Does Being First Still Matter In America? 247
dcblogs writes At the supercomputing conference, SC14, this week, a U.S. Dept. of Energy offical said the government has set a goal of 2023 as its delivery date for an exascale system. It may be taking a risky path with that amount of lead time because of increasing international competition. There was a time when the U.S. didn't settle for second place. President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous "we choose to go to the moon" speech in 1962, and seven years later a man walked on the moon. The U.S. exascale goal is nine years away. China, Europe and Japan all have major exascale efforts, and the government has already dropped on supercomputing. The European forecast of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was so far ahead of U.S. models in predicting the storm's path that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was called before Congress to explain how it happened. It was told by a U.S. official that NOAA wasn't keeping up in computational capability. It's still not keeping up. Cliff Mass, a professor of meteorology at the University of Washington, wrote on his blog last month that the U.S. is "rapidly falling behind leading weather prediction centers around the world" because it has yet to catch up in computational capability to Europe. That criticism followed the $128 million recent purchase a Cray supercomputer by the U.K.'s Met Office, its meteorological agency.
Booyah! (Score:5, Funny)
First post!
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It seems it does matter, at least for Tablizer.
Re:Booyah! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the first time the "first post" post is somewhat related to the article. Well done, Tablizer.
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Timing is everything :-)
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3.4 years of refreshing the main page 10 times a minute waiting for this story to arrive and get first post = time well spent
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First post doesn't mean much on /. these days. A few weeks ago I got FP twice in one day without even trying. i.e. not slavishly refreshing the page or running scripts to watch for new articles.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (Score:2)
Namely, we built big fucking rockets, put people inside a little sardine can, and hit the moon with them. They took pictures, played golf, and went home. It could only be more quintessentially American if one of then died choking on a 2 pound hamburger along the trip.
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... while doing a shite. Hathankyouverymuch,
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Well, with Ted Cruz taking over the Senate Committee on Science and Space (!), we can expect less support for weather modeling supercomputers, I suppose. Since those are the computers those pesky climate change scientists run their simulations on.
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Wish I had mod points, the image of the wicker shopping basket is priceless (as is the small moon in the previous photo).
Anyway, I need to continue to review the evidence, and get some dinner ready for my kids (I know for a fact that they aren't fake).
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It's hard *not* to be the biggest fish in the pond when you're on a steady diet of fast food.
Half the story... (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFS:
We only walked on the moon seven years later because we'd already been developing the parts - for as much as six years in the case of the F1 engine. And because President Kennedy died in 1963 (before he could completely back away from the commitment), allowing LBJ to push for funding as a monument.
Not to mention we couldn't really end up in second place - because we were essentially the only runner in the race. The Soviets were years late in starting because they didn't believe we'd actually even stick with it. And even when they did enter the race, it was a half hearted effort with little political support.
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Do you have any evidence that he intended to do that, or are you just looking for an excuse to blame everything on LBJ and Nixon?
Re:Half the story... (Score:5, Informative)
It's fairly well known among space historians, though like much of the factual matters surrounding the space program it's practically unknown by the fanboys. Anyhow, a tape containing a discussion between Kennedy and Webb was released a few years back where Kennedy voices his doubts [huffingtonpost.com]. In 1963 he proposed a joint mission with the Soviets [nasa.gov], which has also long been interpreted as a backing away from his original commitment. The Space Review also has a two [thespacereview.com] part [thespacereview.com] story shedding some light on the issue.
And no, I blame nothing on Nixon - after the Congressional budget cuts of '65-'67, Apollo was already essentially cancelled. Nixon inherited a program already running short of funds and operating mostly on momentum and force a habit - and Congress disinclined to change that. He didn't kill Apollo, he just stood by while a patient already in a deep coma and dependent on machines for every bodily function simply slipped away.
What the FU*$? (Score:2)
Your alleged only runner in the race is completely false. Good grief man, read some history. Start with the "first" milestones here [wikipedia.org]. The Soviets were ahead of us in many areas, but we decided to take risks that pushed us ahead. It was a gamble that paid off, but a close run. Here is an excerpt.
First animals returned safely from orbit August 1960 USSR Sputnik 5
First simultaneous flight of crewed spacecraft. Andriyan Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich August 1962 USSR Vostok 3 and Vostok 4
First woman in space. Valentina Tereshkova June 1963 USSR Vostok 6
Longest crewed solo orbital flight. Valery Bykovsky June 1963 USSR Vostok 5
Your other statements about JFK backing away is just as wrong, at least in terms of the race to the Moon. Are you confusing US involvement in Vietnam with the Space Race or something? You sure don't seem to hav
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And why had we been developing the engines in the first place?
The "We Choose to Go to the Moon" speech was given, if I recall correctly, in September of 1962. This almost a year and a half after Alan Shepherd went into space on Mercury-Redstone 3, and some four years after the Mercury program had been conceived under President Eisenhower. The purpose was to rally people around a goal that had already consumed almost 2 billion dollars and would consume well over a hundred billion dollars (in today's terms
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Thanks for a thought provoking post from a broad historical perspective!
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If we hadn't been paying for the Russian space program it would have been completely cancelled in the 90s.
That said it was a wise choice. Kept the Russian rocket scientists out of Arab employment.
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That said it was a wise choice. Kept the Russian rocket scientists out of Arab employment.
Which Arabs would that be? Iraq was already contained. What other Arabs could have developed a long-range missile program?
Unless you mean the Pakistani or Iranian "Arabs".
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I didn't say it wasn't - exploration is a succession of progressively more challenging objectives, and what the US accomplished in 1969 was certainly more advanced than what the USSR accomplished in 1957.
Picking one point in a never-ending evolution and calling the leader at that point "the winner (of all time)" is inherently rather false. But if you'r
Budget (Score:4, Insightful)
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Simply put the US population (or at least the portion that politicians pay attention to) seem unwilling to fund being first.
As likely much of the US population believes they are first in everything, regardless of the reality. Why invest when the perception is already there?
Does greatness still matter in America? (Score:3)
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We don't import ALL of our bridges...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Being first still matters a lot. Just not in the metrics you admire.
External debt? USA#1 at $17E+12 and growing fast. Corporate tax rate? Number one baby. Rate of medical cost growth? We go that. Education cost growth? Ditto. Firearms per capita? We own the whole right hand side of that histogram. Because we lack a 50% peasant population to drop the average (like China) we're still far ahead in per capita carbon production. We're the largest oil producer on Earth as well.
So yeah, #1 still matters.
Amazon Elastic Cloud? (Score:5, Informative)
Does the National Weather Service need that computing power all the time, or could they buy it during major hurricanes from cloud services?
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I think the answer is yes they do need a pretty constant level of computer power, since you want as much lead time on extreme weather events. But maybe it would be more cost effective to buy the computing time from a cloud provider. The NWS question is a bit different than the question of having the fastest supercomputer, since the linked article from Cliff Mass talks about NWS needing 20-30 petaflops of computer power which is basically the equivalent of the largest supercomputer the US already has:
"My
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Does the National Weather Service need that computing power all the time, or could they buy it during major hurricanes from cloud services?
Duh. It's the national weather service of course they use clouds.
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Hurricanes can be active storms for weeks. They can still run predictions of the future path after it forms.
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When a weather service runs a simulation, they need a lot of compute nodes that can communicate with very little latency and very high throughput. As far as I know the interconnects in a supercomputer are much more exotic than the networks in your average data center.
The Cloud is based primarily on PC technology. PC technology has its place, but it differs from mainframe technology (designed for robustness and data throughput) and from supercomputer technology (designed for multiple rapid concurrent computations).
To give an example, decades ago, Cray Computers were assembled by people (housewives) who were allowed to spend no more time than they could be maximally effective in, using wires cut to millimeter-precise lengths. Because the speed of light (electricity) throu
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I think you will find that Infiniband is not really up to the task, which might by why the Met Offices new computer is a CrayXC40 which uses a proprietary interconnect called 'Aries'.
Basically while Infiniband is fast and low latency for really big models it is not fast enough and the latency is too high.
Don't get me wrong Infiniband is good, it is just the always good enough.
No (Score:2)
I just love quotes like the following;
The European forecast of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was so far ahead of U.S. models in predicting the storm's path that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was called before Congress to explain how it happened.
According to this [politico.com] NOAA predicted the landfall four days ahead while the European system predicted it seven days ahead. While a longer warning is nice the real question is whether or not the three extra days are necessary. If they are not necessary then the NOAA computers are fine and we don't need expensive new computers. If it is, new computers need to be speced and purchased. Even then the speced computer may not be the fastest in the world.
It is not a question of be
our country is a reflection of us (Score:2)
We live in a delusional bubble and sooner or later that bubble will burst. We were very good but to stay the best takes effort and money. Both of which we traded for political demigods and cheap trinket and oil from authoritarian regimes around the world to live our obese Wal-Mart fueled lives.
We want to be the best, but where will the brain and money that are needed for such endeavor come from? Certainly not from the flag lapel wearing politicians that caters to the money worshiping financial and le
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I think you mean "Demagogues", not demigods.
Obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
There was a time when the US had the tallest buildings, the longest bridges, the biggest dams, etc. What happened is the wealth in the US is now concentrated in "soft" areas like finance, retailing, entertainment, etc. Even more harmful is the concentration of wealth in a few individuals who are mainly concerned with their own amusements. Think of the Walton or Ziff children who, unlike their parents, have neither the interest nor the capability to contribute to economic growth. The record prices of art,
It's not possible now (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things that drove the race for the moon was us losing the space race with the Soviet Union. Having that big a Cold War enemy was a huge boost in one respect (mandates to educate the population and advance science) and a huge detractor in another (who-knows-how-many trillions of dollars wasted on a nuclear arms race that neither side actually needed to participate in.)
I think the times are different now:
- Education isn't seen as a guarantee of a decent job anymore, so fewer people are spending the money and effort on it.
- Decent jobs are no longer guaranteed either, so people are more concerned with day to day survival than long-term planning.
- We don't have a huge boogeyman like the USSR ready to wipe us out the second we let up the pressure...the closest thing now is China, and they're our biggest trade partners.
- Media is more fragmented. You can argue either side of this point, but the world was a lot simpler when there were only 3 TV networks, a much longer news cycle and newspapers of record that did real journalism. Now no one can make any sort of controversial move without 200 news analysts jumping all over it and putting forth their opinion as fact.
- People don't trust large institutions or governments, who are often the only entities big or powerful enough to mandate huge changes or push science forward. (Example: AT&T funding Bell Labs with phone company revenues leading to breakthrough inventions, or the US funding Apollo and other NASA programs.)
I think that some of these factors make it impossible to be "first" in key areas, simply because no one is willing to stick their neck out and invest the time, effort or resources.
Normal /. (Score:2)
Every thread on
We could have a discussion about starvation in North Korea, and how people are boiling grass and bark for 'soup', and some of you geniuses would proudly proclaim that the quality of bark from US trees has less nutritional value. And garner mod points for it.
This 'used' to be a place for semi-rational
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Yes, the US sucks.
We suck better than anyone else. We can sit back and bask in our own glory.
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There is a massive gap between "not 1st in absolutely everything" and "worse than everywhere else".
Betteridge (Score:2)
No.
What we need to do is our best. Unless it involves some winner-take-all competition (like the Cold War was. Maybe.) we need to stop looking over our shoulder. Or lamentng the fact that we've been passed. Who cares if Europe is better at hurricane forecasting? Can they use that against us? I doubt it. We need to be as good at that as makes sense economically. We can't save every mobile home, damn the cost.
It only matters if the speed is actually needed (Score:2)
Too often these things just look like dick measuring contests. A childish waste of time. I don't really care if the chinese have the fastest machine so long as our systems are able to keep up with our needs.
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Too often these things just look like dick measuring contests. A childish waste of time. I don't really care if the chinese have the fastest machine so long as our systems are able to keep up with our needs.
Damn right, Who cares? You USans are good at some things, top in some, bad in others, crap at a few. Much like the rest of the world.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the world owes you a debt for getting humans on the moon.
(On the other side of the coin... never understood why you folks have so many guns...)
$78B / year to spy on US citizens (Score:2)
That's where US R&D dollars have gone. Camelot!
build a quantum computer (Score:3)
You're still first in a few things (Score:2, Informative)
You're still first for billions of dollars spent on warfare.
You're still first in number of people incarcerated per capita.
You still lead in the number of gun-related murders per capita.
And you still lead the world in thousands of dollars per capita spent on healthcare.
We are first in some things! (Score:2)
“We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
(Skip to 3:20 for the part I'm talking about.)
Nope! (Score:2)
Nope! [youtube.com]
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Obesity (Score:2)
We're #2 in obesity too. The Mexicans have beaten us. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
Oblig Bond, James Bond (Score:2)
Bond: Are these pictures live?
M: Unlike the American government, we prefer not to get our bad news from CNN.
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There was once a time when most members of congress listened to scientists and other learned minds in their fields.
Now scientists are viewed with suspicion and distrust by much of our congress and much of our public.
Why? Ask the media, who under the guise of "fair" reporting give equal time to anyone who disagrees with science, making their crackpot claims seem equal in weight.
Re:Put your money where your mouth is. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to present an alternate theory. Don't blame the media.
Blame American citizens. We have developed a collective... bluster about science. An approach where random shit we think we know trumps years of hard research and challenging facts.
It's not just creationists and global warming deniers and anti-vaccers, you know stand-out cases of pushing for ideas based on utter nonsense, but the subtler, softer kind too. I'm having a damn hard time coming up with examples that won't draw out a flamewar from people indignant about how I'm insulting them, so I'll try to speak in general terms:
People talking about what they know about genetics in a way that just utterly predicts everything about a person. Maybe people taking a middle-of-the-road soft stance against nuclear energy because radiation is dangerous. Not radically anti-science like the former groups, just self-assured and wrong.
The media certainly exacerbates this by being willing to drag any public controversy to the forefront of national discussion to fill airtime, but they aren't the source. We are.
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Ironically, more education is part of the problem. We're at that magic point where our collective knowledge isn't that great, but what we do know lends a lot of false confidence.
Don't equate that with a desire to take away education from the masses, to return to some imagined superior past, our education has also done us a lot of good, and we have a lot of people who have interesting thoughts.
College graduate deniers, for example, are less likely to have their views on global warming be influenced by evide
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The kind of people who can't forward reference an ambiguous noun to a helpful qualifier later in a sentence.
That is to say, the worst people.
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Usually people falsely claim to have a degree.
Fear the scientists asking for money (Score:2)
Yeah? When was that?
With scientists (and the lobbyists behind them) asking for taxpayers' money, it is only proper to be skeptical. Not distrustful, no, but skeptical nonetheless.
It is the right thing to do — not much different from you being skeptical, when the car-company or a cell-phone maker try to sell you some super-duper advance, that you probably don't need...
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Yeah? When was that?
When the scientists were explaining how to blow shit up real good.
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You really have no clue how scientific research is funded in this country do you?
And no, there is no reason skepticism.
We aren't talking about a salesmen pushing a sale.
It's not a product being sold.
We are talking about research where there is a question and an effect to find an answer.
Do try to correct your ignorance by reading this: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/... [thenewatlantis.com]
It's a pretty decent primer.
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Uh, you never read Eisenhower's Farewell Address, did you?
Re:Put your money where your mouth is. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, Congress did give NOAA more money for a new supercomputer. The computer hasn't materialized because NOAA is locked into a single-source contract with IBM. As TFA mentions, IBM just sold its supercomputer division to a Chinese company (Lenovo). It seems some people are antsy about the implications for a Chinese company providing the computer behind a critical national security capability (weather prediction).
Re:Put your money where your mouth is. (Score:5, Informative)
As TFA mentions, IBM just sold its supercomputer division to a Chinese company (Lenovo).
What TFA says is:
The linked article says:
I don't know what "[IBM's] supercomputer division" is, but it's not a division that solely develops and sells x86 servers; they also sell Power Architecture HPC systems [ibm.com].
However, at least in 2012, they spoke of iDataPlex servers for NOAA [ibm.com], so they sold that part of their supercomputer efforts to Lenovo. Whether they'll push for Power Architecture HPC systems for NOAA instead is another matter.
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So much wrong in just a few sentences.
First, IBM didn't sell it's HPC group, or its Power Systems group.
Correct [ibm.com].
The computer in question wouldn't be made using x86
If the computer in question is the same one mentioned in IBM's 2012 press release [ibm.com], not correct - that speaks of "IBM iDataPlex servers", which are x86 servers, not Power Architecture servers.
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If Congress really wanted to increase computational ability, they would apportion more money to NOAA earmarked for that purpose.
Agencies come up with their budgets and go to Congress to get the money. Congress telling the agency how to spend the money they give them is doing it backwards. Congress isn't in the best position to determine the needs and how to get there, the agency is.
What Congress SHOULD do is tell the agency it needs to improve computational resources and come back with a plan to do that. THEN Congress should give them the money they ask for.
But just handing an agency a check (that they didn't ask for) and telling
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It's easier to get mad and shake your fist than write a check.
For any given value of "it", "it" is not important until the lack of "it" because a problem. Therefore, the money won't be allocated proactively.
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They already have plenty of computational power. They just need to borrow the NSA's computers.
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or better yet, defund a bunch of the stupid shit they're doing and divert the money to computing resources.. The rest of us call it 'working within a budget', but the elites call it 'waaaaaah daddy took the credit card away!'
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Re:To America? Yes. To the GOP? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, actually, that constitution you mention lists a few more things than "common defense and currency"
form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America
Considering they led with this, it's kind of embarrassing you don't know it.
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The preamble outlines the purposes for which the constitution was established.
Seems to me that, in recent history, the government has been failing to meet those purposes.
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i kan reed (749298) said:
Uh, actually, that constitution you mention lists a few more things than "common defense and currency"
Trying to disprove your user name?
The Federal government was to provide for the common defense, and currency, primarily.
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Yeah, and that's absolutely and undeniably bullshit and frankly you should feel ashamed to be pressing the point when the primary purposes of the government are exactly what the preamble establishes.
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Actually it's about equality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] http://www.now.org/nnt/03-97/f... [now.org] http://www.firstpost.com/india... [firstpost.com] http://www.hindustantimes.com/... [hindustantimes.com] http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/... [unh.edu] http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/... [unh.edu] http://www.weeklystandard.com/... [weeklystandard.com] http://douchebagdork.tumblr.co... [tumblr.com] http://www.ageofconsent.com/co... [ageofconsent.com] http://studentactivism.net/201... [studentactivism.net] http://i.imgur.com/Vac0UOk.jpg [imgur.com] http://i.imgur.com/aob5k.jpg [imgur.com] http://www.law. [fsu.edu]
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Do you really think the list of sexism against women would be shorter? Because if not, you are attacking the least-dangerous gender discrimination.
I'm against any sexism, regardless of the gender being disparaged. It's obvious that men experience far less sexism than women, so it makes sense to try to fix the institutionalised sexism against women first, then we can iron out the few wrinkles experienced by men. Men still earn far more than women in the workplace, get better jobs, and have far better pros
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And arbitrating disputes between the States, and regulating interstate commerce, which sadly has become a catchall to let them do practically anything they want.
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And Big Oil.
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Looking at the big picture the US still leads in anything that really matters. And that is not some type of rah-rah bullshit. The space station has served it's purpose and contrary to popular belief the US has had a reusable X-37 space craft up and running for over 5 years now. The kind of program that makes ASAT weapons old tech while giving the US the ability to take out any satellite they want to. The US space program has put multiple landers on Mars and has had probes traveling through the solar system
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The republican party is in the middle of one of the most unprecedented popular vote losing streaks in history. I don't think they care.
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But the GOP has become obsessed with the idea that government is evil. They will not fund anything except military and espionage. That includes weather forecasting.
Apparently especially weather forecasting. They are concerned that we may learn something about climate while investigating the weather, and apparently they are ideologically opposed to learning about the climate. - http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad... [slate.com]
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The rest of the world is just jealous, because we're the best country with the most successful and richest people around. The rest, especially grotty Europe, are mega jealous.
Would that be the EU with a GDP bigger than the USA?
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So what's the answer? increase those taxes that these rich people don't have to pay so that the 99% feels it more?
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The Europeans, that's who. So it's not surprising to find the US in second place...
Behind China, but ahead of Japan and European countries [top500.org].
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Most of the interesting problems are no longer "embarrassingly parallel". All the rest of them, if we care about getting them solved faster, we'll throw hardware at them to the degree we care about getting the result faster.
You yeard it here first! Predicting the weather is no longer interesting.