No Sputnik this time, but a crisis just as great - San Jose Merc 10/17/05

[Coastie for Truth]

No Sputnik this time, but a crisis just as great - San Jose Merc 10/17/05

The launch of Sputnik in the 1950s was jarring for millions of Americans. It was a clear threat to the nation's leadership in science and technology, and to its economic vitality and national security.

Fortunately, Sputnik scared America's leaders into action. It triggered massive investments in math and science education, in infrastructure and in research and development. All of it helped secure the nation's technological leadership and ushered in decades of unprecedented prosperity.

America now faces a comparable threat, yet few of the nation's leaders appear to be scared. They should be. And they should prepare to deal with it with a sense of urgency.

This time, there are no dramatic images of a Sputnik rising in the night sky. The erosion of America's edge has been gradual and relatively invisible. It manifests itself mostly in a deteriorating education system and a fading commitment to research in science and technology. It's happening at a time when countries such as China and India, Russia and Ireland and dozens more have invested heavily to better themselves and their workers. And in many key metrics, they're outshining the United States.

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The editorial calls for a major thrust in alternative, renewable, and green energy, arguing that DARPA-funded research contributed to the birth of the Internet, to search technologies that eventually spawned Google, to the RISC microprocessor, which helped turn companies such as Apple, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics into industry giants, and to countless other technological advances. Breakthroughs on that scale in energy could deliver incalculable benefits to the American economy.

[phantom power]

1. I wonder if there are enough "reality-based" citizens left to fix this.

[Demeter]

2. The Modern Answer to the Science Gap Is "Intelligent Design"

I think the biggest fallacy of that fiction is that since God did all the thinking, Man doesn't have to think at all, just follow the local religico-political con man into the fox's den a la Chicken Little.