Begone, troll!
Posted on 05/29/2004 6:51:29 AM PDT by liberallarry
THERE IS BOTH good news and bad news in the flurry of reports describing the decline of American preeminence in science. Falling numbers of scientific papers and prizes, as well as the relative drop in levels of funding and students, provide evidence of this decline. The good news is that it means other governments across the globe have begun investing heavily in basic scientific research. It also means that foreign companies have been investing in research and development, creating opportunities that make more people want scientific careers in their countries. More research anywhere creates more possibilities for innovation everywhere.
Yet the reports from the National Science Foundation and elsewhere indicate that the decline is not only relative. It is also absolute: American science is growing weaker, although not across the board. The boom in research and funding for the biological sciences -- including genetics and molecular biology -- has been matched by a decline in funding for, and interest in, physics and math.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This is a curious group. I suppose the types that want private armies and police forces running around.
The way I look at it is the free market works because of competition; it's dynamic. I can't speak for the physical sciences, but in my field (biology) there is a pool of money which is allocated to those who generally have the best ideas, most resources, expertise etc. You can't rest on your laurels...academic scientists have to always be thinking ahead and writing new grants to replace the ones that run out. Tenure doesn't mean much in my instituition. Its not a perfect system by any means, but it run much more efficiently than most other govt. programs.
>>Grid computing is now being applied to a number of commercial problems, such as protein folding to test the effectiveness of new cancer drugs.
Folding@Home participant here.
<*checks personal stats*>
Over 12000 points in 236 completed work units. Three processors running here at the ranch.
Folding@Home home page:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/
The envirowackos started the trend of co-opting science to fit their own agenda, supposed scientific research is no longer reliable.
The adkins diet situation is a prime example. A medical sounding group comes out condemning the diet with warnings about all sorts of dire outcomes and it turns out that it is a front for PETA.
The thimerosol problem with innoculations for children was also tainted research because of the same reason, 6 of the 10 researchers had a vested intrest in slanting the research. The other researchers disavowed the conclusions.
The big global warming project presented to the UN that was the basis for KYOTO was bunk. There was a huge group that was conducting independent projections. Another group wrote the consensus opinion consolidating the projects. The group took all the disenting opinions, threw out their data and then included the disenters as being proponents.
The latest breast ca/abortion study was tainted. The consolidatory that supposedly looked at all the available research study's to date threw out accredited study's that proved a link and included non accredited studies that didn't and then issued the edict of no link.
Science has become politicized that there is very little real research going on in a university setting. The private research that is going on, gets mud slung at it by the lefties because industry is supporting it.
The enviros weren't the first; and they won't be the last. Long before them, the Marxists claimed (and still claim) to have a "scientific" view of history. I suppose astrologers claim to be "scientific." Sociologists and similar "social scientists" say their stuff is scientific. So too with the creation "scientists." It's an old story.
The common denominator that allows these various groups to pervert science, and science education, to their own political ends is that the average student no longer knows how to tell real science from pseudo-science.
It is because of this I am currently developing my own PowerPoint presentation on "Seven (or 8 or 9) Things you should have Learned in School" in which I will layout common scientific misconceptions to which lay people fall victim, and the underlying fallacies the cranks and crack-pots use to promote them. I intend to feed this to every audience I get to the chance to address with it. It's my small contribution to rolling back the pseudo-scientific insurgency that is corrupting science education and understanding in this country.
Where am I going with this?
Trolley!
A worthy endeavor. It would make a neat vanity thread.
The Trolls, Luddites, and pseudo-science acolytes would pounce and trash it.....
Well then, begone. Why you don't change your name here to your LP appellation of Mad Troll, is a mystery.
Whattaya got? Trailer Trollop!
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;Appropriate science research, and the promotion of science in general, clearly provides for the general welfare (i.e. "good fortune, health, happiness, prosperity" -- Webster's) of this nation.
And even in 1789 the Framers saw that promotion of science and research, *specifically*, was a valid and worthwhile goal of the federal government, as you can see from Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
[The Congress shall have Power...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
We already have an example in manned space travel. Space tourism has been suggested as a "someday" appliction for years, but NASA never took the idea seriously because a Shuttle flight costs at least a half billion dollars. Not even a trial lawyer or a BMW mechanic can afford one-seventh of that. Meanwhile, the Russians run a leaner program. If a tourist comes forward with $20 million, that pays for one whole Soyuz launch. They have just signed up their third tourist, a Japanese ad executive - and they're making money on a manned program for the first time ever.
Kyoto is even more tainted than that. By itself reducing carbon emissions would be a laudable goal because of local pollution from fossil sources, but the nonfossil replacement sources specifoed in the Kyoto treaty explicitly eliminates the nuclear option. This was put in to get support from European greens. For this reason, even Kyoto's own country, which depends heavily on nuclear, rejects the treaty.
No. He hasn't, in this statement, made a value judgement concerning YECs (I don't wish to waffle, that's who we are discussing). He's simply pointed out that those who hold a very minority and literal view of Genesis (i.e. zealots) flail around horribly in the face of pervasive science that indicates a different set of events. It's 100% accurate. He didn't say you were wrong, so no strawman.
He also didn't say what his shoe size was, but he did implicitly admit to building a strawman with help.
Anyway, here is the strawman " zealots who think that any investigation of nature constitutes a threat to their religious beliefs". I doubt that those individuals would be using computers to converse on FR.
Then you've not hung out on the right threads. I've run into quite a few. Several were so vitriolic about their hatred that they got banned by the moderators.
Imagine that. The former communist state making a profit by commercializing the state space program. Next thing you know China will be privatizing their roads.
On the other hand, you couldn't pay ME $20 million to go up in a Russian rocket.
What do you think will happen when the first private space traveller dies in a mishap? I fear this country is too risk adverse, even to the point of stopping other people from voluntarily taking on the risks themselves.
There is a bit of controversy about that. One school of thought (with which I agree) is that there is only one power given to congress in that clause -- the taxing power. Period. That business about "paying debts and providing for the common defense and general welfare" was intended as a limitation on the taxing power. In other words, it should be read: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes ... [in order] to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States ... "
In particular, that bit about the "general welfare" was interpreted by the early presidents, including Washington and Madison (who were at the Convention and thus knew what the words were supposed to mean), to require their use of the veto for strictly local projects (now called "pork barrel," but then known as "internal improvements").
Alas, pork barrel spending is now as American as apple pie, so the original idea of limiting the purpose of taxes is lost in the mist of time. A pity. Anyway, there's a lot of historical support for the notion that there is no "general welfare" power. If there were, then why bother to enumerate a bunch of specific powers in the same Section?
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