Posted on 06/02/2008 8:25:55 PM PDT by Flavius
article physics is one of the most intriguing scientific fields, probing the nature of the very makeup of the universe itself. However, over the last half decade, due to the growing economic crisis and various items such as war funding taking precedence in government budgets, the budget to help the U.S. stay leaders in the field of particle physics has been slipping.
The U.S. currently is down to only one remaining particle physics lab, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, associated with the University of Chicago and the lab was looking to be on the way out. It had started in February rolling furlough program that slashed already scarce employee pay by 12.5 percent and forced them to take periodic unpaid leave.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
I've never dealt with the dude, but he's managed to completely hijack this thread. When I saw the title, I figured that freepers would be thrilled at the prospect of private funding replacing government funding. That's kinda what this whole conservatism thing is about last time I checked. But, alas, it's turned into another gay FR religion fight.
I take issue with your graph.
It was well known to the writers at the time that science in the Roman Empire was in decline, along with the rest of the empire, by the mid-3rd century at least. This was a century and a half before Chritianity had any effect beyond bringing hope to slaves.
The source of your graph, nobeliefs.com, is an atheist site that doesn’t even recognize Lenin or Stalin as atheists. I would characterize this site as right up there with Wikipedia as an objective source.
It’s another group in the long tradition of utopians who believe that man is the ultimate source of all good with no need of God.
However, I agree with you that there is a well-established anti-science element on FR. I just don’t agree with your graph.
You must not have gotten the memo. Critical thinking is not allowed on these threads. Only "people who believe in evolution are godless liberal heathens who will burn in hell" and "people who believe in religion are stupid and FR discriminates against poor little us" positions are allowed.
due to the growing economic crisis and various items such as war funding taking precedence in government budgets,
LOL!
I’m a mutation.
It's also known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
The graph seems to be missing a Y-axis scale.
As such, it is meaningless.
What a load of crap....
L
The "anti-science" attitude here is your mistaken interpretation of a questioning of "scientific" just-so stories. This is exemplified by your bogus chart. It is unfortunate that we do not adequately fund scientific endeavors such as the particle physics lab, but it is the attitude of many vocal "scientists" that foment the indifference displayed by the general populace. It is a stupid act to denigrate the beliefs of those whose support you seek.
You must have slept through all of your history classes(that is, if you took any).
I don't entirely agree with the graph either.
It seems to reflect the conclusions of the article more than any actual data.
I would be interested to see how they created the graph, but I couldn’t find it at the website in the time I had.
That is easy to determine. They started out with an opinion, then they drew some lines to "support" their opinion. The producers of the chart for whatever reason chose lines that are patently unbelievable. The "scientific advancement"(whatever that means) fell by about 75% in ~30 years, then remained in absolute stasis for nearly 1000 years.
No one was looking for RADAR then either, not specifically. Anyway, their work was really applied research, the basic stuff had been done decades and even centuries earlier. Maxwell's Equations, only one of which could be really attributed to Maxwell, were put together in the mid 1800s. They consist of Ampere's Law (early 1800s), Faraday's Law (1831) , Gauss'law (1835 published 30 years later) and that fourth equation. The probability theory that underlies radar signal processing was even older. The four men consisted of A Frenchman, two Englishman and a German.
Scientists do not seek the support of the minority of Americans who are anti-science luddites like you.
I'm as pro science as it gets, but these days, there are better science games to play than particle physics. I'd rather see those dollars go into the space program (as inefficient as NASA is). SOMEDAY, we're going to need to head off some big piece of space junk--or face extinction.
If the Europeans want to waste their money on particle physics, fine.
Simply not true. Read up on the iron foundries of the monks in Britain (which were confiscated and destroyed by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I). Those monks were on the very verge of kicking off the "Iron Age" TWO CENTURIES before it eventually happened. Can you imagine were science and technology would be today, if Henry could have managed "to keep it in his pants".
Hi AndrewC!
Long time, no see.
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