With doctors and lawyers, a physical presence is a near-necessity (although this is less true today than 20 years ago even in those occupations). In STEM fields, physical presence is simply not that important. Consider that a vast majority of American servers today run Linux, written in Finland, or that virtually every streaming video service is based in some way on ffmpeg, written by a lone wolf superprogrammer in France. Software programmers can practice anywhere, provided they are capable of producing good software, physical distance is not a barrier.
So it is possible to lose the STEM war, I think that the attractiveness of US colleges to intelligent people around the world (including from within the US) has been the main factor in keeping most of the global talent in the US.
The immigration system is sort of a lottery, yeah you get the average dudes who "depress wages" but you also get the extremely talented people who start a lot of the companies.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/04/25/40-largest-u-s-companies-founded-by-immigrants-or-their-children/
Exactly. Equating GMO with Monsanto is silly.
This is a lot like the Spanish inquisition, people are on a witch hunt, they use the language of science but it is a thin layer over their dogmatic way of thought.
"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge." - Carl Sagan
It depends, some GMs are about boosting pesticide resistance, but newer varieties focus on eliminating the need for pesticides, which would be a great thing. We cannot stop the forward march of science out of fear.
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With doctors and lawyers, a physical presence is a near-necessity (although this is less true today than 20 years ago even in those occupations). In STEM fields, physical presence is simply not that important. Consider that a vast majority of American servers today run Linux, written in Finland, or that virtually every streaming video service is based in some way on ffmpeg, written by a lone wolf superprogrammer in France. Software programmers can practice anywhere, provided they are capable of producing good software, physical distance is not a barrier. So it is possible to lose the STEM war, I think that the attractiveness of US colleges to intelligent people around the world (including from within the US) has been the main factor in keeping most of the global talent in the US. The immigration system is sort of a lottery, yeah you get the average dudes who "depress wages" but you also get the extremely talented people who start a lot of the companies. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/04/25/40-largest-u-s-companies-founded-by-immigrants-or-their-children/
Exactly. Equating GMO with Monsanto is silly. This is a lot like the Spanish inquisition, people are on a witch hunt, they use the language of science but it is a thin layer over their dogmatic way of thought. "Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge." - Carl Sagan
It depends, some GMs are about boosting pesticide resistance, but newer varieties focus on eliminating the need for pesticides, which would be a great thing. We cannot stop the forward march of science out of fear.