The Corean Chronicles
The War on Science and the Future?
What if we've all missed the point of the war in
Now... some may claim that might be going a bit too far, but, in support of the Bush war budget, the latest Congressional appropriations take huge cuts out of fundamental research in physics, so much so that Fermilab in Illinois and Stanford's Linear Accelerator Center together will lay off more than 300 scientists and employees, essentially closing for all practical purposes. Why? Supposedly because the something like $95-$100 million required is needed more to fund the war than for physics research.
Pardon me, but I don't see cuts in $200 million bridges to nowhere, and the cuts in federal funds for physics research amount to tenths of a percent of the annual costs of waging the war in
We're already suffering a decline in
I mean... how could it be anything else? After all, much of American economic and military success has been based on our historic ability to entice the best minds and thoughts from around the world and to offer them rewards well beyond what they could ever have achieved in their homelands.
Surely, no thoughtful person would want to destroy one of the fundamental bases of American success and prosperity just through stupidity and oversight, would they? So there must be a reason for this policy. There has to be, doesn't there? What else could it be but a great fundamentalist and creationist plot?
They were 'successful' in those aims which were achievable, and failed to do the impossible-- make another nation love an aggressor through a bombing campaign.
Seriously, I hope and pray :| that what is really going on is pretending that serious budget-cutting is going on, to make Republicans look like better fiscal managers before the elections. After all, here in Massachusetts we used to have an annual ritual in which the Republican governor would propose a tax cut, knowing that it would be turned down by the fiscal managers in the House (the Democrats have a veto-proof majority in both chambers). This was a great way to get re-elected, but when Mitt Romney attempted to use it to get more Republicans into the Senate and House, Republican representation dropped to new lows. Apparently (heavy irony here) the electorate didn't understand that Republicans weren't responsible for the failure to give them tax cuts.
Anyway, I am hoping that the science constituency, such as it is, will get the cuts restored in the House and Senate, and Bush will ritually blame the Democrats and sign.
I'm surprised you've had such a mild response this far. I actually heard someone the other day say that they thought Bush was the best president we've ever had. Initially I thought I was in on the joke, thought it was sarcasm, but turns out the joke was not a joke, and this person actually believed it.
People don't think critically anymore. They listen to what they are told by the news, and regurgitate it like it's verified truth.
Investigative journalism seems overly wasted on the celebrities these days..."What did Britney do to her hair...", "Who is Jennifer seeing now..." It's a sad commentary on our society to think that this dominates our media.
The sciences will suffer as we raise more and more children in this environment. We create more Non Thinking Automatons every day. Do as your told people, we don't want to be bothered with your concerns and questions....
:D:D:D
The thing about the nation building, and the idea of "spreading" democracy, that always strikes me is that you can't really do that. A culture of people have to grow to want that, from the inside out, for such a change to come about. You cannot impose it on them. I think it is safe to assume that the Iraqi people were not at all happy about their situation under a tyrant - at least, the oppressed part of the populace, anyhow - but it does not follow that they were all sitting around saying "dang - if only we could be like the americans!"
As for the idea that the creationist, conservative religious right is trying to suppress scientific advancement - I couldn't agree more!!! I am from KY, live now in WV, and have lived, over the course of my life, all over the south. The big news here, not to long ago, was the new Creationist Museum, at which you can learn all about how the earth is really on 6000 0r 7000 or years old, that Adam and Eve and Genesis were,in fact, literally true, and that science is the great evil wrong of our society, etc.
What is really scary about that is the number of people who believe it. I am a systems analyst/software developer. I work with a lot of highly trained, technical types. I interact with them, all the time, day in and out. Imagine my surprise, one day, when this guy - this really really smart coworker - lays this comment on me: "Carbon dating does not actually work. It's been debunked by a number of people. The earth is actually only about 7000 years old." And he was dead serious. I was astounded!!!
No clue how you fight a thing like that, when a person of such intelligence and education is prepared and willing to simply take his brain out of his head and hand it over to a religios idea that flies in the face of logic and science!!! No idea what the solution is, either. It is one of the truly scary things about our society that people are willing to swallow and tolerate so much that would be otherwise repugnant, simply because the perpetrator (in this case, our president and his hynchmen) happens to thump the Bible once in a while!
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