What is Digg?387 Comments
- ufoninja, on 09/08/2008, -22/+208creationism, climate change denialism, moon landing denialism, 9/11 truthers. we are witnessing the death of rational thought.
- SenorCardgage74, on 09/08/2008, -28/+161But life is precious....and God...and the Bible.
- SQLserver, on 09/08/2008, -3/+134Essentially we are seeing Natural Selection in action here. We live in an environment where intellectualism is frowned upon, mistreated, and even hated. Thus. stupider people will reproduce more, and we will continually get dumber in America until we stop the anti-intellectual movement.
- rz8472, on 09/08/2008, -2/+91...and while we're graduating 60,000 engineers per year (the same rate as South Korea, and many of whom are foreign students), China is graduating 300,000 a year - a staggering number that is also 25% more per capita than us.
The Olympics were only the beginning... - alpharaptor, on 09/08/2008, -0/+82too bad buzz aldrin can't punch 'em all
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -3/+71As they chanted "Drill! Drill! Drill!" in perhaps the most enlightening cognitive display in 60 years.
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -1/+67God i thought Idiocracy was a Comedy, But the way America is going it might be a labeled a documentary.
- Rotzooi, on 09/08/2008, -3/+64Thank you, Republican fundies! Now I don't have to learn about evolution, I can just accept your fairy tale stories and get a job in 'Science'!
- OfNumbers, on 09/08/2008, -2/+51..and Boobies.
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -7/+56Sorry to rain on the pessimist parade. From Fareed Zakaria's "The Rise of the Rest", May 2008:
"The numbers [of China's engineering graduates], however, are wrong. Several academics and journalists investigated the matter and quickly realized that the Asian totals included graduates of two- or three-year programs training students in simple technical tasks. The National Science Foundation, which tracks these statistics in the United States and other nations, puts the Chinese number at about 200,000 engineering degrees per year, and the Rochester Institute of Technology's Ron Hira puts the number of Indian engineering graduates at about 125,000 a year. This means that the United States actually trains more engineers per capita than either China or India does."
This article just takes the case of the LHC and extends it to some kind of grand symbolism regarding America's supposed decline in science and engineering. Yes, we're seeing dumb discourse on pop science topics, but you all tend to get a little distracted by the creationist and global warming debates. - kiantech, on 09/08/2008, -4/+47its truly really disappointing, we use to be the best at everything, now we just think we are the best at everything. We taught the Japanese how to manufacture cars! But somehow we have fallen to the bottom and there are at the top. Our scientist and engineers could do anything if we set our mind to it. But for some reason we dont like to "waste" money on things that demonstrate our true power. We need to go to mars. People say its a waste, but dont realize while developing for the moon missions so many products and techniques were utilized in the world after we landed on the moon just because we had to think outside the box. But now people are so ignorant and sometimes I really wonder why they are allowed to vote, all this saddens me, and what our future holds.
- lopla, on 09/08/2008, -7/+48McCain will win, Cindy will pop him full of Viagra and screw him hard in celebration, he'll be drunk, up late and in the middle of crazy sex have a stroke and die. Palin will become president soon after and then start her first term as President of the United States of America. Her VP choice will be a highly charged evangelical loyalist to her. All appointees to her cabinet and the supreme court will be highly charged evangelicals. Roe vs. Wade will be overturned, abortion made illegal and creationism will become standard in public schools. That's just the tip of the iceberg. America only has herself to blame. The downfall is coming and there isn't a damned thing anyone with a brain can do about it other than watch the crazy monkeys burn it all to the ground.
- tastypaste, on 09/08/2008, -0/+40I would give anything to hear those same crowds chanting, "Bill! Bill! Bill Nye the Science Guy!!" instead.
- charm803, on 09/08/2008, -8/+44It's a good thing we have youtube to thank for the sudden influence of science in the next generation of hip hop heads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
Maybe more people will stay in school and stop all the gangsta crap and rap about science and use proper English.
/wishful thinking - Azerael, on 09/08/2008, -2/+35A human life exists for just over half a century, a nuclear family for twenty years. However, should we as a species survive or evolve, our scientific achievements will stay with us forever. Nations will rise and fall, but each will build on the progress of the last. This has been so, and this will always be so.
Our greatest plague is not greed, nor is it hatred or envy; it is ignorance. A nation that would consider to promote ignorance to its youngest, most vulnerable generations, is one that works against itself and against the whole of mankind. So I say to hell with America. It was once a haven for the worlds greatest minds, a beacon of scientific discovery, but today it is one that only sees science as a tool for destruction, and its scientists as soldiers against not only other nations, but against their own people.
I hope that your culture of ignorance and anti-intellectualism crushes you under its own weight. - jec68, on 09/08/2008, -10/+39We need to let ALL skilled immigrants into our country as soon as possible. This would have the added benefit of bolstering demand for housing, fixing that market.
Too bad nobody of importance makes this argument in Washington... - CarStan, on 09/08/2008, -4/+33... and.. PoW.
- DeFex, on 09/08/2008, -0/+28One country is not the human race.
- CarStan, on 09/08/2008, -2/+28Dont worry, i'm from the Germany and i can assure you our advantage won't last long because we are abolishiong all our traditional degrees in favour of a 'new', shorter Bachelor Degree until 2010. All the profs hate them, because its a vast decline in quality and in-depth study.
To top it all off, the one promised advantage of it all, easier switching between colleges through better comparable modules, is nowhere to be seen yet, its even worse than before. - argo2d, on 09/08/2008, -2/+25at least the U.S. is still leading the rest of the world in scientology....
literally no competition in that arena
international edition? too many people insulating themselves with fox news for newsweek to hope they'd get enough readers in the U.S.? - stormofswords, on 09/08/2008, -4/+27before this is over, I'm gonna ***** me a fish
- CosmicJustice, on 09/08/2008, -2/+25Pointing to the he Large Hadron Collider as evidence of America's decline is just silly. Does anybody pay attention to history anymore or just concentrate on America bashing? Theoretical physics was born in Europe.
Albert Einstein - German
Satyendra Nath Bose - Indian
Leó Szilárd - Hungarian
Niels Henrik David Bohr - Danish
Werner Heisenberg - German
The US's strength is in practical physics. For instance the Germans figured out the theory of space travel. The US put men on the moon and robots on Mars. - JigoroKano, on 09/08/2008, -0/+22You start right off with a strawman. No scientific theory is an indisputable fact. All scientific knowledge is a tentative best estimation based upon the evidence at hand and hopefully accompanied with a degree of certainty or confidence.
How can anyone have reasoned discourse with you when you don't even know what science is or how it works? - Wholekernalcorn, on 09/08/2008, -0/+22Why the Superconducting Super Collider was canceled in 1993 in the United States
During the design and the first construction stage, a heated debate ensued about the high cost of the project. In 1987, Congress was told the project could be completed for $4.4 billion, but by 1993 the cost projection exceeded $12 billion. An especially recurrent argument was the contrast with NASA's contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), which was of similar amount.[citation needed] Critics of the project argued that the US could not afford both of them.
The project was canceled by Congress in 1993. Many factors contributed to the shutdown of the project, although different parties disagree on which contributed the most. They include rising cost estimates, poor management by physicists and Department of Energy officials, the end of the need to prove the supremacy of American science with the collapse of the Soviet Union, belief that many smaller scientific experiments of equal merit could be funded for the same cost, Congress's desire to generally reduce spending, and the reluctance of Texas Governor Ann Richards [1] and President Bill Clinton, both Democrats, to support a project begun during the administrations of Richards's Republican predecessor, Bill Clements, and Clinton's Republican predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. However, in 1993, Clinton attempted to prevent the cancellation by requesting that Congress continue "to support this important and challenging effort" through completion because "abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science..." [2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super ... - lamiaconfitor, on 09/08/2008, -16/+36I really do think that we are bound for a second dark age. I cant think that human evolution is a progression toward progress exclusively. Also I cant help but think that no matter how progressive I think my ideas are they aren't necessarily going to stand the test of time.
That is why, and if for no other reason, we always have to argue. We will always have these fights, and should keep fighting. I don't care what you think, do your research and argue. - JigoroKano, on 09/08/2008, -1/+20If we only invested in science which ensured "predictable practical returns" then there would be no transistor, no personal computers, and no internets.
- DeFex, on 09/08/2008, -2/+21Edumacation system is just there to make you smart enough to read advertising, government and religious stuff
Dumb enough to believe them. - tdclark23, on 09/08/2008, -0/+19No one in America cares for the long-term. Investors want instant profits so long-term projects are not financed. The big science projects like the Large Hadron Collider are no longer being funded here. College students want to graduate directly into high-paid jobs. No working in college research labs after graduation, but on to business where the rewards are better. When a new technology, like ceramics, for example, is discovered here, the long time it takes to bring it to market results in the technology being sold to the Japanese, who have more patience and are willing to invest long-term.
Now, we have the added problem of pseudo, phony science like ID or Creationism muddying the waters. The ones who promote these pretend to be scientific and knowledgeable but they prey on folks' ignorance. They are not science and to teach them in schools reduces our ability to compete in the new global marketplace. Couple that with the outsourcing of manufacturing and we will no longer set scientific standards, and we will be left in a world where other countries have passed us by, leaving us in a dark age where our glory and industry are a thing of the past. We will teach philosophy in science class, like ID in Biology and wishful thinking, like abstinence instead of sex education and condemn our children to a hip-hop, gangsta age of ignorance and superstition. In place of the American dream of Utopia, we will live in a Dystopian Age while thinking we are still meaningful. - mzieg, on 09/08/2008, -3/+21FTA: "Probing more deeply than ever before into the stuff of the universe requires some big hardware. It also requires the political will to lavish money on a project that has no predictable practical return, other than prestige and leadership in the branch of science that delivered just about every major technology of the past hundred years."
You heard it here first, folks: PARTICLE PHYSICS delivered "just about every major technology of the past hundred years." Let's see, the Standard Model wasn't proposed until 1967, but we'll go back to 1939, when they proved that atomic fission was even possible.
That means, particle physics was RETROACTIVELY responsible for:
1913: X-Ray
1918: crystal oscillators
1919: flip-flop circuit
1922: radar
1923: television
1928: antibiotics
1937: turboprops, jet engines, and nylon
1939: ATMs, helicopters
But none of those mattered as "major technology", because in 1939 we had the birth of PARTICLE PHYSICS! And right away, it started producing all sorts of miracle spin-offs, such as:
1941: velcro
1946: microwave oven
1947: transistor
1951: oral contraceptives
1952: floppy disk, fiber optics
1953: DNA structure
1954: geodesic dome
1955: hard drive
1956: VCR
1958: integrated circuits, pacemakers, satellites
1962: LEDs
1971: LCDs
1971: MRIs
1975: digital cameras
1982: artificial hearts
1983: camcorders, TCP/IP
1990: WWW
1993: GPS
...and many, many more! All brought to you by those thinkerspunks in white coats at your neighborhood particle physics wunderlab! - Barackalypse, on 09/08/2008, -1/+18That is their term for the unquestioning masses who believe whatever their government tells them. They view you as deluded and trusting and ripe for being abused. I guess that also means they view themselves as the sheep dogs, trying to protect you and make you see the truth. Of course there's a certain ***** insane component to a lot of them, so maybe I'm off the mark on some.
- Barackalypse, on 09/08/2008, -8/+24The real reason for our coming decline has nothing to do with government funding for particle accelerators, after all the article itself says there is "no predictable practical return". The real issue is our crumbling school system, lack of respect for academic achievement by some economic and social groups, and a burdensome regulation, legal, and tax climate that hinders or outright forbids certain lines of scientific inquiry (stem cells for instance).
- Zippo, on 09/08/2008, -5/+21The US has far more important things to sink its money into... like war, religion, and rap music.
- SillyRabbits, on 09/08/2008, -3/+19Huh? I guess we don't dare consider encouraging more US students to study science and engineering? Are you suggesting that we might as well give up on US students and have them start aiming for low-paying service oriented jobs? People are already screaming about outsourcing of US jobs, now you want to "in-source" an entire labor force? It's bad enough trying to deal with customer support located in other countries, it's very annoying to have to do technical work with people on a day to day basis where English is a 2nd language.
- Bertram23, on 09/08/2008, -0/+16I think i do, he is using sarcasm and exaggeration to humorously point out that any country that puts non-science subjects into the education of their scientists can expect to see a decline in the quality of that education. I suspect it is an oblique reference to the teaching of Intelligent Design in your schools which has been a subject of some contention in the US over the last few years and has been observed with a combination of hilarity and fascinated horror here in Europe.
- arcangelgabriel, on 09/08/2008, -1/+16It's the small piece of brain lodged in their head.
- AaronSTL, on 09/08/2008, -1/+15Dugg for the Mr. Show reference.
- solid12345, on 09/08/2008, -3/+17Religion has nothing to do with the death of science in the US. Church attendance is at the lowest in it's countries history and 50-60 years ago when we dominated scientific advancements more Americans were religious by far.
I personally find the problem in our school system which has lost discipline and enforces political correctness. Now teachers are supposed to be pupil's "friends" instead of educators. - licnyc, on 09/08/2008, -0/+14Democrats don't promote fake science like creationism. Republicans refute most reputable scientist when it comes to global warming. Republicans want to prevent stem cell research. Republicans are making it harder for top science minds to come here by limiting immigration- and republicans have implemented one of the worst education programs in the history of this country called no child left behind.
Republicans are the anti-science party - JoeB4ever, on 09/08/2008, -2/+16Can someone explain to me why truthers most used word is "sheeple?"
- stormofswords, on 09/08/2008, -1/+15except for that whole forced health-care thing which libertarians think is modern day slavery
- NoCt1, on 09/08/2008, -3/+17whhhooossshhh The sound of something going right over your head. You completely missed that point.
- DeFex, on 09/08/2008, -1/+15why do you hate smart people? do you want your entire country to turn in to tweaking trailer trash.
- IceX, on 09/08/2008, -0/+14more people want to become 'gangsta' these days.
- Beaver1279, on 09/08/2008, -1/+14because it is the fault of the religious in this country that we suck at science
- rjc5056, on 09/08/2008, -0/+13I bring up that same point all the time and then recommend the film. By no means is Idiocracy a "great" movie, but as a forewarning premonition it chills me to the bone. In the words of Jon Stewart, "You have to laugh so you don't cry."
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -1/+14Here's a little more:
"Indeed, higher education is the United States' best industry. In no other field is the United States' advantage so overwhelming. A 2006 report from the London-based Center for European Reform points out that the United States invests 2.6 percent of its GDP in higher education, compared with 1.2 percent in Europe and 1.1 percent in Japan. Depending on which study you look at, the United States, with five percent of the world's population, has either seven or eight of the world's top ten universities and either 48 percent or 68 percent of the top 50. The situation in the sciences is particularly striking. In India, universities graduate between 35 and 50 Ph.D.'s in computer science each year; in the United States, the figure is 1,000. A list of where the world's 1,000 best computer scientists were educated shows that the top ten schools are all American.
The United States also remains by far the most attractive destination for students, taking in 30 percent of the total number of foreign students globally, and its collaborations between business and educational institutions are unmatched anywhere in the world.
All these advantages will not be erased easily, because the structure of European and Japanese universities--mostly state-run bureaucracies--is unlikely to change. And although China and India are opening new institutions, it is not that easy to create a world-class university out of whole cloth in a few decades." - SillyRabbits, on 09/08/2008, -0/+13If a student has learned nothing after 4 years of engineering courses then there is either something drastically wrong with the student, or the school isn't really teaching engineering.
- sprash, on 09/08/2008, -0/+13I agree. The Bachelor/Master system is intended to make students "ready for the industry" in a society of financial benefits rather than innovation.
Critical and scientific thinking is no longer desired. - inactive, on 09/08/2008, -6/+18Dugg down for referencing a relevant article that disputes some of the layman's arguments being spewed in this thread, anti-intellectualism indeed
- oldgal, on 09/08/2008, -0/+12Also the unwillingness to keep tuition at our best universities tenable. In the 60s when I graduated, it was not unusual to work a part time job and put yourself through an excellent state university without student loans. Impossible today. We seem to have no problems funding the building of more jail cells and providing full support for those in them. Maybe we wouldn't need so many jail cells if we flipped the priorities between funding prisons and funding education.
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