2008 Woodie Awards
You might have seen it, but a fascinating article titled “Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge” appeared on NYTimes.com today.
It’s about a group of people who are essential to America’s prosperity, but who are valued much less than Michael Jackson by the media, and hence, national population. Above and beyond everyday politics, inventors and innovators are really the ones that will carry the US economy in the long run. And like the reaction to Sputnik, a renewal of interest in sciences is desperately needed as performance in the math and sciences abroad have already begun outpacing the performance in the US. Cracking in the bottom layers only spells collapse for the things above it. Now if only the Chinese will land on the Moon, or get to Mars, sooner. That or someone can do something about it.
While we’re rightfully praising Hunter Rawlings, current president of Cornell University, for taking a strong stand against teaching ID, it’s worth noting that Princeton’s own Shirley Tilghman has similarly called the Intelligent Design movement out for what it really is:
Of course, the real test of whether intelligent design is a scientific theory, comparable to Darwin’s theory of natural selection and worthy of equal consideration in the biology classroom, is whether it poses testable hypotheses. Here the answer is self-evident — it does not. Rather than searching for explanations for the complexity that is surely present in each living organism, it accepts that the complexity is beyond human understanding because it is the work of a higher intelligence. That suggests no experiment, and thus it creates an intellectual dead end.
A creation scientist is offering $250,000 to “prove” evolution. Someone do this.
My friend Pete Hill is discussing stem cells over at his new blog.
Chris Mooney is discussing The Republican War on Science (which I reviewed in August) this week at the Cafe.
From the NYT today:
Production of ethanol fuel, much of it blended in small doses with regular gasoline, has doubled to more than three billion gallons in the last half decade. This year, propelled by rising gasoline prices, E85 is finding new life as an alternative fuel.
It remains hard to find, to say the least, in part because many oil companies have no desire to put a competing product in stations that carry their banner. But the number of stations offering E85 has nearly doubled since January, to more than 460, mostly in corn-growing states like Minnesota. And because of incentives included in recently passed energy legislation, and the fact that E85 is now about 40 to 50 cents cheaper than a gallon of regular gasoline, E85 backers are expecting the surge to accelerate…
In a nation that has shrugged at conservation for two decades, the impact of Hurricane Katrina on gasoline prices has been a bracing reality check. All year long, as prices have ticked up, a movement has been afoot away from jumbo sport utility vehicles and toward more fuel-efficient vehicles.
That said, it would take a radical change to wean the country off foreign oil. Still, more than ever before, the nation’s roads are a moving laboratory with all manner of alternatives to gasoline combustion engines, often being driven by average Americans, if in small numbers.
There are cars powered by natural gas, by hydrogen fuel cells and by French fry grease. There are electric cars and hybrid electric cars that can be plugged into the power grid.
What separates E85 is that more than four million American cars and trucks have the ability to run on it right now, even though the majority of people who own these so-called flex-fuel vehicles are not even aware of the ability. Already, Brazil has turned to ethanol en masse, though the fuel there is derived from the more prevalent local crop, sugarcane.
Gasoline prices in Princeton jumped about 80 cents right after Hurricane Katrina hit to $3.45 regular unleaded and then fell roughly 30 cents after the IEA and others said they would release reserves. If people in other parts of the country stopped using gasoline and substituted ethanol or other alternate fuels for their flex-fuel vehicles, then it would free up gasoline for those of us who do not drive such cars. That certainly would alleviate some of the pain.
Famous and infamous Princeton alum Senator Bill Frist announced today that he will back a bill to loosen the restrictions placed on stem cell research by the President. Even that “crazy liberal” from Massachusetts (no, not Kerry; the other one) had nice things to say about the Majority Leader’s decision. Frist’s support increases the likelihood that Congress would be able to overcome a threatened veto by Bush.
Surprised that anything short of a commandment by God itself would cause the Republicans to break ranks? Well you shouldn’t be. After all, Nancy Reagan, the wife of the Republicans’ next most revered being has been lobbying hard for the bill.
Frist’s decision isn’t enough to make me forget about his lies about Schiavo, his palling around with Dobson at a Louisville mega-church, his role in “the nuclear option,” his destructive comments about AIDS and abstinence-only education . . . well, you get the idea. However, perhaps it proves that, once in a while, the right (left?) side wins.
Princeton students, just like those who attend the Ivies and the other top schools in the country, are a privileged few in terms of the education we’ll get. Most of us worked hard to get through high school and obtained good enough grades or succeeded enough in our endeavors to become admitted to a top college.
However, the fact that American is falling behind on its education front is not surprising, and people from college graduates (for example, the Teach For America program is an increasingly popular option) to the highest government officials have taken notice of this brain drain. Last year during a speech, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan cited the following:
A study [The Third International Math and Science Study] conducted in 1995 revealed that, although our fourth-grade students were above average in both math and science, by the time they reached the eighth grade, they had dropped closer to the average.2 By the time they were in their last year of high school, they had fallen well below the international average. Accordingly, we apparently have quite a distance to go before we catch up.
In fact the conclusion of the study was so important as to be cited many times by Greenspan. Of course this demands a solution. Slashdot users weighed in on what could be done to make American schools better, or “suck less,” on there always lively discussion board.
Of course, what ultimately needs to be done is more funding from the federal government. Recently during a hearing, John Kerry asked Chairman Greenspan if spending on Iraq, national security, tax cuts, etc. by the Bush administration was hacking into spending on education, and if this was a zero-sum-game.
Greenspan: “I cannot see how it could be otherwise.”
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