The Decline of Science and Technology in America 1347
puke76 writes "There's a good article over on the BBC about the decline of science and technology in the U.S.. Vint Cerf and others are going on record to voice their concerns about the current administrations recipe for 'irrelevance and decline.' Scientists are increasingly concerned about the White House's pandering to the religious right at science's expense. From the article: 'radically we have moved away from regulation based on professional analysis of scientific data ...to regulation controlled by the White House and driven by political considerations.'"
Socialism (Score:1, Interesting)
As I read the constitution the government is 1. only supposed to do things that the constitution explicitly states it is supposed to do and 2. is supposed to encourage useful invention with the patent system.
The article states:
I don't know what sort of warped and unrealistic idea of how politics work would cause a person to be surprised by this.
In summary, nobody likes how the government spends money. Only a person suffering brain damage would imagine that giving them more would improve the situation.
-Peter
PS: Poo poo on the person who wrote this article, and on G.W. Bush. And Mrs. Cartman.
-P
US Technological Leadership (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course such trends never continue indefinitely - it's just a leveling of inequalities left over from the WWII and cold war days. The US benefitted from an immigrant brain source once (Einstein, Von Braun, Tesla) - it could easily flow the other way if conditions here become too hostile or the grass looks greener elsewhere.
Religion holding us back as usual (Score:2, Interesting)
Meanwhile they want to teach our kids stuff out of the Bible because if it's in the Bible it MUST be true. What we really need is one country (somewhere else) where Christians can gather and live in whatever primitive manner they choose.
Rise of the new america, not sink to irrelevance (Score:1, Interesting)
States ruled through Religious Dogma do not necessarily sink before pragmatism. History is full of examples where holy wars shaped the world; and religious power over people is just as sure a way of controlling them as technological means such as the threat of nukes (though rest assured that military technology is still being heavily invested in).
For better or worse, I don't see this as America sinking to irrelevance, so much as the Rise of the new Holy American Empire.
Re:Brainwashed! (Score:5, Interesting)
I must say you bring up some good points and I tend to agree much of your arguement. A good portion of this country is very uneducated and tends to follow blindly to what its fed from news stations such as Fox News who proclaim themselves to be, "Fair and Balanced." In a lot of ways this country *is* going backwards, as ultra-paranoid religious groups are collectively working to sway votes in the whitehouse. I think what we do need is the same sort of counter-group to thwart their attempts at branding their religious/ personal beliefs on "the rest of us."
Re:Seperate them! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or did you mean to suggest that they did not mean it, simply by virtue of their being "Christian"? Their variety of Christianity was far more enlightened than what is often found in evangelical churches today. Here's another quote:
Current admin punishes criticism, different ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
The real stupid part? The metro serves a large number of people and is always in need of more money. So, in reality, they punished the people. Look for lots of punishment from an angry God, er, government because scientists feel differently about religion, environment, and politics in general.
Re:How can it not decline? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Brainwashed! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, in fact, into reading the bible any more than selectively. US fundamentalist Christaianity seems to have rather odd ideas about what exactly Christ said. The concepts of loving your neighbour, helping the poor, and forgiveness that seem to crop up a lot on the new testament... well apparently they're not so important. Despite 85% of the population of the US professing to be Christian, the US has ranks second to last among developed nations for foreign aid as a percentage of the economy, rate almost as poorly for private charity, have high rates of poverty for a developed nation, and are the only developed nation that still uses capital punishment (so much for "turn the other cheek"). 75% of Americans thought that "God helps those who help themselves." was a teaching from the bible - look as hard as you like, it isn't there; Ben Franklin said it. Christianity in the US is less Christianty, and more some bizarre American religion with vague Christian roots - I mean hell, most mormons are closer to following the new testament then a great many US Christians.
Jedidiah.
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:5, Interesting)
"It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause, that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred years to the respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had the progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock that before existed, that chasm would have been filled up with characters rising superior in knowledge to each other; and those Ancients we now so much admire would have appeared respectably in the background of the scene. But the christian system laid all waste; and if we take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that long chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile hills beyond."
-Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Re:Corporations (Score:3, Interesting)
You hit the nail on the head. I just got back from visiting my girlfriend's parents in Mainland China, and the change I see there over the past year is mind blowing. In North America we're focused on the short term profit, on how to make a buck in the next quarter, in China they see the big picture and the long term goal. They know where they want to go, and know that some investments are long term.
We've forgotten that, and we're going to pay dearly for it over the next decade. In her home city I saw 4 bridges, multiple express ways, and countless buildings being built all at once. You could see at least 100 cranes at a time from any vantage point. In North America we have crumbling infrastructure, budgets on everything from education to health being slashed, and crumbling cities.
We need to wake up and see that we will become irrelivant unless we start looking at the long term.
Distraction is a serious problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
I feel sorry for Joseph Wilson and his wife every day. They experienced this first hand - object and be retaliated against.
It's not my idea - I heard it originally from a journalist for the SF Chronicle - but one of the biggest tools the White House is using is distraction. Attention is being drawn to social issues (such as gay rights, and vegetable rights - Schiavo), while significant detrimental policies are being waged against science (like barring publication of papers about global warming) and civil rights.
The true crimes involve Writ of Habeus Corpus (Jose Padilla), and intentional endangerment (Valerie Plame), not stem-cells and Hubble.
Re:Again (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone who is unbiased sees a world leader imposing religious dogma onto secular public schools, and scientists doing legitimate and lifesaving research with aborted fetus tissue, or even pre-life-viable embryos in a labratory.
Slashdot has a story involving Bush because like him or not he's a world leader and what he says counts as news. If he says something objectionable, then it's the medias' responsibility to report it and explain why it's objectionable. In an open society you're allowed to use the media to respond, or say the media is wrong for saying Bush is wrong, but if all you can say is that they are "biased" and that somehow passes as a solid argument, then we're letting people like you off way to easily.
Tell us WHY critics of Bush's science and religion policy are wrong? You can't, because they are right.
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm telling it like it is, and I can spare the karma, so the radical right can just piss off.
Re:Corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
Or they just don't get it. I sat down with one of the VP's at my old job (as the company was starting to head down the toilet) to talk about their hiring practices. The company policy was "we pay in the 60th percentile." For every job, they used some salary survey to determine what it was worth. They literally looked at the salary range and picked a number based on the 60th percentile. Here's a summary of the conversation we had:
Me: What kind of organization are you trying to build?
VP: World Class.
Me: So, if you were going to hire someone to administer your databases (a component so critical that even a VP knew that the business did not run without them), what kind of person would you want?
VP: Someone at the top of their field.
Me: So if you had to rate them, say on a scale of 1 to 100, what are you looking for?
VP: I wouldn't even consider someone who isn't in the top five percent of candidates.
Me:So what your looking for is someone whose skills are in the 95th percentile but is willing to work for pay in the 60th percentile?
I never got a reply. For what it's worth, I wasn't an employee, I was a contractor.
Re:Fix the delusions (Score:5, Interesting)
There are also the perceptions of Europe as being some socialist unproductive quagmire. Yes, in terms of GDP per capita most European countries are behind the US - but they also get much longer holidays, and work less hours and thus have more time for family. Turning things around if CO2 emisisons (as US opponents of Kyoto like to claim) are the natural byproduct of production, and reducing emissions would reduce GDP... well consider this list of countries by GDP/CO2 emissions [wikipedia.org] which shows that in terms of waste most European countries are significantly more efficient in generating GDP than the US. Is Europe perfect? No, not in the least, they're just different, with different priorities - they produce less but do it more efficiently. That's not the pereption a lot of Americans have of Europe though.
Jedidiah.
Why is the problem and solution always government? (Score:3, Interesting)
The basic problem is your ( not all of you, I know) belief that the federal government is the solution to your problems. Stem Cell research? Oh, this cannot happen without unrestricted federal spending. Public education is screwed? Let's get Ted Kennedy and President Bush to work together to create "No Child Left Behind", only to have Ted rip it after he helped create it.
The long term results of the Feds being involved is more slow moving, poorly engineered administrations like NASA. If the private sector had been invited into the space business 25 years ago, we would be much further along.
I am starting to think that this is a generational view. I am an older Gen X'er, and it seems that the younger Gen Y crowd is much more use to asking for solutions from their "Parents" (aka, the Government) than in doing for themselves.
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it hasn't. It's been at the forefront for the last 70 years or so, but that's mostly due to the nazi's rise to power, which caused a big wave of immigration of European scientists.
Now, please don't take this as flamebait; I don't intend to say that the USA don't have their own brilliant minds or that they didn't have them before the nazis, but I think that the current situation, where the USA, which account for less than 5% of the world's population, are the scientific center of the world, so to speak, is in no small part due to the fact that many top scientists did go to the USA back then.
In the future, over time, things will shift again. Not necessarily back to Europe, but India and China, for example (both nations with more than a billion inhabitants, which is more than the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe and Japan have combined) will definitely leave us behind them in terms of scientific significance.
Basing politics on religion rather than science is just gonna speed that up even further.
blame you dad! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the 60s/70s...they were entering the colleges and workforce...what did we get...a massive overhaul to the educational systems. In the 70/80s they were moving through their "working lives"...what did we get...a massive overhaul to industrial relations in favor of the workers...in 2000, they're all heading into retirement, mostly funded by shares, wanting to live on less money and also worried about death...what do we see? More power being given to corporations and taken from workers (in all three countries), more focus on immediate share holder returns rather than r&d, outsourcing to cut the cost of consumables, cutting of government research, services and educational assistence to lower taxes, and an increase in relious uptake as they all worry about death.
This is sheer speculation on my part, but in Australia we're watching all the great social practices put in place during the 60s/70s and 80s be repealed...from free education and medical, to workers rights...and from what I hear here it seems to be happening in the US and UK. These trends, to my untrained eye, seem to follow rather closely the needs of the major voting demographic (baby boomers)...so lets face it...if you're under 40 you're screwed...unless of course you move to south america where I believe the major demographics in most countries is 15-25 (they're having somewhat of a baby boom at the moment).
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The truth of the matter is that the United States has been a Wartime economy since World War II.[3] The thing propping up such an economy? The Cold War, of course![4] The US outspent the Soviet Union at every turn, eventually causing the USSR to go bankrupt. The wartime economy then began to taper off, slowly reducing the amount of private and government funded research. By the end of the 90's, science was already in trouble, but no one noticed because of the technology boom.[5] (Itself an artificial boom caused by overspending.) The tech boom crashes, and suddenly the true state of things is revealed.
The entire Stem Cell issue, and ID issue are irrelevant to the US's technology bottom line. We simply can't afford the level of progress that was achieved in the Post WWII economy. We had one last "Hurrah" in the 80's and early 90's, then everything petered out after that. It's not sexy, it's not pretty, and there's no good place to put the blame. But that's the way it is.
[1] [wikipedia.org]
[2] [wikipedia.org]
[3] [wikipedia.org]
[4] [independent.org]
[5] [selenasol.com]
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:3, Interesting)
People no longer encourage those around them to share knowledge and information, but rather spend a significant portion of each day trying to keep the other guy from learning something, lest the other guy get a competitive edge of some kind. The energy they spend on throwing the other guy under the bus could be spent learning what the other guy learns, but who wants to learn anything? We'd rather be lazy and just be an obstruction.
There's another facet to this phenomenon which isn't limited to CS majors, but runs the gamut; if, by some small miracle, you DO manage to find a job in your field that doesn't require an impossible-to-get amount of experience (meaning everyone wants you to have 3 years experience but is hiring graduates, can you tell I hate HR?) you will most likely be replacing someone (or in a lot of cases, two someones) who made three times as much as you are offered. Those folks go try to make ends meet working at Wal-Mart, and you get to take an insulting salary. But the company saves lots of money, so it's OK. You put in herculean amounts of effort into doing the job, fighting your hideous overworked status with as best an attitude as you can muster, with the naive belief that your hard work will be rewarded. Then comes wage review time, and you get a raise that doesn't even cover inflation. Meanwhile you're eating Ramen and living in a rabbit hutch so you can pay off your student loans. It's gotten so that I don't even encourage the high school students that I meet to go to college, because I know for a fact that it's become a complete waste of time and money. Sure, maybe that B.A. helps you get a slightly better job and salary, but if you add in the $70,000 of debt you garnered to get it, you're not any better off.
Anti-Intelligence (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pro Bush, but let's ignore that. Whether you think Bush is killing science or not, I think the fact is there is a BIGGER problem. Bush will be gone in 3 years. You can choose someone else then.
But where are the kids who want to grow up to be astronauts? Used to be TONS of kids. How did you do that? You studied science. Wanted to be Einstein? Study physics. There were heros in science.
Name a famous scientist now (a current one). The only one I can think of really is Hawking. And most students I've seen don't know who he is unless you refer to him as "the wheelchair guy", and even then they don't know what he's done.
Where are all the famous scientists? Where is the acclaim for intelligence? TV and the Papers are full of anti-intellectual stuff. Who do we learn about? Brad and Jennifer and other celebrities. They don't have to be smart, in fact it seems better if they AREN'T ("Walmart, do they... like... make walls there?", and "...[Canada] is like a whole other country"). These are who kids look up to. That and athletes.
So while most people are worshiping at the Church of the Golden Calf Highschool (like that? Saw it in a book), "nerds" are ostracized. In this country getting high grades doesn't earn you respect, it earns you hate. You're not "that smart kid", you're "the kid who ruined the curve for the rest of us". Meanwhile a kid who happens to be able to kick a football gets people comming from all over the country to try to recruit them to a college (often with illegal bribes). But that is far more rare for the smart kid. Let's ignore the fact that not being able to post grades as well as "not hurting kids feelings" and grade inflation have made it TOUGH to compete on grades because everyone gets As and Bs.
TV is aimed at people with a 3rd grade education (don't know the real number, but it's down there), and even the best newspapers like the Wall Street Journal are targeted at someone with something like an 8th grade reading level.
You don't need to be able to read. You ain't needing to be able to be speaking properly. If you can play a sport, you can focus on that and have it made. Teachers may help you out, give you advantages, etc.
This country has a SERIOUS anti-intellectual current going on, and THAT is what is making things worse. If we can't reverse that, it doesn't matter how well we teach that 2% of kids interested in science; because if it's only 2% we won't go anywhere.
I'll reply to my own post with my thoughts on the Bush administration, so anyone wanting to argue about that can post under that reply.
JPL Open House last summer was very encouraging (Score:5, Interesting)
But, I had one glorious day last year. The Jet Propulsion Labs at CalTech had an open house in May, and I attended this year with my little boy. It was a unique experience. You don't just stumble upon JPL, it's way off in the corner of the LA basin, but people came from everywhere around to the open house.
At each of a fifty or so different stations, there were JPL scientists describing their current work to an incredibly diverse but intensely interested audience. The scientists and engineers are, of course, very enthusiastic about their projects -- but the tremendous enthusiasm of my fellow attendees was surprising and heartening. Young and old, of every imaginable race and combination thereof, in families and individually -- everyone was just enthralled. It was kind of interesting to watch the engineers trying to describe the interferometer that JPL hopes to send up to measure the positions and velocities of stars more accurately to this group -- but they struggled to explain it, and people struggled to understand it.
As I said above, it was glorious. I recommend it to anybody in the LA area. There is hope.
Thad Beier
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, yes, they were. Most of the Ten Commandments monuments that you see in courthouses were actually donated in the 1950's to promote the film The Ten Commandments with Charleton Heston.
christians at work (Score:2, Interesting)
Anti-Intelligence Re: Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll say that I support Bush and most things he's done. I agree with most of their science policies because they give true respect to human life. The one I DON'T agree with is Evolution.
I live in Kansas, so I've seen a lot about this. I am a Catholic. I support Evolution. I think it should be taught in schools. Basically everyone I've meet thinks the same thing. It is a few far-end nut cases that don't want evolution taught AT ALL. Most people do.
Here is how I would like things changed, and this is what most other religious people want (from what I can discern). The problem isn't evolution. It's "evolution". Kids should be taught the idea that a organism that is better able to survive will reproduce and overtake an organism that isn't. Over time this leads to species changing, branching, dying, being created, etc. This is perfectly fine. I see nothing wrong with that.
Now there are some (mostly on the far left) who get it taught like this: <everything above>, plus things started out as a few protines. Once they became alive through random chance, then millions of years of various random chances in the right order created everything we see. That is a LOT of random chance. Especially if you include all the random chance that landed us in this version of the multi-verse that has the right elements in the right ammounts in the right places to allow life to form. Another insanely unlikely random chance.
Once you go into that random chance stuff, I see you as entering into philosophy. Was it random chance, or was that random chance guided by something (the G-word... God).
There is nothing wrong with evolution, but when you try to expand that (as above) into guaranteed fact and teach that, I think that's a mistake. You can say some people believe everything came from evolution, some believe it was created by God, some by God directing evolution, and some by a combination of the above. But I don't think we should go teaching something we can't prove (that each one of those random chances was random and not influenced in any way) when we can't prove it. Leave it for the philosophy classes, the religious study, or even higher level biology classes in college. That part of the lecture isn't necessary for a 6th grader, it just undermines a parent's attempts at teaching a religion (if they are doing so).
Basically, it's the particular variety of evolution they are teaching (that has been taken into a philosophical realm) that's my problem, not the theory of evolution that I fully support.
I hope you can all understand my meaning, I have a feeling I haven't described it in a very eloquent way. Maybe if I had been an English major :).
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:3, Interesting)
To make matters worse, Nixon took us off the gold standard to hide what he had done with the dollar (illegal minting). So now the OPEC communities are seriously talking about creating a gold based money. If they do, the dollar also becomes irrelevant.
Comments from Neal Stephenson (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.mg.neal.shtml [reason.com]
Reason: The Baroque Cycle suggests that there are sometimes great explosions of creativity, followed by that creative energy's recombining and eventual crystallization into new forms--social, technological, political. Are we seeing a similar degree of explosive progress in the modern U.S.?
Stephenson: The success of the U.S. has not come from one consistent cause, as far as I can make out. Instead the U.S. will find a way to succeed for a few decades based on one thing, then, when that peters out, move on to another. Sometimes there is trouble during the transitions. So, in the early-to-mid-19th century, it was all about expansion westward and a colossal growth in population. After the Civil War, it was about exploitation of the world's richest resource base: iron, steel, coal, the railways, and later oil.
For much of the 20th century it was about science and technology. The heyday was the Second World War, when we had not just the Manhattan Project but also the Radiation Lab at MIT and a large cryptology industry all cooking along at the same time. The war led into the nuclear arms race and the space race, which led in turn to the revolution in electronics, computers, the Internet, etc. If the emblematic figures of earlier eras were the pioneer with his Kentucky rifle, or the Gilded Age plutocrat, then for the era from, say, 1940 to 2000 it was the engineer, the geek, the scientist. It's no coincidence that this era is also when science fiction has flourished, and in which the whole idea of the Future became current. After all, if you're living in a technocratic society, it seems perfectly reasonable to try to predict the future by extrapolating trends in science and engineering.
It is quite obvious to me that the U.S. is turning away from all of this. It has been the case for quite a while that the cultural left distrusted geeks and their works; the depiction of technical sorts in popular culture has been overwhelmingly negative for at least a generation now. More recently, the cultural right has apparently decided that it doesn't care for some of what scientists have to say. So the technical class is caught in a pincer between these two wings of the so-called culture war. Of course the broad mass of people don't belong to one wing or the other. But science is all about diligence, hard sustained work over long stretches of time, sweating the details, and abstract thinking, none of which is really being fostered by mainstream culture.
Since our prosperity and our military security for the last three or four generations have been rooted in science and technology, it would therefore seem that we're coming to the end of one era and about to move into another. Whether it's going to be better or worse is difficult for me to say. The obvious guess would be "worse." If I really wanted to turn this into a jeremiad, I could hold forth on that for a while. But as mentioned before, this country has always found a new way to move forward and be prosperous. So maybe we'll get lucky again. In the meantime, efforts to predict the future by extrapolating trends in the world of science and technology are apt to feel a lot less compelling than they might have in 1955.
Re:Fix the delusions (Score:2, Interesting)
No, actually, it's quite accurate. Which isn't so surprising in a country where you can buy better health care for your dog than for your daughter, and that shares the distinction of banning a free market in health care with only Cuba and North Korea.
bt for the most part it functions very well, and very efficiently.
You obviously haven't used it much. Or are you a member of parliament..?
Per captia health spending in Canada is significantly less than in the US.
Per capita health spending in Canada is significantly less than public spending in the U.S., let alone overall spending. And it shows.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you kidding? He crippled the entire line of ESC research for years. And every argument given for doing so was entirely baseless. The Christian Right simply wouldn't ever shut up about how it encourages abortion, even though the one has utterly nothing to do with another. As a result, the US has already begun falling behind in biosciences. He puts _faith healers_ on medical boards. Money spent on actual scientific studies of environmental problems gets thrown away because the guys at the top don't like the results. The latest crop of republicans are about the worst thing to happen to science and they are making religion look like a caricature of itself. To the rest of the world, the most powerful nation on earth looks like it's becoming a Christian version of Saudi Arabia.
The lunar missions ended because American leaders decided the money was better spent getting GIs killed in Vietman. The space program ultimately stagnated because US leaders made it a government monopoly run by a political committee. I see a solid week of news dedicated to ongoing technical problems with a single solitary shuttle (i.e., a third of our entire manned fleet) and I think, "We don't have a space program, we have a space hobby". And the reason people get pissed off with the expense is because it doesn't _do_ anything useful or even new anymore.
Anyway, it's not so much that there's a declining number of competent researchers and scientists. It's just that they are increasingly being told that neither they nor their work is wanted here. Fact is old and busted, faith-based-government is the new hotness. Average Joe is not just getting dumber, he's becoming more and more convinced that this is a virtue. Nothing could demonstrate this better than the studies showing that half the voting population would refuse to vote for a candidate for no other reason than because he was an atheist. I.e., competency and intelligence are secondary to whimsy and insanity.
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:4, Interesting)
George Washington 1779
"I have sometimes thought there could not be a stronger testimony in favor of religion or against temporal enjoyments, even the most rational and manly, than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and [who] are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent advocates in the cause of Christ; and I wish you may give in your evidence in this way."
James Madison 1773
"Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this."
Benjamin Franklin (who, let it be known to all the gentle readers, was decidedly NOT a Christian or a religious man)
Jefferson was an atheist.
You know what's missing from American Education? Even the tiniest bit of knowledge about how to think for yourself.
Re:Christianity versus global warming (Score:1, Interesting)
One of the greatest indicators of pseudo-science is the claim that something is an undeniable "fact." Science does not deal in such things. There are few facts in science, but many evidences. Facts are immutable, but in science we tend to change our minds all the time.
Speaking of facts, I can think of one. It's a fact that climatology is a new science, and that we have a lot to learn. I've personally read a number of opinions from presumably reputable, intelligent sources that dispute the "fact" of global warming. Dr. John A. Baden is one of them. There is no need to dispute about reality; the truth is that we don't know what it is just yet, in spite of the global-warming alarmists out there.
Re:Fix the delusions (Score:2, Interesting)
And yet, Americans are very workaholic, taking much shorter vacations than their european counterparts. So I'm inclined to conclude that the decline in science is not due to complacency or laziness, but instead to a cultural/economic shift, a shift of priorities perhaps. Take, for example, enrollment in Computer Science. It's on a downward trend because of the dotcom bust mostly. Technology in general has been impacted by the NASDAQ. It could very well be a temporary dip.
Re:Brainwashed! (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it, what else but religion, can do what the U.S. does?
Christ will free your soul. Coca-Cola will quench your thirst.
Interesting theory (Score:2, Interesting)
The US is falling behind? Give me a break. (Score:2, Interesting)
The US subjugates science to belief? Unlike Europe, which rejects the 300 million person, 10 year experiment with GM foods. But ID kooks don't make you go blind. It's OK; you can assuage your post-colonial concience with a check to OxFam. Maybe they'll send you a thank-you note in braille.
I am a scientist. This isn't blindness, but observation. I'm prepared to worry.
When Europe, collectively, has as many top-notch CS schools as can be found within commuting distance of San Francisco Bay, I'll start to worry.
When any country in Europe has as many Nobel Lauriates as can be found at Stanford, I'll start to worry.
When any success in a European undergraduate program ceases to be defined as admission to a US grad program, I'll start to worry.
When Europe starts to produce inventions of consequence (the last one was, I believe, the radio, while the US came out with nuclear power, computers, the internet, magnetic storage, long-distance air travel) I'll start to worry.
When European culture starts to produce inventors, achievers, dreamers and entrepreneurs en masse, I'll start to worry.
In the mean time, good luck with your English lessons and H1-B application. -Will
Gold Standard (Score:3, Interesting)
To make matters worse, Nixon took us off the gold standard to hide what he had done with the dollar (illegal minting).
This may be part of the reason Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard but another part is that France had a hand full of dollars and demanded the US exchange them for gold. Nixon gave them the gold then removed the gold standard. What's really galling about this was that the US helped France to get out of Viet Nam in the previous twenty years. While I think it was stupid to get rid of the gold standard it would be difficult to reinstate it because the US would have to have on hand enough gold to exchange a lot of dollars for gold which would drive up gold prices. On the other hand if gold and thus dollar prices went up then the US economy would get a boost as imports would rise in prices and exports would drop in prices.
FalconRe:US Technological Leadership (Score:3, Interesting)
One of main problems is getting a visa to enter the US, even for a conference. It is not only about high profile cases http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/17/business/cr ypto.php [iht.com], but simply PhD students. What do you do when the time to get a visa for entering the US is longer than the time between acceptance and the actual conference?
Also would you go to the US if you were either arab, muslim, or have some family connection in an arab country?
It's not religion that will diminish the US... (Score:5, Interesting)
...It's the attitude that says this:
The single biggest negative perception about the US that I experience here in Europe is the collective ego represented by the way the US government conducts itself, and the comments made by so many Americans in many an Internet forum. Here are a few claims I've seen in the past week alone:
Now here's an alternative version, as seen by the devil's advocate:
Seriously, this isn't meant to be a troll. That first list really is the impression a lot of Americans I've encountered give, and the second list is certainly how the US is increasingly perceived here in the UK.
The problem for this discussion, of course, is that being a world leader in scientific research depends fundamentally on three things: attracting good people, getting them in touch with everyone else's good people, and funding them well enough to do their thing. Pissing off the rest of the world and destroying your economy from within probably aren't the best ways to achieve any of those three critical things. Yeah, I'd say the US is pretty much toast for a while as far as leading the world in scientific research.
Re:Get off the political troll.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm a grad student who works with a lot of foreign grad students. Ten years ago, foreign students worked hard, got advanced degrees, and settled in the US, enriching our nation. Now, half of the people in my classes are planning to get their degrees and go back to their home countries. Don't get me wrong, I respect 100% their decision to go back and improve the countries that they call home over what might be a more comfortable life here.
The fact remains, however, that our universities are churning out our competition. Federal and state funding is poured into universities where foreign students come, receive advanced educations, and leave! In many cases, for free! (Think: what nationality were your math and engineering TA's? Their tuitions were paid by the school.)
Our country was built in large part by foreigners seeking a better life here. Now that trends point to foreigners seeking to improve their own homeland, perhaps it is time for attitudes to change.
And, sadly, I must post this anonymously, because I'm truly afraid people would misunderstand me as racist.
Re:Gold Standard (Score:1, Interesting)
Thirty years and countless books on the subject and not til today do I learn the US entered Vietnam for France. It's been a while though and apparently I'm not up on the latest 'Freedom Fries' school of historical thought.
The real problem with America is your inability to step outside the national delusions and even consider the possibility of a global view. Yours is a too-typical example.
Re:Distraction is a serious problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
Columnist Molly Ivans pointed this out about the Bush Administration well before 9/11. She called it "The Politics of Outrage". Basically the cycle goes something like this:
1) Administration does something outrageous
2) Outcry & Criticism of action erupt that day
3) Next day: Administration does new outrageous thing
4) Outcry & Criticism over new outrage, yesterday's outrage forgotten (at least by the press)
5) Lather. Rinse. Repeat, EVERY DAY.
The truly disturbing thing is this strategy seems to work.
This administration cynically manipulates news and news cycles every day. Real criticism is either ignored or jollied away as "well I disagree, but support your right to be feel differently, but we aren't changing".
When the next idiocy or outrage occurs, the previous outrageous actions are stuffed under the floor by the media. This has given them free reign to pursue every boneheaded policy, or just flat out greedy corporate wellfare program they can think of. Its no wonder at all that Science is being strangled to death in the U.S.
Rove, Bush, etc I salute you. You are the greatest marketeers the world has ever seen, and God save us all from your foolishness and greed.
-I.V.
Re:Interesting theory (Score:2, Interesting)
Am I an anomaly? (Score:3, Interesting)
And it would seem that my colleagues find the positions compatible as well. I don't have the statistics readily at hand, but I believe that something like 75% of scientists believe in God.
(Discussions like this just make me tired. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to keep up a conversation that generates much more heat than light.)
Re:Get off the political troll.. (Score:2, Interesting)
That's hardly unique to the States, and it's hardly a new thing.
Here, in the middle of Europe the reaction to introducing myself as a mathematician has three steps:
1. "You must be really smart to understand all this"
2. "I was never good at math"
3. "But what do you do for living?"
Unlike GP observations, the other side doesn't try to express superiority. However people who would be ashamed to admit that they don't know some classic literature titles are somewhat proud that they have no idea what a logarithm could be.
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I call BS (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and it pisses me off.
"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." John Quincy Adams
We've come a loooong way haven't we?
It's a relative decline. (Score:5, Interesting)
The rest of the world has been a relatively peaceful place for the last 50 years. So now the rest of the world is catching up. It doesn't mean the US is doing worse, the rest of the world is doing better.
Bringing Foreign Talent to the U.S. (Score:5, Interesting)
The article commented about visa restrictions preventing talented people from coming to the U.S. to study or do research. I just don't see that at all. In my field, there are tons of foreign post-docs working in the U.S., and many them decide to stay here after their post-doctoral appointments are done. Ironically, I have been told by many people in my field that I should look for a job overseas, since I can't find one here. Instead of trying to cultivate the talent that is already here in the U.S., our government's policies and the hiring practices of many institutions are bringing in foreign scientists while American scientists are being told to look to other countries for employment. In principle, I'm not against bringing foreign talent to the U.S. to help with scientific research. I just don't think it makes sense to do this on a large scale when U.S. scientists are struggling to survive.
I've also heard the complaint from many industry leaders that they can't find Americans with the right technical and scientific skills to fill job openings, so they need to bring in foreign talent. I've started looking into industry jobs, and I'm beginning to realize that computerized resume searches may be partially to blame for the apparent lack of qualified applicants. Most of the job descriptions are so specialized that I don't think there would be anyone in the entire world who fit the job exactly and would have all the right keywords in their resume. It doesn't matter if corporations look for employees in the U.S. or in other countries if they aren't willing to invest in training their staff. The executives and upper level managers of most corporations probably don't have a lot of technical experience themselves, and yet they expect a prospective employee to show up at their first day of work and know everything there is to know about the corporation's products. This is unreasonable and impossible, given that this type of information is often proprietary and available only to people who already work at the company.
I think that there are plenty of talented scientists, engineers, and programmers in the U.S. but the policies of our government and the practices of large corporations make it nearly impossible for us to actually find work in our chosen fields. Until we fix these problems, the U.S. is going to get further and further behind the rest of the world.
Politicians really don't know how to fix things... (Score:3, Interesting)
Given the US came about software patents thru small squablings in court rooms and not public awareness and feedback and is now considering changing patent law to allow first to file to get patents on the works of slower to apply or those not wanting to patent their work...
From a British point of view, maybe this is a good thing, just make Science and Technology rewards attractive in the EU to get the talent to move there.
Isn't that similiar to Einstiens move away from his homeland, the motherland? And what was then accomplished to end a war amd establishing the winners...
Bush in many ways is a little hitler...
He doesn't seem to understand the words of Benjamin Franklin or FDR, which was to the effect - a country willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security neither deserves either nor will it have either...
Science understands the concept of not being able to prove a negitive..... So Bush wanted Iraq to prove it had no weapons of mass destruction....
Science and Bush just don't mix.
Technology??? Bill Gates and anti-trust.... A first and formost marketing company named Microsoft, second focus being law and something like playing chess in business, willing to sacrifice its own, take a smaller hit if it brings a bigger return. Not even is innovation a third priority of Microsoft, but rather buying it from others and calling it their genius..
What did the US government get in exchange for letting MS off the anti-trust hook, with only a public slapping of the wrist?
It should be obvious. The knowledge of how to well mislead the public at large, for what ever purpose it might... Anthrax used to get the Media VOICE inline???? Probably! Though Richard Jewell was blamed for the Olympic Park Bombing in Atlanta, they did eventually find the real guilt party..... But the Real party guilty of the Anthrax letters to the press..... Seems to have dropped out of public sight...
The most terrorism I have seen has come from the Bush Administration. How terrorising is it to see such power out of control, abusive?
The only science Bush seems to know is the science of marketing his will..
Do a google search on "Trillion dollar bet" to see the probably excuse for the WTC...
When is it not about money?
Do another party wrong, expect revenge?
The real solution to world problems is found @
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod0
Remove the excuses....
Which only leaves one question:
Why are genuine solutions NOT happening?
Science knows how to do it. Politicians Don't!
Re:Gold Standard (Score:3, Interesting)
Christianity (Score:3, Interesting)
My point is that, on the value of religion at least, Tom Paine clearly ran counter to the Founding Fathers.
Not to all of them. Thomas Jefferson, who was a deist [wikipedia.org] and Freethinker [wikipedia.org] not Christian, said religion is a private matter. Notice that Jefferson also used "nature's creator" when writing the DOI, Declaration of Independence. As far as the "God" of the Old Testament, he writes "a being of terrific character -- cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust" [infidels.org].
FalconRe:Are you kidding? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, Newton was a jew. Or should I phrase it this way so I'm not accused of using it as a pejorative, "Well, Newton was jewish."
Re:It's not religion that will diminish the US... (Score:4, Interesting)
Americans, in general, are the masters at expending every effort to not have to think or do anything. Example: The Atkins Diet. Nowhere else in the world will you find people who will invent crazy ass, unhealthy diets, count carbohydrates, and generally jump through hoops to accomplish what could easily be done (more healthily, too) by GETTING OFF YOUR FAT ASS AND DOING SOMETHING.
America is going down the toilet, slowly but surely. I hope it dies the painful, agonizing death it so richly deserves, WITHOUT fucking up the rest of the world first. It pisses me off though, because I love this country, and I hate to see the idiots destroy it. But there is nothing I can do to stop them.
Re:Anti-Intelligence Re: Bush (Score:2, Interesting)
I understand the idea of human evolution, I believe in it. I have no problem with the teaching of human evolution. The problem is that there are those (and unfortunately they seem to be growing stronger) who don't like the idea of teaching that. The think everything must be able to be explained in secular scientific terms, reductionism in a way. It is THIS idea that I find dangerous and object to.
Teach evolutionary theory. Teach that humans evolved from apes. That's fine with me. We can prove evolution in experiments, and humans have been using it for thousands of years (unknowingly) in the breeding of plants and animals.
I'm really not qualified to express this it seems, I don't know how to write this more clearly, but I can tell that I'm probably not getting my point across well.
The last book I finished reading was Sen. Rick Santorum's "It Takes a Family" and it discusses this subject more than once. I'm sorry I'm not eloquent enough to express it well.
Re:Irony (Score:2, Interesting)
I think they honestly believe that the ones who go into management, law and politics are the best and the brightest. They expect the ones who go into science, engineering and technology (not to mention the military service...) to be their oh-so-useful idiots. No paradox there at all.
What has American elites stressing is the nagging worry that, soon, there might not be enough scientists, engineers and technologists to maintain their historical economic and political advantages over their counterparts in other countries. And they're right to be stressing about that. There are a lot of nice places in the world besides the USA to be a scientist, engineer or a technologist.
Very few of us techno-geeks are in a hurry to leave the USA over this issue, but I know several people with dual-passports or permanent residency status, with excellent résumés that could put them in the 95th pay percentile practically anywhere in Europe or Asia, and more than half have already moved out of the country or are executing on plans to do so.
Works both ways (Score:3, Interesting)
The world economy these days is was too intermingled to allow simply cutting out a large player like the US.
Did you know that China is currently in the middle of an oil shortage because of internal price controls?
Mao and Ho Chi Minh (Score:3, Interesting)
the amazing part is that ho chi minh wanted a democracy in there. He only turned to the chinese because America would have nothing to do with him or backstab a friend. Overall I liked Eisenhower, but this was one of his bigger mistakes.
And before Ho Chi Min asked from help from the US Mao asked as well but the US turned him down which left him only one option, Russia.
Overall I liked Eisenhower, but this was one of his bigger mistakes.
Agreed. And what ironic is that it was Eisenhower who made the state about being wary of the military industrial complex. It was his actions in Viet Nam that strengthened it.
FalconRe:Am I an anomaly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Much of the present climate is very much anti-science. In recent times I've been almost ridiculed for "believing" in DNA. One woman sneered and called me an "academic".
I think the problem is that science is being made into a "belief system". I've heard so many times, "Science is just like religion" or "Science is just another paradigm". Clearly it's not. If I were to say that the Bible instructs the faithful to wear purple polka-dotted pantaloons on Wednesdays I'd be dismissed as a crackpot. Yet so many in the religious community can claim that science is a "belief system" and misrepresent aspects of scientific theory (evolution, the Big Bang) and get away with it. They have conned people into believing that science is something more than a process and by doing so, forced people to choose between God and science.
Sure it's noble to seek knowledge, but ultimately it's just a process. One might as well call arithmetic a belief system. "You're adding! You godless heathen!!!"
Saw Vint Cerf yesterday (Score:3, Interesting)
At work I lead a team of four developers, two men (Americans) and two women (Asians). It shouldn't have come as a surprise, but my workplace (and the lecture crowd) isn't representative of what my past experience has been. I guess I need to get out more. Anyway, I find it quite interesting that Vint Cerf's name and the demise of Americans in tech, science, what have you, are in the same sentence, since I had my epiphany at his lecture.
I tried today to converse (remotely) with one of my Asian staffers but it was polite banter and I didn't pursue the apparent majority of Asian students. She did observe that American interest in tech was waning due to outsourcing - agreed; but it doesn't explain the explosion of Asian students of CS/IT in this country. I will definitely talk with both my staffers some more, as they are wonderful friends.
The lecture was great, by the way!
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:1, Interesting)
(By comparison, it took far longer to introduce the system into Europe.)
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:2, Interesting)
The UK is hardly and example of Europe. Take a look at the rock solid unemployment and stagnation in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain... I'm not going to include eastern europe just yet -- because i'm east european, and I don't think Europe deserves the growth figures that might be mis-attributed to contries they don't represent.
I agree with you that Europe did incredibly well after the war, but the good decisions of the UK, Ireland, and especially Whales are to serve as no example of the current state of affairs of continental Europe's rush toward the overregulated economies they are today. I only hope the UK keeps up the good work, and refuses to subsidise the continental make-work culture.
And Japan.. ummm.. try here [demographia.com].
Yes, Japan is an example to the East, but the inflation of the Yen and decade long recession is nothing to be envied in terms of policy.
The U.S. current account deficit will pass as the East develops, but I don't think the Euro will long, if ever, serve as a benchmark currency.
The Pound, however, would make a good candidate.
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I suggest you go take a look at what happened in many southern American countries, or in pre-republic Iran for example. Please take a peek also at where the governments which were in power at the time got their money and knowledge from. By your own standards the USA has been and still is very evil.
You've sold out your morals (or your common sense) for a retarded idea (anti-Americanism? socialism?
I can't speak for the poster of GP, but I can say that for all I can see, he replaced the utter ignorance about anything outside the USA with a dislike of hypocracy. I congratulate him on that. Now for as far as you are concerned, come back when you can actually think for yourself and have informed yourself instead of mindlessly repeating what government propaganda is trying to tell you.
Just one more thing, if you do not want to look utterly stupid then it is really a good idea to consider that differing opinions and critisism are very American, stamping out anything that is not like you is very un-American. Next time you accuse people of being anti-American that might be something to consider. Maybe you heard about this concept called Freedom? Herr Bush loves to throw the word around, and so do his henchmen, now maybe go look up what it actually means, it may not be what you think it is.
Re:Gold Standard (Score:3, Interesting)
Not exactly.
I am assuming you are from the USA where discussing the real causes and effects of the Vietnam war is still very controversial (for understandable reasons)
If the USA would not have offered support to the French they would have been kicked out of Vietnam a bit earlier. If it had not been for the USA sabotaging it (supposedly to fight communism) then the result of the elections in North and South Vietnam would have been accepted and the entire Vietcong would not have existed. If it wasn't for the utter neglecting of human rights and of the principes of self determination, the entire Vietnam war would not have happened.
In the years 1949 till 1953, the Dutch had trouble in their then colony of Indonesia. After the Dutch had sent in their army, and were losing the battle against the Indonesian freedom fighters, the USA together with some other countries put a lot of pressure on the Netherlands to grant independence to Indonesia. Had they done the same with regards to France and Vietnam then the entire thing would simply not have happened and France would have been out of there a lot earlier.
So if anything, the USA helped prolong a decolonisation war with 2 decades and added hunderds of thousands if not milions of casulties.
Re: America has a choice.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:America has a choice.. (Score:2, Interesting)
In October 2002 US Congress passes "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq".
US invades Iraq in March 2003.
Also recently, US policy towards Iran has hardened leading many to post the question Is Iran Next After Iraq? [bbc.co.uk]
...and as if by magic : U.S. evangelist calls for assassination of [Venezuelan President] Chavez [reuters.com]
Coincidence? Synchronicity? The unseen finger of fate plucking the boogers of destiny from the nostril of time and flicking them out of the car window of the age? You decide....
America has a choice for a short while longer (Score:4, Interesting)
The US military is currently on the edge of being over extended and cannot in practice be used to enforce national policy without some major changes. Right now, it's just not able to take on extra activities without leaving the country "undefended".
The US has been losing it's edge in technology research for a few years. The IT industry has come to a standstill pretty much since 1998 and won't move until MS and others stop being a bottle neck. Recently, Rice was the first foreign minister to blow off the ASEAN [honoluluadvertiser.com] meeting, indicating that the US may be preparing to cede the entire Asian economic region over to China. For manufacturing, everybody including the US has already moved over to China.
Dollar hegemony and inertia look to be what keep things going this long. The dollar, however, would become irrelevant if the cost of oil were tied to the Euro. I recall Saddam Hussein including among his threats shortly before he got raided.
If current policies are allowed to continue much longer without intensive corrective action, it may be time to say that it's over for the US.
Re:blame you dad! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we can add the level of national debt to that, mortgaging away future generations. I don't know the history of UK and AU debt levels, but the US debt has absolutely skyrocked in the las few years. In US dollars:
AU has mortgaged to the tune of $5340 per capita.
UK has mortgaged to the tune of $11700 per capita.
US has mortgaged to the staggering level of $26700 per capita (and growing).
Note that those figures are per capita... meaning a US household with two parents and two-point-five children plus one retired grandparent living with them would have a debt load of over ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.
-
Re:America has NO choice ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Dubya regime has been anything but frugal or conservative when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Their tax reform^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorporate welfare program (I include the Iraqi war under this heading) has been largely funded by Federal Reserve bonds purchased by foreign governments. When these same governments stop buying and start selling their US Treasury bonds, a new "Great Depression" will settle upon the American landscape. The nexus of very high interest rates, high unemployment, $10 dollar per gallon gasoline, and the continued push of the neo-Con(artists) to strip away the social welfare net will result in (1) a "fire sale" of US companies, resources and land to our foreign creditors, and (2) a social revolution.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our new Euro-rich Chinese/Indian/OPEC overlords
Re:SSC (Score:2, Interesting)
ask any particle physicist where the discoveries will be made during the next two decades, and they will tell you: at the LHC (at CERN, in Switzerland).
if the US had built the SSC, we would already have discovered the higgs boson (or else whatever takes it place in TeV scale physics). even with b*sh as president. there would likely not even have to be an LHC. the LHC uses the LEP tunnel, which actually makes it significantly smaller and less powerful than the SSC would have been.
Re:Gold Standard (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow, you know nothing about India, do you? (Score:1, Interesting)
i don't think more representation is helping them that much..
some headlines..
Low-Caste Tsunami Victims Denied Aid
Partner reports caste bias delays relief aid in India
India: After the Deluge: VI. Caste-based discrimination
Long Live Biblical Science... (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't believe they're stifling science now. It's so easy to see that ID is wrong. Consider this:
If there was a designer, he certainly can't be compassionate.. why the heck would he design genes that cause only some people to be born with horrendous diseases like muscular dystrophy, or hemophilia. Were they born sinners? Then why would he be so unfair to only them? Why would he design genes that lead innocent people into terrible degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. I have seen absolutely devout people live and die miserably, simply because they inherited bad genes, and I've seen people who lead a life full of vices live happily and die peacefully, simply because they had the right genes. Certainly doesn't look like the work of an "intelligent" designer, who is fair to all.
Well, but as an Indian, I think I shouldn't worry about it. As matter of fact, I'm all for teaching Biblical biology in American schools. And why stop with that, why not Biblical mathematics. Check this:
A little known verse of the Bible reads
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about. (I Kings 7, 23)
The same verse can be found in II Chronicles 4, 2. It occurs in a list of specifications for the great temple of Solomon, built around 950 BC and its interest here is that it gives p = 3. Not a very accurate value of course and not even very accurate in its day, for the Egyptian and Mesopotamian values of 25/8 = 3.125 and 10 = 3.162 have been traced to much earlier dates.
Holy Jesus !!.. imagine those atheistic math teachers teaching pi = 3.1415926535897932384... and corrupting innocent American students.
And why stop at that.. why not Biblical Physics..Biblical paleontology (I heard some one built a biblical dino museum.. glory to them)
Let those non-Christian infidels from India and China learn things like pure mathematics, modern physics, and the cursed e* word.
After all Jesus is coming (in the summer of 2008 to Pat Robertson's Church ). I'm sure American's don't want to be left back in the line to see him...and don't let him catch your young people reading D..a..r..w..i..n (may his soul burn in hell).
I hope you get the real message I'm sending..