I don't think that goal is necessarily mutually exclusive with some forms of nationalism. Certainly the rabid nationalism that some countries have exhibited aren't conducive to cooperation, but national-type governments are probably always going to be necessary. Even if we end up with a global government of some kind, we'll still need smaller administrations just like we have provincial/state and local governments now. Different areas have different resources and populations with different priorities.
As an example, the local area I grew up in certainly cooperates with neighbouring parts of the country, and there are no barriers to entering or leaving the region -- none of the negative influences that are usually attributed to nationalism. Yet, it being a rural area, the local municipalities have a variety of programs to encourage locals to get good educations then return to the area, as well as encouraging educated people to come to/remain in the area as opposed to migrating to the cities.
As far as this article is concerned, although the article does seem to have some (real or assumed) nationalistic overtones, it would seem to me that the problem is not the US slipping back to doing it's fair share of the world's research, but that US research institutions are finding it necessary to recruit trainees overwhelmingly from other countries. Whether that's because US students are unable or unwilling to go into the sciences doesn't really matter - it means that some factor in the US is discouraging those with scientific talents. Even in a cooperative, peaceful world, suppressing those with a talent for science from a large segment of the population is bad.
Yeah, but nobody wants to blow up anything other than New York, whether it's terrorists, aliens or sea monsters.
Sure, a flight from nearer New York might be easier, but then you'd have to pass through the cutting edge airtight American security instead of just Swiss cheese Canadian security, which mainly consists of a guy saying "Sorry, but please don't hijack this flight, eh? Thank you!"
You might have something in the long, long term, but it's not going to happen any time soon.
A reasonable nationalistic system also has the advantage that different places can try out different ideas on a smaller-than-the-whole-species scale. Ninety years ago Communism seemed like a pretty great idea. A couple hundred years ago unlimited capitalism seemed equally utopian. Good thing we didn't go ahead and convert the whole world to either of those, hey?
Academics don't make as much money as you might think, given the ranting some Slashdotters do.
The starting salaries for elementary school teachers (four year BEd) and professors at my university (4 year BSc, 5-7 year PhD, multiyear postdoc) used to be similar. They've since had to bump professors a bit because the disparity with local industry was so ridiculous they couldn't hire anyone.
That's reasonable. There's one problem though - if the issuer can profit from unused balances the issuer has an incentive to encourage people not to redeem their gift cards.
Requiring unused balances be transferred to the public coffers removes that incentive and retains the benefits of gift cards that expire.
Come on, you can do much better with the analogy. Comparing two Android phones is like comparing two computers running Windows.
The hardware can be just as distinct as any other computer, including all the input devices. Just because everyone is making iPhone clones doesn't mean they have to.
Must be nice. In Canada you pay more if you don't take the contract. You can take or leave the discounted phone if you sign the contract, but you pay for it anyway so you might as well have it.
You mean the one where you check off how much tobacco and booze you bought, and whether you've been to a farm or not?
Go ahead, forget something. If the customs guy thinks you forgot something they send your bag off to get x-rayed. If they find something you have to pay duty on it.
We didn't even have a watch list until we felt all left out because the Americans' was such a raging success.
More interestingly, there are probably a few great circle routes from US city to US city that pass through Canadian airspace. Seattle to New York would seem pretty likely. And anywhere to Alaska. Most US flights to Europe probably also fly through Canadian airspace.
Yup, one metal detector and three or four hand searches of person and baggage.
Or is that just me? I've tried my best to avoid going to the US because of it. I'm very happy to hear that treatment will now reach out to me when I'm travelling elsewhere.
If your own country doesn't produce many students of high enough calibre to do science, your aging research infrastructure trains mostly foreign students, then you send them home afterward, do you think that might have some future repercussions for the continued leadership of your country in science?
The point has nothing to do with race. We're talking about whether the US is going to continue to maintain it's preeminent position in science. Those students could be Indian, Chinese, Danish, English, Canadian, whatever. If you truly believe that nationalism is over and done with then the entire discussion is meaningless because "the United States" has no meaning anyway.
"Tyson made a very good point. In that lecture, he talked about the Islamic Empires of the 12th and 13th centuries that were building while we were in the Christian Dark Ages. Do you know what happened? A bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil. After that, it was only a matter of time. The result is the Middle East we see today."
For that matter, Aristotle and company got together and declared that their philosophy is the true description of the world. When that philosophy later got adopted by the church it pretty much kicked off those dark ages of which you speak.
Have you noticed the names on those Science papers? The US has a lot of research infrastructure but quite a bit of it is staffed by people from all over the world. Until now many of them have stayed and become Americans but that is starting to change.
The brain drain to the US was always a double edged sword. Many people went to the US with the lure of higher wages and lower taxes, realized it wasn't really true, and left.
Taking Canada as an example, Albertans pay lower taxes than residents of many US states. Any remaining disparities in wages and taxes are easily swallowed up by all the extra fees, the biggest being health insurance, that you run into in the US.
A few years ago I was part of a group interviewing a prominent researcher from Cornell for a position at a Canadian university (he was originally Canadian, educated in Canada). His reasons for coming back were (1) excellent research opportunities in Canada, (2) inability to pay for a decent post secondary education for his children and (3) inability to pay for decent health care in the US as he and his wife got older.
Statistically, IIRC, the brain drain between Canada and the US reversed about a decade ago in most areas.
Sure. There's a gold and diamond encrusted macbook that costs $50,000 too. There are also subnotebooks that cost $2000. The point is that netbooks are available cheaper now than they ever have been. Prices are not increasing. The line between netbooks and notebooks is blurring, but that's very different than saying the prices of netbooks is increasing.
You could easily get equivalent or longer battery life for all those things in one device if you were willing to carry the same total battery mass in one device.
The passenger side mirror is generally a convex, wide field of view mirror, inscribed with the famous warning "objects in mirror are closer than they appear."
What's he talking about? The Wikipedia says the Eee PC was introduced at a price of $399 US. Taking a wander around the racks at the local electronics retailer suggests that the average netbook, which has considerably better specs than the Eee is priced around $300-$350 CAN, which some being as cheap as $250 CAN.
They seriously haven't gotten that figured out yet on the Windows side of the fence?
I assumed Windows, Macs and well configured Linux machines were roughly equal on that score. If it's the case that suspend isn't reliable in Windows, the solution isn't expensive new non-volatile RAM, it's getting your driver and OS manufacturer to not write sucky software.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that goal is necessarily mutually exclusive with some forms of nationalism. Certainly the rabid nationalism that some countries have exhibited aren't conducive to cooperation, but national-type governments are probably always going to be necessary. Even if we end up with a global government of some kind, we'll still need smaller administrations just like we have provincial/state and local governments now. Different areas have different resources and populations with different priorities.
As an example, the local area I grew up in certainly cooperates with neighbouring parts of the country, and there are no barriers to entering or leaving the region -- none of the negative influences that are usually attributed to nationalism. Yet, it being a rural area, the local municipalities have a variety of programs to encourage locals to get good educations then return to the area, as well as encouraging educated people to come to/remain in the area as opposed to migrating to the cities.
As far as this article is concerned, although the article does seem to have some (real or assumed) nationalistic overtones, it would seem to me that the problem is not the US slipping back to doing it's fair share of the world's research, but that US research institutions are finding it necessary to recruit trainees overwhelmingly from other countries. Whether that's because US students are unable or unwilling to go into the sciences doesn't really matter - it means that some factor in the US is discouraging those with scientific talents. Even in a cooperative, peaceful world, suppressing those with a talent for science from a large segment of the population is bad.
Yeah, but nobody wants to blow up anything other than New York, whether it's terrorists, aliens or sea monsters.
Sure, a flight from nearer New York might be easier, but then you'd have to pass through the cutting edge airtight American security instead of just Swiss cheese Canadian security, which mainly consists of a guy saying "Sorry, but please don't hijack this flight, eh? Thank you!"
You might have something in the long, long term, but it's not going to happen any time soon.
A reasonable nationalistic system also has the advantage that different places can try out different ideas on a smaller-than-the-whole-species scale. Ninety years ago Communism seemed like a pretty great idea. A couple hundred years ago unlimited capitalism seemed equally utopian. Good thing we didn't go ahead and convert the whole world to either of those, hey?
Academics don't make as much money as you might think, given the ranting some Slashdotters do.
The starting salaries for elementary school teachers (four year BEd) and professors at my university (4 year BSc, 5-7 year PhD, multiyear postdoc) used to be similar. They've since had to bump professors a bit because the disparity with local industry was so ridiculous they couldn't hire anyone.
That's reasonable. There's one problem though - if the issuer can profit from unused balances the issuer has an incentive to encourage people not to redeem their gift cards.
Requiring unused balances be transferred to the public coffers removes that incentive and retains the benefits of gift cards that expire.
Come on, you can do much better with the analogy. Comparing two Android phones is like comparing two computers running Windows.
The hardware can be just as distinct as any other computer, including all the input devices. Just because everyone is making iPhone clones doesn't mean they have to.
Must be nice. In Canada you pay more if you don't take the contract. You can take or leave the discounted phone if you sign the contract, but you pay for it anyway so you might as well have it.
You mean the one where you check off how much tobacco and booze you bought, and whether you've been to a farm or not?
Go ahead, forget something. If the customs guy thinks you forgot something they send your bag off to get x-rayed. If they find something you have to pay duty on it.
We didn't even have a watch list until we felt all left out because the Americans' was such a raging success.
More interestingly, there are probably a few great circle routes from US city to US city that pass through Canadian airspace. Seattle to New York would seem pretty likely. And anywhere to Alaska. Most US flights to Europe probably also fly through Canadian airspace.
If you can hijack a flight and fly it into a building, you're probably quite capable of flying it the few hundred miles from Toronto to New York.
Yup, one metal detector and three or four hand searches of person and baggage.
Or is that just me? I've tried my best to avoid going to the US because of it. I'm very happy to hear that treatment will now reach out to me when I'm travelling elsewhere.
What's that?
If your own country doesn't produce many students of high enough calibre to do science, your aging research infrastructure trains mostly foreign students, then you send them home afterward, do you think that might have some future repercussions for the continued leadership of your country in science?
The point has nothing to do with race. We're talking about whether the US is going to continue to maintain it's preeminent position in science. Those students could be Indian, Chinese, Danish, English, Canadian, whatever. If you truly believe that nationalism is over and done with then the entire discussion is meaningless because "the United States" has no meaning anyway.
"Tyson made a very good point. In that lecture, he talked about the Islamic Empires of the 12th and 13th centuries that were building while we were in the Christian Dark Ages. Do you know what happened? A bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil. After that, it was only a matter of time. The result is the Middle East we see today."
For that matter, Aristotle and company got together and declared that their philosophy is the true description of the world. When that philosophy later got adopted by the church it pretty much kicked off those dark ages of which you speak.
Have you noticed the names on those Science papers? The US has a lot of research infrastructure but quite a bit of it is staffed by people from all over the world. Until now many of them have stayed and become Americans but that is starting to change.
The brain drain to the US was always a double edged sword. Many people went to the US with the lure of higher wages and lower taxes, realized it wasn't really true, and left.
Taking Canada as an example, Albertans pay lower taxes than residents of many US states. Any remaining disparities in wages and taxes are easily swallowed up by all the extra fees, the biggest being health insurance, that you run into in the US.
A few years ago I was part of a group interviewing a prominent researcher from Cornell for a position at a Canadian university (he was originally Canadian, educated in Canada). His reasons for coming back were (1) excellent research opportunities in Canada, (2) inability to pay for a decent post secondary education for his children and (3) inability to pay for decent health care in the US as he and his wife got older.
Statistically, IIRC, the brain drain between Canada and the US reversed about a decade ago in most areas.
Okay, we're all a little bit Intel, IBM, Arab and English. Where's the American part?
Sure. There's a gold and diamond encrusted macbook that costs $50,000 too. There are also subnotebooks that cost $2000. The point is that netbooks are available cheaper now than they ever have been. Prices are not increasing. The line between netbooks and notebooks is blurring, but that's very different than saying the prices of netbooks is increasing.
For the same price as it is in the Apple form, yes.
You could easily get equivalent or longer battery life for all those things in one device if you were willing to carry the same total battery mass in one device.
Funny. But if mirrors didn't reverse front and back, you WOULD be staring at the back of your head in the mirror.
Convex mirrors make objects appear further away.
The passenger side mirror is generally a convex, wide field of view mirror, inscribed with the famous warning "objects in mirror are closer than they appear."
That one appears to just be a convex mirror. You can easily get one. In fact, there's probably one on the passenger side of your car right now.
As the article says, curved drivers side mirrors are illegal in the US though.
What's he talking about? The Wikipedia says the Eee PC was introduced at a price of $399 US. Taking a wander around the racks at the local electronics retailer suggests that the average netbook, which has considerably better specs than the Eee is priced around $300-$350 CAN, which some being as cheap as $250 CAN.
They seriously haven't gotten that figured out yet on the Windows side of the fence?
I assumed Windows, Macs and well configured Linux machines were roughly equal on that score. If it's the case that suspend isn't reliable in Windows, the solution isn't expensive new non-volatile RAM, it's getting your driver and OS manufacturer to not write sucky software.