Private Donor Saves Fermilab 560
sciencehabit writes "In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country's only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently."
The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the Republican party's low appraisal of science probably has a lot to do with it- after all, what good is science that might change peoples' minds about something (FLIP FLOP FLIP FLOP) when there's Muslims to kill?
Phwew (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's REALLY hard to feel bad about them (Score:1, Insightful)
It's an unfortunate reality that taxpayer funded institutions are often horribly inefficient, and pay little attention to keeping their costs down. Why should an organization that has proven that it's incapable of setting its books right, an institution that has a budget of over $160,000 per employee, play on our heart strings when they let people go? Sharpen up the operation, and then come cry when you run out of cash.
Bush doesn't care... (Score:2, Insightful)
Umm, both houses are (D) - cuts are from congress (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't have that...
No, this is what's great about the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Gifts freely given enrich both the giver and the recipient. The people of the US excel in individual generosity.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Congress and Senate slashed the budget, not the DOE.
Maybe you can say "well they didn't lobby hard enough to maintain or grow their funding...
but it's pretty obvious that science has not been a USA priority for quite some time now.
Re:Taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
You're welcome to your partisan opinions (it is Slashdot after all) but at least apportion blame fully where it is due.
Re:Umm, both houses are (D) - cuts are from congre (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bush doesn't care... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of really good reasons to hate Bush, just as there are plenty of good reasons to hate all politicians, but at least point your anger in the right direction. This is just stupid.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even worse? The DoE is almost entirely devoted to missions having nothing to do with energy research.
Too depressing...
Re:Why Is That Embarassing??!! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Research (even esoteric) can have completely unexpected practical applications. Remember the steam engine? For hundreds of years it was nothing but a novelty, and then whammo! Industrial revolution. Just because something has no clear immediate practical applications now, doesn't mean squat for the future.
2. Compared to how big a proportion of your 'tax dollars' goes to funding despotic regimes, terrorist cells we use against 'other' terror cells, and kickbacks to the arms industry, I think you can wear the tiny percentage that goes to 'esoteric' research.
I'm sorry, but I wish people had a bit more perspective on these things
Re:No, this is what's great about the US (Score:5, Insightful)
And before someone says it, corporations have no incentive to do basic research, there is no profit motivation for them to do it. Try telling GE 100 years ago to do basic atomic research, at that time there were no known applications for that research. However, after government funded nuclear research, GE now has a nuclear energy division, making a developing better nuclear reactors.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are so freakin' concerned with this research, pull out your check book and pony up some cash!!! Put your money where your mouth is you geeky bafoons.
Too bad wars weren't funded this way. It'd be a much more peaceful planet.
Re:Umm, both houses are (D) - cuts are from congre (Score:2, Insightful)
ugh, what spin. (Score:5, Insightful)
They might have had to lay off 200 employees. Out of TWO THOUSAND. Because their budget was "slashed" by just 22M (less than 10% of the budget.) Christ. It's not embarrassing, and the lab was in no danger of being "lost."
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No, this is what's great about the US (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that US taxpayers are so ignorant they can't see the value of research in particle physics when it apparently costs less than a sixtieth of a penny per person to keep it up is what's so great about the US?
Or is it just people desperately looking for reasons to cling to their unjustified sense of self-satisfaction at being American what's so great about the US?
How do the DOE and Congress not get this? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can also, given their ideology, understand why they want to de-fund climate research. That sort of thing leads to uncomfortable implications about John and Jane Doe's lifestyle in the exurbs.
But de-fund particle physics? Really? The successors to the folks who brought you the wonders of the atom bomb and who do all kinds of cool death-ray and weapons-applicable research (roughly)? To put it in terms even Bush and Congress should understand, "You like the boom-boom? They make the boom-boom."
How is it they cannot grasp that de-funding these facilities leads directly and quickly to the loss of our technological and military edge?
It's bad enough that they killed the supercollider. But killing the last of our first-rate physics labs is just plain nuts.
More than basic research is done at Fermilab (Score:3, Insightful)
I can think of three techniques off the top of my head that one can only do at a lab like Fermilab:
ARPES [wikipedia.org], Muon spin spectroscopy [wikipedia.org] and neutron scattering [wikipedia.org]. Materials scientists live and die by these techniques - and they investigate things like improved materials for hard drive read heads, new steel alloys, materials for solar cells, everything.
The sad thing is that if this money hadn't come along, it could have completely destroyed Fermilab. People think research produces papers which anyone can read and become an expert. How many people became great Java programmers after reading one book or a few papers? None - it takes practice, and many years at that. If you have to fire any of these guys and gals, they will never come back, and that knowledge is very expensive to lose. You can hire someone and train them, but it takes time, and many of the little secrets never make it into the published literature.
Re:Taxes (Score:2, Insightful)
This is an apolitical issue (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a Republican or Democratic issue, it is a societal one. Year after year, administration after administration, we as a society have been saying "we don't really consider science/education/research all that important."
Just look at the trends: companies are increasingly seeking out technical professionals overseas because they're churning out greater and greater number of graduates with science/engineering degrees with China pushing out 600,000 such graduates compared to the US' 70,000 per year [businessweek.com]; and how can we compete in biotech when the majority of our citizens can't grasp genetics nor do they even believe in evolution [livescience.com] (we beat Turkey though!)?
With the way we've been funding education and paying our teachers, we collectively give educators the big middle finger tipped with stinky poo every year. We're making these choices as individuals so we all have a hand in this appalling state of affairs.
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why Is That Embarassing??!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SCIENCE? Who needs that shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:0, Insightful)
Only remaining? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, this is what's great about the US (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can't see the value in the sort of thing that's raised the average life expectancy of Americans to 78 years (up from about 40 years at the beginning of the 20th century), or the economic benefits of side-effects of general research (rather than targeted research) like, say, the Internet, I'm not going to hold your hand and explain it to you.
Some perspective for you, though: $5 million is less than what the Iraq war costs the US in half an hour, and the American public overwhelmingly wants to end that, while it's not clear at all where they stand on science funding.
If you want to pretend the budget cuts to scientific research are a result of the will of the American people, I suggest you get your head of your ass.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Joking aside, it's damn depressing seeing how little the public cares about science.
Re:It's REALLY hard to feel bad about them (Score:1, Insightful)
Quite frankly, the fact that a small cut kept them from running is evidence that they are being tight with their money. If they weren't, they'd just tighten the belts & keep working.Please list a private particle accelerator lab that has been operated more efficiently.How have they failed in setting the books right? Could you run it cheaper? $160K/employee (most of whom have PhDs) is nothing. I'm sure it is much more in many companies and universities.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, this is what's great about the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent is correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people hoped that they'd use this opportunity to put a limit on the Iraq war. The bill could be worded to say you get funding, but only if a withdrawal date is agreed to or the like. That was indeed what was talked about and the president was not happy. Looked like a showdown was coming, but the president had no power. He could veto a bill he didn't like but lacking a funding bill, the money would run out and it'd be over by default.
So what happened? Congress sold out. They wanted their own pet projects. Chief among them is a minimum wage increase (which may sound good, but is proving problematic in areas of the country with low wages and cost of living) but others as well. They said "Ok you give us our pet projects, we'll support your pet war." Done and done, funding was passed and we are where we are.
So this as well is not a presidential issue. The president doesn't get to write laws. If the president doesn't like a bill, he can veto it, but that's all. However in terms of funding bills, continual vetos means the budget will go away by default.
People need to stop scapegoating all the nation's problem on the president. This idea that when Bush goes away, everything gets better is bogus. He has no small share of responsibility for the problems we face, but he is not at all alone. Congress is also heavily at fault. So hold your representatives accountable, don't just whine about the presidency. Blame where blame is due.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Said federal budget is $2.7 trillion in 2008, while Phoenix and MRO combined barely break a billion, and both are invaluable in terms of knowledge we get from them (have already gotten and are still getting from the MRO mission, and expect to get from Phoenix).
And a final bit of perspective: the $5 million Fermilab gets from this private donor is less than what half an hour of Iraq is costing the US.
Parent has the right idea but not the facts (Score:5, Insightful)
When Congress cuts the budget, there's nothing the administration can do.
1) Congress decided to increase funding to natural sciences. Republicans and Democrats agreed on it. The Bush administration (which does have heavy, heavy influence in the Republican-sponsored budgets in congress) agreed with Congress. Things looked good.
2) Democrats in Congress and the Republican Congress/Presidential administration started fighting about funding for veteran-benefits (D's wanted more, R's wanted less), the war (D's wanted a timeline for withdrawal, R's didn't), and several other issues. They needed to compromise, as usual.
3) The compromise they reached ended up cutting the funding increase that they ALL had supported, and which was already being spent. Instead, funding for natural sciences was cut. This is why the DOE, NSF, etc. are in their current situations.
Why did the politicians cut something they all agreed was worthwhile? I'm going to speculate that it was because they didn't really care about it much one way or another, and also because research funding is such a tiny part of the budget with virtually no lobbyist support that our esteemed leaders essentially forgot about it.
Re:ugh, what spin. (Score:3, Insightful)
So you really think losing 10% of your staff isn't catastrophic? Do you appreciate that the Tevatron runs 24/7, 365 days a year? That they don't just turn it off over the weekends, and start it up again on Monday morning by turning the key and giving it some gas?
And, do you really understand how research projects are funded? It's not like Fermi is just thrown huge buckets of money that they can just dole out any which way they please. Each project has its own funding, generally with competitive renewals. Plans are made, projects are begun, and then one day $22M that you were promised for the next year is pulled out from under you. What works in progress get the plug pulled? How much wasted time, effort, materials, is acceptable?
If basic research funding will continue to be decreased, it might be nice if they'd at least give a heads up to researchers that the money is drying up, so researchers could plan accordingly ("oh well, forget that line of inquiry, there's no money.") But to promise monies and then yank them away is cruel as much as it is shortsighted.
Re:Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
democracy is 2 foxes and 1 chicken voting on what's for dinner.
Re:No, this is what's great about the US (Score:1, Insightful)
What about energy? Isn't our reliance on foreign oil (held in politically unstable countries) a poor defensive strategy? Wouldn't we be in a better economic and defensive position with renewable power & with reduced energy demand?
What about medical research? Shouldn't we try to stop chemical and biological terror?
What research DOESN'T help our defense?
Increasingly, it is not direct confrontations that must be won. There are economic battles that we will lose if we do not have the best people, best knowledge base, and best technology.
(D) Congress... funding executive/(R) policies. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not exactly. More precisely, both houses have a slim Democratic majority, and they're more or less pressured to continue budgeting for policy recently created and executed by the R's.
Without the momentum of those policies -- especially without certain high-profile foreign military adventures -- it's pretty clear the budget picture would look pretty different. Heck, just by introducing competitive bidding on Iraqi reconstruction contracts, it's plausible to suggest the budget picture would look at least $5 mil different. And all that's to say nothing of the Bush tax cuts.
I'll still agree that this makes the Democrats somewhat complicit. Congress does have the authority to simply refuse to fund the war -- or to provide only limited funding for it, opting instead to fund other things, at least in theory.
But in practice, it's pretty obvious where that was going to go.
And it's always important to remember that for the most part, legislation doesn't happen without executive influence while the houses of congress are this closely split.
we all end up so worked up that we miss the point that the government should not be doing any of this stuff.
I don't agree. It's certainly an easy out -- you definitely don't have to worry about public accountability or effective government anymore if you simply say the government shouldn't be doing/funding anything -- but in so doing, you effectively throw out one of a somewhat limited array of societal tools for getting things done.
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:3, Insightful)
at what point in history has a pure democracy ever been tried?
As far as I can tell, the reason we're a republic is that people who have power tend to believe they deserve it, and to believe that people who don't have power, shouldn't.. at least, not too much.
Do you have examples to the contrary, beyond the theoretical?
I know Iraqi scientists. (Score:2, Insightful)
They are around but you can't really tell at a glance can you? The few I know are NOT happy with the destruction of their country, despite their dislike of Sadam, and neither should you be. If there are fewer immigrants from Iraq in the future than there were in the past or from other countries in the past it's because in the past we liberated people and today we do the opposite.
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
(disclaimer: I play with NASA images for a stipend.)
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:3, Insightful)
In unrelated news, Evil Corp CEO Doctor Evil announced that no changes would be made to Fermilab's existing projects following Evil Corp's philanthropic donation. However a new project, Project Deathray was announced.
Just kidding. It doesn't really seem bad to me. There are probably enough billionaire nerds in silicon valley to fund a decent percentage of basic research. And actually good US universities are staggeringly rich by academic standards. It seems like the way to go is to try to migrate funding from the federal government to university foundations and private donors.
Maybe there should be some sort of intellectual property device that allows for pure research. Fermilab would get file for them and engineers would license them. It would be hard to do though, the physics that allowed for semiconductors was in the 1920's and 30's decades away from the engineering R&D that made them in the 50's and 60's. So it's hard to see how to use IP licenses to pay for the physics. Unless the physics is about time machines of course, then the engineers could pop back a few decades and pay the fee.
Re:Taxes (Score:1, Insightful)
There was a time when there was this conflict in this area of the world called "The Middle East". The Arabs running the joint decided they didn't like the U.S.A much. So, they decided not to withhold oil in protest of American meddling in their affairs. This caused oil prices to skyrocket. Americans, in their arrogance, were driving huge, gas-guzzling land yachts. All of a sudden, those impractical vehicles were abandoned, left to rot on the used car lots, and smaller, more efficient cars became all the rage.
Realizing that the Arabs had the USA by the cajones, one forward thinking individual created the DOE with a singular mission: wean the USA from their addiction to Arab fossil fuel by researching alternative, renewable energy sources.
But his successor twisted the DOE's task into what basically amounts to babysitting America's nuclear weapons. Because, of course, the nastybad Russians were more important, since they were going to be a huge thorn in our side forever.
I'm sure glad we learned from that whole episode... Just imagine what the world would be like today if we completely ignored what happened back then!
Re:The sad thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad wars weren't funded this way. It'd be a much more peaceful planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_East_India_Company#Military_expansion [wikipedia.org]
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
No. Every child in America is offered free childcare (except, I am guessing, pre-school). Education is totally different to sitting in a classroom of 30+ kids in front of a teacher who can't read or count, and doing so until one is 18.
The government doesn't have an education system in mind at all. It's just a euphamism.
Go to a country of equivalent wealth but with better education and see the difference (eg: Germany).
The problem is that what passes as education in the US (and other similarly wealthy countries, indeed) is of such poor quality that one is left wondering if this was intentional and not accidental.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Once they get tenure, they are nearly impossible to fire for even the most egregious misconduct. Tenure generally requires 3-5 years of teaching in the same district and little else, it's not like in higher ed where you have to jump through a million hoops to prove yourself worthy.
b) Pay raises are based entirely on seniority, and in most places CANNOT be based on actual achievement, evaluations, good work, etc. The only exception is raises for getting an advanced degree.
Yes, teachers get the short end of the stick in a lot of ways, but the union is not really helping things - it's hell-bent on securing the jobs of the worst teachers out there to the detriment of the average teachers, the decent teachers, the great teachers, and the students. There's no other job where you could do shitty work and not only not get fired for it, but continue to get the same raises as your colleagues who are doing far better work. Even if your boss wants to fire you and doesn't want to give you raises.
Re:Why Is That Embarassing??!! (Score:1, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile [wikipedia.org]
Re:What did Fermilab do recently? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
No sir, it is clearly you who is peddling "a load of twat"--- whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, you illiterate tard.
fundamentalists (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and yes. The USA has been largely taken over by religious fundamentalists. To the extent that they don't rule outright, their influence is still pervasive, and moves the entire country in that cultural direction. Science and scientists are openly held in amused contempt by about half of Americans, if not more.
They respect engineers and people who can make stuff, but science for science's sake seems pointless. As Ronald Reagan, the official saint of the Right Wing, said, "Why should we fund intellectual curiosity?" That's not a gaffe--that's a normal right-wing attitude towards intellectual curiosity, i.e. basic science.
You can make an argument that Christianity itself isn't inimical to science. I won't agree with you, but I acknowledge that you can make a case for that. You can't, however, make a case that religious fundamentalism isn't harmful to science. The hostile relationship between fundamentalism and science is glaringly obvious, and there just isn't much to talk about here. As long as fundamentalists are running our culture, our downward spiral regarding science education will continue.
We'll still be on top for a while, but only because our initial lead was so great and we still have so much more money. I don't think they'll turn us into Afghanistan anytime soon, but they're going to keep trying.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the real world, you don't pay people for the education they have, you pay them for the education you need. So if someone with a master's degree flips burgers, he's not going to be a freakin' six figure burger-flipper.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Consequently, it makes sense that they think a "do nothing congress" is a bad thing, and they rate the success of a congress by how much legislatin' they got done.
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, actually, the point wasn't that ticket evasion was expensive but the electronic ticketing system was expensive. They may as well just thrown the whole pay-to-travel idea out and still saved money.
I take your point, though, that ticket evasion is by and large a small scale problem. The issue was that a high-tech solution is dumb-stupid-crazy-evidence-of-corruption when it replaces a low-tech and very cheap solution (paper tickets, real people selling them as well as enforcing their use).
The REPUBLICANS also share blame here (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The Democrats have a very, very slim majority. This is usually not enough to get anything done because the party is full of people who wear a (D) but are truly (R) in spirit.
2) Many of the Democrats opposed the science budget cuts. Many Republicans supported it. Both parties share blame here. You should actually investigate this for yourself. Do some research before you open your mouth next time.
3) The funding cut was a purely political move. Both sides wanted it because it makes BOTH sides look bad. This wasn't done by the Democrats, it was done by DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS!
4) Most PhD holders (ie the physicists working in these labs) are themselves DEMOCRATS. More Democrats see the good in doing scientific research. More Democrats support it.
Politicians - working together to better screw you.
Placing the blame on a single party is meaningless and stupid. It makes you look like a moron.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd argue yes.
Early education is much more important that high school education. This is not only because it serves to instill the fundamentals needed to build higher levels of education on, or the fact that high school serves mainly to socialize. Primary education is where the LOVE of learning is instilled, which leads children to the desire to learn more.
Children (the smart ones) are inquisitive beasts, as anyone who has ever dealt with them can agree. They ask questions, and try to probe adults understanding. Thus they ask questions based on the fundamentals of knowledge which are instilled in us adults sometimes AFTER out lowly B.S.s (the modern equivalent of a high school diploma). I, for example, pestered my 8th grade teacher until he handed me a book on chaos theory, and one on chromodynamics. I didn't understand them, but they put me on a journey (which lead no where close to physics, or math). Same with one of my english teachers, who decided that I should be reading Orwell, P.K.D., and T.S. Eliot to answer my questions.
Also have you every looked at the curriculum of an education bachelors? You, as an aspiring teacher, are basically only learned what your supposed to be teaching your students, no more, no less. This is bad, you should know far more than your students, so you can continue to teach them even when they're on to your games.
Education is the most serious profession in the world, since it really does shape the full generation to come after it. It should be a matter of budgets and minimums, since, indeed, our full future rests upon the kids in grade school right now. Education should NEVER be a business.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
The median for Maine (and the US) is around $35k per year for ALL families.
But if you isolate those with a Bachelors Degree, the average goes up to $49k for people aged 24-35 (less than 10 years experience).
Occupations which require a bachelors degree AND an additional advanced certification (like teachers require) further increase this median to $55k for this level of work.
Occupations which require stringent background checks further increase median salary by 2-5% in most fields (like teachers).
Now we're looking at a $58k per year median for someone with a few years experience, which is substantially higher than a teacher, and in fact, even a teacher with a PhD.
Do you know what the median income for someone with a PhD is? It's somewhere around $85k. But not teachers. They max around $70k even after 14 years of experience.
Which comparison are we making here? Everyone? or well educated "everyone"?
Because teachers HAVE to be well educated. It's in the job requirements.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't really a tin-foil-hat flavored conspiracy though, since no one actually sat down and though about this, or implemented this. Its more like a form of social evolution, accidental, and based on survival values. Plus, why the hell would I go against my own interests for YOUR benefit? Its just like how it isn't in the criminal justice systems interests to eliminate crime (loss of profit, employees), or the lawyer based legal system to make sensible laws (loss of profit, employees), or the pharma industry to cure ANYTHING (loss of profit, employees). Again this has nothing to do with the conscious will of individuals, but the very structures involved.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
*Why* exactly should my money support anything?
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Presumably at some point we will see the "payoff".
People are becoming restless because george promised things would move much more quickly and smoothly.
When we compare the proposed timetable, to the apparent timetable we cannot help but ask "how can the people in charge be fucking this up so badly"
It is probably more a failure of the administration to properly manage expectations than anything else.
So this term we will have a populist revolution with a free pony for everyone.
And business as usual.
That is what I am reading between the lines in any case.
It's a biological imperative... (Score:5, Insightful)
Though, there is variation in any population, so I suppose you do have the choice to turn your back on about 2 million years of human evolutionary success and just be a selfish git. ;p
Re:fundamentalists (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is that lawyers are society's experts in law, so it makes sense they should be making them. They know the most about the ones that already exist and they know how to make good ones (assuming they are good lawyers of course). The point of legalese is to be precise and to eliminate loop holes, not make laws incomprehensible.
Re:Why Is That Embarassing??!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Throughout the history of science and mathematics the development of many technologies has started many years before in esoteric areas of research. For example: developments in number theory leading to Public Key and other Cryptography, work in sub atomic physics leading to nuclear power (and weapons), quantum physics leading to the current and future developments in microelectronics and photonics, General Relativity to GPS, etc.
The point being that no-one, not even an expert in his field is capable of predicting what will develop from some obscure area of mathematics or physics.
The fantastic advances mankind has made rest on the shoulders of those giants with the intellectual curiosity to explore new subjects, or to look at existing subjects in a new light.
The OP was voicing a sadly prevalent attitude that reflects a decline in the funding of subjects that don't show short term gains, such as the ability to kill people more efficiently. Unfortunately for the USA this is simply one more step backwards whilst developing countries elsewhere are making large steps forwards.
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. However, I'd let someone else design the user interface for the machine.
They have a vested interest not in good machines, but in more machines.
Engineers usually want to build the perfect machine. Unfortunately, it will then require another engineer to operate it.
If engineers designed machines like lawyers made laws, you'd need to hire an engineer to operate even the most trivial machine (car, elevator, TV). We don't let the engineers get away with that. Why do we let lawyers ?
Re:It's a biological imperative... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:fundamentalists (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the most ridiculous thing I've read in a long time. You'd pretty much have to define "fundementalist" as "non-atheist" or "vaguely socially conservative" to even approach being correct.
There are three major problems with the state of science in the US. All three are fairly simple and none have anything to do with eeevil fundementalists stealing your precious bodily fluids:
1. Politicians (of all parties, sadly) don't bother to fund basic research because they'd prefer to spend goverment money on pet projects that get them re-elected. Congress wastes enough money every year on ridiculous earmarks to fund that lab for a long time. The new Farm Bill is a perfect example. It's filled with ridiculous and contradictory subsidies, most targeted right back to the sponsors' home states.
2. Schools waste student and teacher time on peripheral nonsense and neglect the basics. This has nothing to do with evolution vs creative design or any of the other popular straw men. The problem is that the unions that control the schools are always ready to throw their resources behind implementing whatever trend is in vogue at the time. There's only so much money and time, and the basics of reading, writing, math, and science inevitably suffer.
Take a look at the exploding enrollment in your local university and community college remedial education courses. Ask yourself, why do so many young adults who have just graduated from high school need to take special courses before they can function in even entry level college courses.
3. Modern big science is easily hijacked by ideology. Sexy issues get the money. Boring things don't. Whether you agree with me here or not, it seems to me that there's one basic lesson we all should embrace: Allowing all your science to be funded and run by the government is a very bad idea. The political winds are fickle, and you can't rely on them to blow in the same direction long enough to reach your destination. Even worse, it inevitably corrupts basic science into supporting political ends. You end up with stupid and dangerous nonsense like miasmatism, eugenics, Lysenkoism, and the Great Leap Forward. That kind of ideological "science" kills people and wrecks countries. Basic science is best done in a distributed, decentralized model that allows for independent innovation and avoids groupthink.
Socialism doesn't work (Score:2, Insightful)
Socialism doesn't work for two reasons. Public ownership is a myth and trading rationing for scarcity is not really an improvement.
Public ownership is a myth. Someone does own the property that is made public and that is the institutions that administrate it. They use that property to dole out favors and powers and so it creates a tremendous abuse in the allocation of resources, which, is generally what we see in countries that have gone socialist.
Both socialism and capitalism try to deal with the fundamental problem of scarcity. Capitalism says that whoever has the most money gets the resource, that is, prices go up on it. We see this in America today - the price of oil goes up as the commodity becomes scarce. Socialism, by contrast, takes the same finite resource and merely redistributes based on some idea of fairness as determined by the bureaucracy.
What happens, though, is that, because there is no price incentive, there tends not to be any reason to solve the problems of that shortage of the resource. That there is a bureacracy means that advancement is political and is disconnected from solving the economic problems at hand. So what you get in socialism is a lot of finger pointing, a reduction in the amount of the available resource, then dishonesty and finally some increasing degree of repression as the government must crush anyone who dissents from their world view.
history has shown, again and again, that socialism fails, so, its not even about the bile distaste for those who are like the idea of ceding one's economic freedom to a "like minded" bureaucrat. It simply doesn't work.
Re:This is an apolitical issue (Score:1, Insightful)
I worked recently with a really sharp chap with a Master's in Bioengineering. He is presently coding up perl at a bank...the reason?
Those precious huge tech and chemical companies we tout as being the beacons of our might paid him less than $40k per year. That's not going to pay off student loans within his lifetime, to be sure. How about we push more at the bastard companies squeezing pennies and refusing to pay our wonderful science students after they spend a shit ton of cash in college getting those degrees? You can easily make more money slinging perl around than doing any kind of pure science as a profession.
Re:OMG "it's been politicized!" (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a straw man in the sense that it distracts from much more important practical issues. I actually agree with you about ID, but I'd prefer we focused our efforts on giving kids a strong basic education and letting them make up their own minds about the subject.
"I'm not sure which science you're referring to. The global warming issue is mainstream consensus in the climatalogical community."
Sorry, "Consensus" is not a synonym for "Correct". I didn't even mention the subject, but, yes, right now there's arguably a consensus for some kind of anthropogenic climate change. That certainly doesn't mean we stop asking questions or doing research. In the 1850's the best medical minds of the day concurred that miasma caused epidemic diseases. Many biologists in the early 20th century sincerely believed that sterilizing mental defectives and preventing interracial breeding was vital to the health of society. There was consensus. There was data. There were models and theories based on the best evidence available, maybe with just a little harmless fudging thrown in to clear up that pesky ambiguous data. Those theories were sanctioned by the state and enshrined by law. They were also wrong.
I really don't want to get into a global warming debate, except to remind you that theories come and go all the time. Read through the Wikipedia entry on superseded scientific theories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories [wikipedia.org]
Some of the more recent items on that list were things I learned in school as scientific facts, and I'm only in my 30's. Being dogmatic about science is not a good idea.
"Trying to discredit science by saying "it's been politicized" every time it doesn't agree with the Republican platform IS politicizing science"
And I don't think that anyone's political party is relevant to the science they do. Science is not ideology and it's not religion. I don't think the Republicans or the Democrats have a monopoly on bad science. If you argue Republicans have impeded, say, stem cell or climate research, then I can point to Democrats and Green "environmentalists" blocking safe, clean nuclear power for the last 30 years. And spreading disinformation about pesticides that could have prevented widespread death and suffering from malaria. And blocking the development of genetically engineered crops that could save millions from malnutrition. And both parties have screwed us over by insisting that only NASA can get Americans into space.
The problem in all these cases is that we have ceded control of the science to the government, and squelched out contrary notions as heresy unworthy of intelligent debate or funding. Demanding that the government take even more control isn't going to make either of us happy, because the government is not a reliable ally. And that is my point. If you can get past arguing about Republican boogeymen long enough to see it.
Limit Government (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the world is getting harder, and some part of the upper sigmas of the curve are up to the challenge, and will continue tobe, but to be smart enough to plan a society is really hard, and getting the maximal area under the curve there is even harder. I hope Plato's view is simply the pre-ox world view of Galton, and that we really are a smart race, in general.
Rather than try to get everybody to be smart and then plan out how the world should look, I think we do better to ensure that Government isn't powerful to maim, kill, and rob everybody blind, and then allow small pockets of society to do what they're best at, as specialists.