovation" (mostly the lack thereof) that never manage to define what true innovation would look like if we had it.
I did discover yesterday some interesting applications of Bounce dryer sheets.
* Cram one down the filler neck in your car's fuel tank and increase gas mileage by 430%.
* Tape ten sheets across both of your car's bumpers to prevent accidents--it repels other vehicles.
* Put a sheet in your dishwasher and your plates will be wrinkle-free.
And then I found this link from Chemical Engineering News, from which I gleaned the following perky keywords and electrostatically neutral buzzphrase:
polymers and enzymes, softergents, alcohol ethoxylates, cationic dialkyl quaternary surfactants, linear alkylbenzene sulfonates, combination of an alkyltrimethylamine with a fatty acid, monoalkyl quaternary surfactants (quats) or ethoxylated quats, specialty polymers and amidoamines, dispersants and opacifiers, biocides and rheology modifiers, protease and carbohydrase enzymes, manganese-based catalyst that activates percarbonate and perborate bleaches, dye fixative offering dye-transfer inhibition, fluorescent whitening agents, cyclodextrin chemistry to reduce odors, proprietary fragrance with zinc ricinoleate, temporary surface hydrophilicity, silica nanoparticles
No, no innovation at all. But careful not to breath the fumes of progress as it roars off in pursuit of the silicone nanosphere.
As Monkhouse once noted, "It got up to 94 degrees today - that's pretty good at my age." Since the era Monkhouse recalls when "safe sex meant a padded headboard" we've since, uh, licked that particular problem three times over. At the end of the day, the only innovation that matters is the innovation people are willing to pay for, and for most of us, what we're willing to pay for hasn't much changed since the CT boundary.
If a non-European wants to study in Europe, she has to both pay her way AND deal with the immigration roadblocks.
The result is that the US gets all the best and the brigtest, and is thus by far the largest science producer in the world. Certainly more so than the rest of Europe combined. Here are some recent stats on research paper citations: http://www.in-cites.com/countries/2007allfields.html
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I am a graduate student in physics, and today some of my core courses (quantum mechanics!) got canceled last minute, despite protests from the dept and even college. The administration is filled with businessmen that only think of short-term monetary gains, and so we were one student short of their crazy enrollment requirements (actually not, but they suddenly decided not to include audit students in the count) and they refused to budge. To them, we weren't worth the money. Apparently the dean was told "The course is being canceled, deal with it, now get out of my office." I'm left struggling to find a course because the same thing happened to many graduate courses in mathematics, engineering, etc. I'll probably have to do an independent study, but that's hardly a replacement for a real quantum mechanics course. I feel like my degree program is slowly becoming meaningless because of these administrators. I'm seriously considering applying elsewhere and leaving next year over this nonsense. After all, what self-respecting student would want to come here once they hear about graduation requirements being canceled arbitrarily? All that tells me is that they aren't serious above giving me the education I signed up for.
If we want to improve science education in this country, we have to reverse that mentality. Unfortunately, I think too many people nowadays think with a quarterly spreadsheet instead of considering the long-term consequences of their decisions. They want to see immediately returns on investment in science, not realizing that isn't how it works. Research may be quiet for a few years then a sudden breakthrough; you can't quantize it on a business schedule. And just because you can't measure progress quarterly doesn't mean it isn't important to do. No one thought of cell phones when we were studying electromagnetic waves, etc., but I think people nowadays would argue cell phones were a great invention. Who knows what the future will hold from seemingly unimportant discoveries made today.
A lot of what you describe is happening here as well. More and more schools don't recognize a valedictorian, because spotlighting achievement, it is presumed, hurts other students' self esteem. Failure is regarded with indifference, as kids move on to the next grade level whether or not they have completed the "required" coursework.
Our educational policies reward failure and ignore success, and we wonder why kids aren't motivated to succeed.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I don't need to bash the US, because the US is still it's own biggest critic. This is the sign of a free country. The critics haven't been totally marginalized yet.
Having said that, as an European I can't help wonder why American culture is so obsessed with "freedom" and "liberty". I've yet to see what you've got we don't. Where is this obsession coming from? Perhaps you can help me here.
But since you asked, I do have more freedoms, more rights and more privacy. Let me name certain areas. My employer cannot read my email or monitor my Internet usage. I'm free to join my family after 8 hours of work, and cannot be penalized if I refuse to do overtime. Meanwhile Americans have corporations employing spies and using underhanded tactics to monitor their employees. Sure many Americans are "free" to walk out after 8 hours but they'd get fired for it.
Please write me off now for being a jealous penniless pinko weeny with an inferiority complex.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Engineering is still something of a professional occupation, but the economic rewards available to lawyers, doctors, accountants, and management (hell, even real estate as an occupation) are much greater.
Science? Much worse: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
So let's sum up here: interest science and engineering often means lower social status and being mocked/stereotyped, plus these fields are highly competitive and intellectually demanding, but there's decreasing job security and economic rewards relative to other professions.
Greenspun's got it right. The question isn't why we have decreasing interest in technical careers, the question is what would make someone interested in pursuing one, especially in the current climate.
Tweet, tweet.
In our effort to Leave No Child Behind, we've Left The Entire Country Behind. There's a sort of irony in that.
Although as a researcher, I have to say that the very structure of academia interferes with the ability to perform groundbreaking research as well.
First, these kinds of studies are usually created for a purpose - to get money. I'm too lazy to follow the money trail back to its source, but I'm guessing there's a party that's gonna benefit from increased money - can't tell who until you look at the recommendations. I'm getting more and more cynical about these kinds of "reports", which are nothing more than advocacy research.
Second, the average student doesn't matter. Well, not in terms of science. It's the top 1% of students that actually matter in terms of bleeding edge science, so measuring the average is pointless. Sure, it's handy to have citizens who are somewhat conversant with the subject, but that's only important for policy-making, not the research itself. I'm not sure if the geniuses are getting more or less attention than they ever did. I suspect it's about the same once they get to college.
Third, as virtually every other commenter has pointed out, patents are a really lousy measure of scientific progress. Lumping one-click patents in with stuff that's truly innovative makes the raw numbers worthless for anything beyond chest-thumping.
And finally, I don't think there's a competitive advantage to doing basic science. Of course it's a benefit, in the long run, to the entire world. But purely in terms of competitiveness, it doesn't really do much for you. Basic science requires collaboration with scientists in other countries, since only people who understand the current body of knowlege can do any sort of peer review. So you don't derive much relative military or economic advantage from it.
I'm just going to throw my two cents here. First, American freedoms in some cases do indeed outclass the rest of the world. For example, the right to own firearms (imagine, a government of the people trusting its people) and the U.S. enjoys a lot of freedom of speech protections. Indeed, a lot of hate speech legislation, less common and less strong in the U.S. than other parts of the world is counterproductive (Strossen, "Defending Freedom: Even for the Thoughts We Hate"). That's not to say other people don't have freedoms that easily outclass America, like the Netherlands somewhat looser standards of "illegal" drugs; people should be free to consume what they'd like so long as it voluntary and they know what they're getting. It would be difficult to ascertain just which country has more freedom, but America is certainly up there. These freedoms enable freer transactions -- they're what literally contribute to a "free" economy. A freer economy will tend to be richer, i.e. have more money (says tons of econometric research). That greater money, as you said, will lead to greater research. That's exactly why China is growing in every direction, including becoming competitive in research. There's more money to invest or throw away; either way, more money to experiment. As for centralization -- it also leads to the question of freedom. Heavy centralization will lead to a loss of freedom as the majority will have greater power, power to override the freedom of the minority population. This is what America's Founding Fathers tried to balance in the Constitution and Bill of Rights: the States' rights and the rights of a "central" Federal government. The idea was to enable the States to experiment with different policies, and people would gravitate towards those States that had better policies, as well as preventing mob rule by means of having States that may be minority dominated giving those minorities greater "voice". Hawaii is an example, but there are plenty of other States, too. In regards to education, the idea is that local people know how to take care of those same local people. It may also be a reason why "centralized" legislation like No Child Left Behind has been unsuccessful (and I'm the sure the lack of funding helps). What would help the U.S. lower educational system is a good public-private mixture. Look at American universities -- they're literally the very top of the heap throughout the world. Why not duplicate a similar framework in our lower educational system? Instead, what we have is a primarily public educational system with private options only for the super -rich. This happens when you push a public system too hard; everyone gets a craptastic "fair" distribution of X Good, while only the super-rich get Super Quality X Good. You have to allow the free market to participate and regulate and aid when it has failures, not regulate and aid overwhelmingly and hope the free market can maybe peek through. This has happened in countries where there is "Universal" health care; sure everyone gets care, but private (free market) care ends up being reserved for the super-rich. And that private, free market care is top-notch and has no waiting lines. Quick side note: while the U.S. has higher infant mortality rates and lower life expectancy, they rank near the top for treating and curing most diseases/ailments, as well the development of new medical innovations. Infant mortality rates are at best, an indicator of issues with our obstetrics while life expectancy in the U.S. is affected by lifestyle factors that have little to do with our actual health care system. Living in Michigan, it's common to hear Canadians hop the border because of higher quality care and/or smaller lines (say 30 minutes to hours, as opposed to months). And just like in our primarily public educational system, it's the rich that can afford the better stuff. My point being: our educational system needs to be less public. A more private educational system will inherently engender greater competition, which will impro
Boycott Sony
I fucking hate it that when I'm making nice little paragraphs in the text box, only to have it show up as a garbled mess if I forgot the HTML.
Boycott Sony
I won't dispute the fact that the US is more effective in drawing in the best and brightest. However: - Immigration is a strange measure of freedom - like it applies to people outside the country. While it isn't difficult for whiz-kids to enter the US. How about unskilled laborers and political refugees? Should we also discuss how the US has historically "promoted" freedom internationally? - There are European countries that don't have tuition fees. At any level of education. This applies to foreign students, too.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
You seem to be neglecting the possibility that someone could be neither ignorant nor atheistic.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
And using numbers of patent applications as a metric, given the sorry state the application review process is in is hardly a sound idea. Its a better indicator of the prevelance of swindles and con artists.
Have gnu, will travel.
The biggest problem here, then, is distinguishing true intellectuals from aintellectuals - people who think they are intellectuals, but they ain't. (If "ain't" isn't intellectual enough, that is a symptom of aintellectualism, so regard the initial 'a' as indicating negation).
Formal education has become the industry of aintellectualism.
Yes, of course, there are some true intellectuals associated with formal education. There are millions of people working in the industry, and in any large population there will be a few way out on the skinny parts of the bell curve. On one skinny end are the intellectuals, in the bulging middle are the aintellectuals, and on the other skinny end are coaches and department chairmen.
And we must count the intellectual students who are pressed into the violent hellholes of formal education by law or custom, even though they could teach every class they were ever locked in.
(Ending sentence with a preposition is completely valid in English, though clarity needs the attendant verb nearby. All grammar and spelling Nazis are aintellectuals.)
The formal education racket goes way beyond the requirements of Sturgeon's Law, such that they achieve five nines of reliably aintellectual crap.
"Postmodernism" and "deconstructionism" are the crowning achievements of aintellectualism. They are bullshit, and normal people know it. If "intellectual" is identified with "bullshit" in the public's opinion, these soi-disant intellectuals have only themselves to blame.
The word "intellectual" itself must be redeemed. It correctly describes men who live by their minds. "Aintellectual" describes, and is designed to irritate, those who live by destroying minds.
Ignoring Dawkins and numerous others, presumably. Science is not monolithic.
Well, except the vast number of religious people who are also scientists or support science, both lay people and clergy, and the others who are indifferent to it. "Religion" (even "Christianity") isn't monolithic, either.
$20 X 2080/hour = $41,600 (this very high since I have seen "The Lucky" intern getting half that here in the mid west. Entry levels programmers and/or admins are making $12 to start. I see it all the time on the job boards)
... Woot for joy $41,000/7/24/365 = $0.67 per hours, well you don't like it, do the math yourself.
The Long term finical security is poor, the cycle seems to be 3 1/2 year good a years to 1 and a half bad years. Its tuff to raise a family like that. I have personally seen folks submit 3,000 resumes to get a low end computer job at around 40K to 50k because the market is that tight. (after 25 years in the business with 19 years, as an IT consultant that's just the way it is now, chalk it up to personal observations).
7/24/365 days a year on call
Ever take a look at the cost of the technology seminars for continuing education the range fro 1.5k to 8k per pop and you are going to go thru those a couple times a year just to keep current. Maybe your firm will cover the training cost but not usually.
Just remember, there are postal workers doing the 9 to 5 making 60k a year. Plumbers are doing even better, the same for Electricians and Welders now with overtime. But the It folks don't get paid overtime.
Ok, so you still want to spend 10k a year at the state university. And what are you going to get at the end of it. You still need to up grade your technology every two years to stay up with Moorse Law. So you better love what you do...
So you are the best and brightest, what do you think?
I had no trouble getting scholarships to Canadian universities, and getting in was no problem either. I left grad school with slightly more money than I started. And really, I am no whiz-kid, so if I can do it, I'm damn sure that whiz-kids can.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Typical U.S 'making-up-for-our-lack-of-intelligence-by-spending-all-of-everyone-else's-money' mentality.
The following is the blurp I responed to Post Topic "Wrong". The REQUOTE is a follows:
... woot for joy
$20 X 2080/hour = $41,600 (this very high since I have seen "The Lucky" intern getting half that here in the mid west. Entry levels programmers and/or admins are making $12 to start. I see it all the time job boards)
The Long term finical security is poor, the cycle seems to be 3 1/2 year good a years to 1 and a half bad years. Its tuff to raise a family like that. I have personally seen folks submit 3,000 resumes to get a low end computer job at around 40K to 50k. (after 25 years in the business with 19 years, as an IT consultant that's just the way it is now, chalk it up to personal observations).
7/24/365 days a year on call
Ever take a look at the cost of the technology seminars for continuing education the range fro 1.5k to 8k per pop and you are going to go thru those a couple times a year just to keep current. Maybe your firm will cover the training cost but not usually.
Just remember, there are postal workers doing the 9to 5 making 60k a year. Plumbers are doing even better, the same for Electricians and Welders now with overtime. But the It folks don't get paid overtime.
Ok, so you still want to spend 10k a year at the state university. And what are you going to get at the end of it. You still need to up grade your technology every two years to stay up with Moorse Law. So you better lover what you do...
So you are the best and brightest, what do you think?
Since when is Canada a part of Europe, genius?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
It single family parents where the parent sits on the couch watching TV and slurping Brawndo all day, vs Finland, where the parent (and maybe even the gov't) is much more involved in the community.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Ah, so Canda has different ways in which is is massively less free than the US? I presume Australia (I know several people who got scholarships to universities there) is also somehow different. Come on, admit you were grasping at straws (I mean really, exactly how is ability to get university scholarships and immigrate a significant freedom). Just in case I'll mention that I also know people who got scholarships to UK and German universities and had no trouble getting into those countries.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
If you have the resources, hiring the best minds from around the world to do your R&D is the most economical option. But the funny thing about money is that today you have it and tomorrow you lose it all in some mortgage industry crisis.
Consider Russia's recent experience: in the 1980s USSR had some of the best scientists in the world and the vast majority of them were homegrown. In terms of science and technology the Soviets rivaled the most developed nations in the world. While the quality of consumer goods in the USSR left much to be desired due to economic reasons, the quality of their most high-tech products - everything from nuclear submarines to space vehicles - was among the best in the world.
And then within a couple of years the USSR tore itself apart, its economy collapsed, and its many R&D programs disappeared. Many scientists and engineers left the country, but majority remained, allowing the country to maintain its hi-tech industries and continue developing new technologies.
Imagine a similar economic crisis in the US and tell me what all those foreign scientists and engineers will do, if the US can no longer pay the top dollar for their services or offer them the best environment for their research?
| 7/24/365 days a year on call ... Woot for joy $41,000/7/24/365 = $0.67 per hours, well you don't like it, do the math yourself. |
CORRECTION
$41,000/24/365 = $4.68 per hours. So just what is minimun wage again in the US?
That's more accurate.
And what's more amazing is the level of standards they need to reach. There is a perhaps understandable double standard in place for almost every institution. For example, in the matter of subject GRE tests, if a domestic student gets a score over a 90% percentile, it's pretty decent. However, for international students, they will often need to get a perfect score even to be considered for admission.
I have heard explanations as "It's because they practice for the test over and over; it's not really indicative of their aptitude," which may be true. But nonetheless, a significant fraction of graduate students are in U.S. with the admissions standards stacked against them.
Thanks for the upbeat attitude. The real "space race" style program is clearly transhumanism. People have some hang-ups over this, though.
Does trolling count as patent development?
In my opinion, the school systems in the US are a joke. I can't remember a single occasion where anyone was held back because of inability to understand mathematics or science - rather they are simply pushed through the system holding brighter children back. The reason we fall behind in just about every category is because we're far too concerned with things like self-esteem. Even in colleges today, there are people who aren't grasping some of the most important fundamental elements of computing, but are still pushed through the system.
I agree with all of your first paragraph. It could be better for startups etc. We're getting an increasing amount of sportsmen with Learjets and open source entrepreneurs selling companies to Sun, but so what? I still get a warmer feeling knowing more people can "make it" on a smaller scale. So I disagree with your second paragraph. Facilitating a few people making it filthy rich isn't worth it. Not everyone can be a millionaire, but we can make university free for everyone.
:) Oh, and how much are you paying for medical insurance? I've met Americans with double insurance to make sure they are covered. I don't need any. My wife's friend is paying about $15K to give birth in the US. We paid nothing to have our baby in a world class hospital.
We don't have the cult of the self-made millionaire. Personally I'm pretty happy where I am and don't feel a need to "rise up" to earn more. I skip chances to go into management and prefer to do tech stuff.
Of your third paragraph, I agree with some as being "problems", like the holocaust denial case. Every country has it's sore points, like race in the US. You wouldn't suffer some of the wonkies we have. I love your point about political parties, though. How much actual freedom of choice do you have in that regard? Will your vote matter if you vote for a 3rd party? You have lots of nominal freedoms, but the system robs you of choice. A US single mom may have freedom to choose her job, but she has to work two jobs night and day to support her family. You can vote any party you want, but if it's not one of two it is totally meaningless. It's not the government doing the shafting, but some people are really getting it.
You've yet to convince me I'm lacking something you have.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I'm interested in counterexamples to this statement. I can't think of many, but I'll start a list and welcome other people to reply with their additions to it.
That's right. Just three names so far. (Or should I add Edward Lorenz to the list and make it four?)
I suppose you could make the list quite a bit more impressive if you included immigrants. Then you'd have Einstein, Dijkstra, Von Braun, Tesla, Kalman, etc... but though these are examples of the U.S. attracting great minds, they are not examples of American society producing them.
There are some other impressive names that I can think of (Knuth, Kay), but none of them seem to be quite in the same league as the European greats like Euler, Gauss, Lagrange, Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, etc.
I'm looking for counterexamples to the suggestion that people born into American society just don't reach that level of greatness. Suggestions for additions to the list wanted.
Perhaps to an idiot religion is anti-science. And there certainly are many idiots out there trying to push creationism and intelligent design as fact.
It would be completely inappropriate to make a blanket statement about some minority group based on the actions of a few individuals so why is it acceptable to do this with Christians?
There's no reason whatsoever why a person can't be religious and completely believe in science. There's nothing in the bible that contradicts science. Most scholars have accepted the bible to be figurative. Because a few idiots have decided to believe in a literal interpretation doesn't mean all Christians believe that. Not to mention that the Pope has accept evolution as a fact.
What we have going on in the United States is a vocal minority trying to make themselves relevant. The creationists have seen their institution being undermined, so what's their solution? To undermine the institution they see as one of their biggest threats, science.
As for the atheists who are condescending in their view of anyone who believes in a higher power; you can make all the rationalizations you want about how there is no God. But the fact is that although I can't prove there is a God, it is impossible for you to prove he/she/it does not exist. I myself prefer to err on the side that something does exist.
"In 2006, Americans expressed greater confidence in leaders of the scientific community than those of any other institution except the military. On science-related public policy issues, including global climate change, stem cell research and genetically modified foods, Americans believe that science leaders, are knowledgeable and impartial and ought to be influential."
Hell, I think everyone should go to school for engineering.
There's always the saying: "The lowest 5% of engineering majors switch to business and become the top 5% of their class."
Mike for President 2024
Go study.
I can not prove that my closet is not a portal to another universe.
I can not prove that my backyard is free of purple and green unicorns.
I can not prove that god does not exist.
So ? Why would anybody waste their time trying to disprove the existance of things for which there is no evidence of existance in the first place ? The only evidence one can have for the non-existence of something is the non-existence of evidence. There is no evidence that God exists, therefore that utter lack of evidence provides us with evidence that God does not exist.
Religion causes people to reject knowledge and embrace ignorance.
those Scientists working at US Companies doing the work in order for them to file Patents? I wouldn't be surprised to see most of them are Foreign.
As we get more people into atheism and computing, the demand for those same people grows.
Where is there a demand for both atheism and computing? I want to move there today, before Slashdotters drive the property prices up.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Here in SF, $1,000 will get you a rat hole. It's repugnant that for $825 I was in a lease of a unit that had:
-- tilted flooring,
-- a hole under the radiator through which mice or rats would emerge,
-- kitchen cabinet doors so overpainted as to be unable to shut without slamming (and then slamming would rip out the hinge screws),
-- screens non-existent (so bugs would fly in),
-- an airway so dust-filled as to be a wonder my computer didn't short out),
-- a window-situated garbage that would back up,
-- a toilet that had a leaky seal in the flooring (so water, (clear fortunately) ended up leaking to the transition strip of the bathroom entry)
-- a shower having doors that slid shut or open on their own (so, I had to de-rail one from the track, and ended up gouging the lower track...)
-- a bath tub which could not hold water
-- closets too oblong to be useful, and too high to use without a chair
-- a radiator that would be shut of most of the year, and then hissed like hell, so much so (louder than my 1999 Gateway computer p/s & CPU fans) that I had to use ear-covering headphones with high music to drown out the hiss)
-- a window that wouldn't open or shut without extreme effort
-- a bathroom and a bedroom window that were screwed permanently closed
-- unit having tons of pre-1930's paint (the building was built before (or just after?) the big quake (1906ish), and the manager was proud that it survived the 1989 quake and that the firefighters were amazed that it had suffered not structural damage (this, being near Union Square)
This, I feel is TYPICAL of raggedy-assed properties in San Fransideshow. It's appalling and embarrassing and it's a travesty that to get into NEW structures costs some $1500 or more if they're not government set-aside units for low-income. It's amazing that all the money this government and the wealthy have for funding wars around the world is not being spend on war against blight rental units.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why shouldn't American graduate schools admit more domestic students? A good portion of graduate research is funded by the federal government, and I think it'd be unfair to the taxpayers if domestic students weren't given preferential treatment.
Where? I was living in a clean and perfectly acceptable unit in the inner Sunset (right near the N-Judah) for $700 a month. The floors were level, the rooms were spacious, the plumbing modern, and it even had a fire escape/balcony.
Yeah, it's not downtown, but it was right on major transit lines (on the N-Judah and the express bus lines, and a few blocks from the cross-park bus lines) and had everything I needed. If you want to live in a "hip" or "cool" neighborhood you have to pay for the location, but if you are looking for an affordable and perfectly functional place then there are plenty in the Sunset/Richmond area.
PE getting outsourced? I highly doubt that one!
Regardless, a lot of the real engineers work in security work
The question was about ways in which America was more Free than the countries in Western Europe.
My answer is that America allows much greater levels of immigration in general, and skilled immigration in particular. Immigrants receive greater welcome and are significantly better integrated.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
For the same reason the UNC public university system is openly biased against instate students. It's about the money. $24k/yr vs $8k/yr. The UNC system has said they want to increase the out of state enrollment to 50% of the total. Now of course they're not going to spend 25% more in capital improvements to keep the number of instate students whole.
Tower Semi: 100
Marvell Semi: 400
Bristol Myers: 4300
Abbott: 1200
Dow Chemical: 1000
Why would anyone want to go into science & engineering?
However, I assure you I am not.
I honestly believe that the US would not be lagging so far behind in sciences if we finished converting fully to the metric system.
An acquaintance of mine is taking his first college-level physics class, and the professor stated on the first day that since this was an exact science, there would be no use of US customary measure, only SI units. More than half of the class was simply unaware of what these non-customary units were, and as a result, they spent a week's worth of courses going over grams, litres, metres/kilometres, etc., all the while the students bemoaned having to learn a "foreign" unit of measure. I can even recall something similar happening in my high school physics classes. What a waste!
If we're going to teach our kids to be proficient in math & science, the least we can do is give them a Base-10 system of measure with no fractions and simple conversions.
Actually the USSR did lead the world in a number of areas for some time
Can you name any major technological or scientific innovation used today that was developed in the USSR? Any major drug or medical therapy? Any computer, car, airplane, consumer electronic device, building, tool, engine or power plant that uses some major idea developed by the Soviets?
The list for the United States in the same period (1920-1991) is enormous.
but there was plenty of home grown advancement as well.
Such as what?
Speaking from first hand experience I am certain that family values play THE MOST significant role in raising educational levels. And I don't mean that religious values crap, I mean the value that your family places on education and learning. My experience is with eastern european immigrants from the 70s-90s. They placed a huge value on education seeing it as something that will improve their economic status. I know of Russian adults who in their 30s and 40s, without speaking a word of English, would enroll in college, to learn a completely different profession. The worst thing a child could do was not loose a game or start dating, but bring home a B. Obviously, this doesn't apply to every family in this demographic, but by and large grades and doing well in school were the overwhelming preoccupation of these parents and they made sure to force their kids to behave the same way. Comparatively, asian parents would force their children to study just as hard if not harder, but would opt for more entrepreneurial, small business jobs themselves. Both groups saw education as the best way to raise their economic status. Comparatively, 2nd or 3rd generation families would place less importance on getting good grades and more on fitting in socially, establishing wide social networks and making sure to associate themselves with the jocks, the rich kids and other already socially successful people. I don't know whether its cultural, an artifact of coming from countries with huge emphasis on a technical education or lack of options but in my experience a lot of immigrants were often a lot more concerned about grades and education then those who grew up in the States.
Oh, I'm not saying that the double standard is wrong. In fact, as a domestic student who would benefit from such a double standard, I heartily endorse it, for what it's worth.
I am just saying, that there is such a double standard. I'm simply stating a fact.
And by the way, foreign students are not eligible for much of the federal funding, they only "get" federal funding in the secondary sense---international students get private grants that are available for everyone, which forces some domestic students who might have gotten that private funding to be supported through federal funding. And there are a lot more restrictions on international students with F-1 visa, such as the amount of hours they can work (as TA) and so on.
I am not saying all these discriminations are either wrong, or entirely unfair, but if only to keep ourselves honest, we ought to acknowledge that it exists.
Oh, can't resist re. "The most important freedom is economic freedom" ... tell that to a US citizen being taken to a concentration camp in Guantanamo as an "enemy combatant". ;)
On a more personal note, I'm taking my family to the States when visiting a friend, and have to face the humiliation of having them fingerprinted like a bunch of criminals. There's freedom for you. Come to Europe, no fingerprinting or danger of concentration camps here, promise!
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
When you speak of your freedoms you are speaking of consumer freedoms. These are freedoms you have as a consumer, a wage-earner, an employee, an average citizen who simply inherits his social setting and wants to enjoy it, not particularly change it.
In the United States you have more producer freedoms. More freedom to change the world around you to make it suit you. You can start a new business more easily. You can start a new line of business (e.g. Amazon.com) more easily. You can live in an eccentric way that would annoy or appall most of your right-thinking neighbors more easily. You can get a peculiar education that suits your own desires, and which most of your neighbors would find crazy, more easily. You can be elected to leadership positions with outlandish ideas more easily, and it's easier to change the dominant paradigms. The United States is far more heterogeneous than Europe (which I say having traveled and lived extensively in both). That means it's easier to find a little corner that thinks like you, and to try to expand it. (most of the time you won't, of course, but certain crazy people -- Americans -- really value the chance to try.)
Which kind of freedom you prefer is a matter of individual taste, not a question of right or wrong. As a rule, those who prefer consumer-citizen freedoms do indeed prefer Europe. Those who prefer producer-revolutionary freedoms prefer the US.
Let's be honest. There isn't a lot of money in science. Most smart US-born kids who are strong in science are going to follow the dollars and the social prestige and go to med school, not grad school. The foreign students are often going to grad school in the US in hopes of being able to stay, and that's why they're willing to put up with the low wages and long hours in the sciences, both the "dignified poverty" of grad school and the less-than-stellar wages and shaky job security once they get out.
Of course, it might be argued that one reason there's so little money in science is that US universities are producing more PhDs than the economy can realistically support, and some of that is due to the presence of so many foreign grad students.
For now, the US is reaping the benefits of brain drain from other countries, and the relatively poor quality of science education for US-born students consequently doesn't have much of a real impact.
A lot of it is also just a matter of looking around. Some people try to pawn off some awful crap for a lot of money in the housing market around here, regardless of location. I always recommend using a paid for apartment searching service (usually about $100 with a refund if you don't find an apartment), as they've always turned up apartments that are both nice and cheap for me.
Their space and aeronautics program? The AK47? The T34? I didn't say they remained competitive in these areas (although the AK47 remains a stunningly successful design, and their space systems are apparently more reliable than America's). I said that for a time they led the world in some areas. Their brutally flawed economic system ultimately prevented them from capitalizing on their developments. As the wikipedia article will tell you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_in_the_Soviet_Union), the most successful soviet research was pure science, with less emphasis than the US at turning out working products. Military equipment is the obvious exception, and many countries in the world continue to use Russian weapons or ripped off versions of them. The Chinese space program is also largely based on Soviet designs.
For anything remotely technical or digital, you will quickly run afoul of current IP Laws. In other words, they would sue you into oblivion. And if they don't....well, that means you aren't big enough yet.
THAT is the real reason it is very very difficult to break the status quo and do what the GP laid out. It's so absurd that you can make something "work" in your basement but as soon as you try to capitalize on it....here come the attorneys with all kinds of arcane reasons why you can't do what you just did in your basement.
Look no further than Vonage for an example. History is littered with companies like this. Companies who could build a better mousetrap but are not allowed to because they will inevitably have to use functionality that is locked up in some stupid, overly broad patent. Of course, the root cause there is the patent system. But if you start your own company, you are subject to that system. It doesn't matter if it's fair or not.
I think it's easy to say "well go start your own company if you think it sucks" but in actual practice, it rarely happens on anything but a small scale.
being accused of wanting to repeal the 2nd amendment
man the weird trolls you meet on teh intarwebs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They exist, met a bunch when I was a kid. I don't think the fact that faith is part of their lives means that they can't come up with technical solutions to real world problems. They certainly don't expect god to design for them.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
We'd also probably have more (chicken) eggs if we could just somehow produce a whole lot more chickens, first.
(To be clear, I'm not saying you are wrong, only that it works both ways: I think we'd be more likely to convert fully to the metric system if the average level of math/science proficiency were higher.)
The freedoms are distributed more equally between business owners and employees than in many European nations. This is one reason why it far easier for Americans to start and grow new businesses than it is in many EU nations. When Americans talk about "the land of opportunity," a big part of what they mean is the ease with which one can start a new business--which is one of the best ways to create wealth for yourself. Americans are good at starting and growing businesses. But for that to work, business owners need rights and freedoms too.
And I think you're exaggerating the problems with corporations in the U.S. Not every company spies on its workers, is draconian about computer use, and requires overtime. The vast majority of businesses in the U.S. are responsibly run and are good places to work. And one of the great things about the entrepreneurial freedoms here is that it improves competition for worker talent. If IBM treats its workers like garbage, there are hundreds of other computer companies of all sizes they can go work for.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It seems that you inadvertently touched the point where the European and American perspectives clash. It's not how easy or hard it is to become wealthy but the very perception of what being wealthy means.
What struck out from the beginning is your implicit obsession with money, as if it is the dominant objective in mind. Being successful means not only stockpiling the most money but also showing it off the most extravagant exterior signs of wealth. Another incomprehensible detail is how Americans perceive class as being showing off as many exterior signs of wealth as possible. That means that in america a character like Paris Hilton is seen as classy and successful, when the truth is that a character like that is nothing more than cheap white trash. Just because you can afford real diamonds instead of plastic trinkets or you live in a suite instead of a trailer it doesn't mean you are any more posh. Yet, somehow Americans perceive her, and others who emulate her, as successful, posh people. Even as role models. Europeans aren't obsessed with material wealth as Americans are. Europeans do enjoy consumerism and do buy a lot of stuff but Americans just act like that was their sole purpose in life. Well, that isn't healty at all.
Indeed and yet again Europeans do have more economic freedom. Europeans do pay a lot of taxes but those taxes are used to fund basic, fundamental services that benefit the entire fabric of society. The public health service is an European institution that pretty much defines if a society is civilized or not. The public education system is also an European institution. As soon as no citizen is barred from progressing academically (which does more to climb the class hierarchy than money) due to economic constraints or receives a de-facto death sentence due to being poor, the entire society benefits. It constantly amazes me how a society can accept the idea of success and even the concept of life and death can and should depend on the money you make.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Yep, the thing is to NOT be in a hurry moving. Now, I'm renting an in-law-like room. $400/month, so I can resume dealing with debts.
... Someday, Someday, but not in california, ...
But, personally, I don't believe in "old charmers" or other snow-job descriptives. I realize that new-construction materials-loaded structures have formaldehyde and other heinous chemical treatments, but, to me anything with lead paint, rat infestation, old-world (US pre-1985) construction, cheapo-gymn/manufacturing-floor-like carpets and new walls inside code-condemnable buildings is just shameful. Sadly, it's just to expensive for owners, unprofitable to undertake. And, the greedy city and counter governments would just relieve the building owners of more or new taxes, ostensibly to socially care for the homeless/etc. I'm only grousing because my one-time (~3-years held) home was new, from the ground up, and I watched her go up almost every weekend.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
>>Science is not anti-religion...I don't hate the religious, I pity the ignorant. I see ignorance and lack of education as a more serious threat to this country than any foreign terrorist organization.
You don't see ANYTHING you might be doing that would strike religious people as confrontational? Anything ending in ondensation and starting with a c? I'm not defending anyone's willful ignorance, but you're being disingenuous. You can't walk around telling people that they're more dangerous than al Qaeda and act like that's not an attack. And for what it's worth, science IS anti-religion. It may not have been in Newton's day, when it wasn't obvious that natural laws made omnipotence at best unnecessary, but in the 21st century, science is very much anti-religion. You just can't have any sense of the merit of the scientific method and look at the number of mutually exclusive religions, all with equal supporting evidence (read: none), and not come to the conclusion that the question of "Does God exist?" is totally a wash. We just don't have any information on it. And if you believe that, and someone believes (and moreover lives their lives based on) something else, you are simply and fundamentally at odds, and that's just the end of it.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
>>cannot be penalized if I refuse to do overtime.
That would be an example right there. I'll give you that as consumers, we are very much the same. But the number and scope of laws that restrict your employers (to give one example) is far larger than in the U.S. Remember, businessmen are people too, and individual freedom is not the only type of freedom. Economic freedom is important too.
That, and although I don't know what nation you're from, I'm betting you can't own a handgun. So we've, uh, got that one on you too.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
"For example, US schools continue to lag behind internationally in science and math education. On the other hand, the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies. The US also leads the world in patent development."
This is surprising? I suppose one could think so if they are expecting said patents and R&D activity to have scientific intent. In my experience, most patents and R&D activity are for commercial purposes. They exist to make money. The science is just a means to that end, rather than the end itself.
There are two points I have not seen in the many posts on this so far: 1. Is a possible reason. As I grew up I had it said to me a few times that the money was in areas like being a doctor. Has anyone else run into this? You get told that being a doctor gets you allot of money and is not as hard. This alone may be the reason. We promote other fields to our young. When was the last time you hear someone say, "Become a engineer and make lots of money". 2. Next is what this means for the US. We are the leaders in these areas because of what your fathers did. THEY studied these subjects and MADE us a leader. If we are not studying to stay the leaders here the leader will shift to another country as it will be them that have trained people, not us, as our experts will have grown old and died off. This point may not be seen by some that are used to thinking in time spans that are too short to see this. 100 years form now, do you think we will still be the leader if this continues?
Im thinking it's idiotic to try and compare engineering with information technology.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
An, then this kind of reasoning appeals to you, apparently:
Question: Which number is greater: x+1 or y?
Answer: y is greater
Reasoning: there is no evidence that x+1 is greater than y, therefore, the opposite is true.
--
Do you get it? There's just no way to tell for sure either way. Your answer depends solely on your belief.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
An old story. Trends versus anecdotal events. Broadly, more and more US students are falling below the optimal acheivement curve in math and science, but there are still large numbers, in absolute terms, who are not. Plus, a lot of R & D in the US is done by immigrants who have come from other places where they received excellent education.....despite perhaps being in the third world. The US benefits hugely from the tax-funded education of people from other countries. It's one of the ways the US has been staving off the effects of the failure of its own education systems in many parts of the US. At the same time, there are still many schools in the US committed to providing excellent, reality-based (no creationism or other faith-based mumbo-jumbo) education in the sciences.
Only boring people are ever bored.
... why do foreign students fall over themselves to study here and take that knowledge back home, where the vast majority of them become college professors?
Now, our K-12 education is another story. My niece's English teacher could not name the three different types of conjunction. For Pete's sake, what the hell? One of our problems is tenure in schools. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of bad teachers. It is even harder to get rid of the WORST teachers. Any time someone suggests making teacher pay merit-based, and culling the herd of under and unqualified teachers, the unions go apeshit and scare the politicians into making sure it doesn't happen.
None of my high school teachers were competent to teach the subjects they were charged with. Luckily I did enough studying on my own to learn the things that would be on the state tests, because the teachers surely didn't. My Electrical Engineer dad also helped make sure I learned the things I needed to learn about math and science. I could learn more from him in 20 minutes than I could in a whole week of math class in school.
When my job gets shipped off to India, I've decided that I am going to "retire" into teaching and just suck it up and take the $25k/yr and try to make a difference. Of course, there are so many barriers - have to find a non-union district (I may be willing to take a $50k pay cut, but I am intransigent in my refusal to join a union) - have to get all the certifications - so on.
We'll see how that works out. I will probably be the monkey that gets the shit beat out of him for trying to get the banana at the top of the ladder.
I spent my time after I got home from work tonight (until now) cleaning graffiti off of the backside of the fence in my yard.
On my way home from work, I drove past tons of high school students (I live almost next door to a high school, and in one of the best neighborhoods in my city) with ripped t-shirts, wildly colored hair, baggy pants with zippers everywhere, and no purpose in their step.
The problem is twofold: The American family structure these days blows, and the educational system blows.
The family has nothing to do, really, with single parents and divorce. It has to do with the fact that too many parents value their time and lives more than their kids. So they get babysitters one night a week so they can go to the bar. And they turn on the TV when they get home from work so that they can 'unwind' in peace. And their weekend family time is spent at America's favorite pastime: shopping.
In the monkey-see monkey-do world of childhood, kids see their parents shirk responsibility and act as good little consumers from day one. Even better, the parents have no involvement in their children's schools and educational programs.
The school system blows because there is no emphasis whatsoever put on critical thinking. Kids can't handle their math class for the same reason they can't handle the critical analysis part of their English Lit classes. They are taught to go look something up (in three sources), combine what's in those three sources into three paragraphs and turn it in.
Kids can't handle math because they're taught the hows of problem solving, not the whys.
Kids don't do well with critical thinking, because they're not thought to think creatively either. Arts and music are the first things cut by the powers that be, and when they're not cut, they're often taught by highly under-qualified instructors.
Sports and activities are good and important, but there's a major problem in that ATHLETICS are perceived as the best way to earn a scholarship for ACADEMIC study.
From preschool to grad school, too many institutions ignore critical and creative thinking. Everything is taught vocationally. Hence, the death of the liberal arts education.
And then after school, kids are getting further screwed over by their a) overworked and/or b) undereducated and/or c) socialite and/or d) overly consumerist parent(s).
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
So you maintain the position that there exists no such person that satisfies the condition that they are both smart and useless? Of course, "useless" is a subjective adjective...
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
In many high school courses SI units are used. Some students will complain, but they're better off for it that way. All science should be taught using the same system of units.
Yeah, because if a student can't handle units involving numbers other than 10, 100, 1000, then the problem is the units and not the student.
[/sarcasm]
That's not all, the US leads the world in World Series titles, too!
I accept I know nothing. Insulting my ignorance is wasted on me.
Nice try but no cigar. ;) I happen to come from a country with one of the world's highest gun ownership ratios. We get hand guns. We get silencers. A 15 year old can get a gun with parental permission. You can try guess which country.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I have held dod/secret, and ssbi/top-secret clearances. Today, getting a civilian clearance is practically impossible. It costs your employer about $40K - $50K, plus, it takes nearly a year to get - so your employer has to pay your salary for all that time while you are only marginally productive. In today's job market, you had better be something very *very* special if you expect somebody to pay for your clearance.
I am sick to death of these "just get a clearance" posts - as if you just go down to wal-mart and pick one up. Why not suggest "just win the lottery?"
With all the IP crap that is going on, I doubt you have any trouble finding work. And I doubt that patent attorney work is easy to outsource.
Maybe that's the way to go?
I do believe most countries have different rules. So if I may ask, which country do you hail from? My work ethic is about the same. I would love to work 8 hours and then go home without the worry of being fired. The only job that comes close to that, is a federal job and those are hard to come by seeing as the last time I applied for one I got turned down just because I never joined the military. Also, the euro is worth more then the dollar, so technically I'd be making more. So please, inform me of which countries have these rules and more specifically which country you are posting from.
Btw, does your country have a draft where you have to serve a year or two, after turning 18, in the military? I seem to remember a few European countries like that.
There is no logical reason to believe in something for which there is no evidence of its existence.
You present no evidence that x or y exist, therefore it is pointless to care about such things.
Your question is more like which is greater the tooth fairy with a sword or the easter bunny with a hammer.
You clearly have a mammoth-sized chip on your shoulder against Stanford. Having attended an upper-tier state school, I can say that most of the complaints you level at Stanford faculty are pervasive among the better research universities. I'll also add that I don't think it's as bad as you describe, at least with regard to the education one receives. When it comes to Stanford in particular, the price premium isn't due to the quality of instruction, it's charged because attending Stanford affords one the opportunity to hobnob with faculty who are eminent in their fields and students who, compared to a random sampling of upper-tier state school students, are more likely to do something "impressive" after they graduate. Also because having the Stanford "brand" one one's diploma, for better or worse, means more to some people than "random upper-tier state school".
I will add that if a student considers himself "very interested" in post-graduate education, and feels like he has the chops to "perform" academically regardless of the undergrad institution he attends, that it's almost certainly a better investment to attend an upper-tier state school if that's possible without paying tuition comparable to Stanford's. For instance, if the student's home state is Mississippi then he's going to have to pay out-of-state tuition to attend a Michigan, Illinois, Texas, Berkeley, Maryland, etc., and some of those schools' out-of-state tuition approaches Stanford levels. Assuming a post-graduate degree is in the student's future, the institution awarding *that* degree is the only thing that's going to matter long-term.
Anything ending in ondensation and starting with a c? What's "condensation" got to do with it? (he said, condescendingly)
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
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