Friday, January 18, 2008
Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the biennial report of the
National Science Board, came out this week. It's not going to make the
best-seller list, but with the economy in free fall even as President Bush
signed a crushing 2008 science budget, it's a good idea to see where we
stand. The conclusion to the Overview chapter notes a rapid "shift in the
epicenter of world S&T activities, toward several rapidly growing Asian
economies." The shift was led by the emergence of China as the world's
second largest economy. By comparison, the report said, the EU's position
has degraded in high-tech trade, while "Japan appears stagnant and has
lost market share in a number of areas. The U.S. is holding its own." I
don't know how "holding its own" and "stagnant" differ, and the Board
might ask Ford about market share. But this is not a race. If we are
ever to have world peace, everyone must share in the benefits of science.
Saddled with the Iraq War and years of neglect of science, the huge U.S.
economy could pull everyone down.
Bernanke: Uh, but Mr. President, we've already spent those taxes on the
Great War to stop Iraq's WMDs. Bush: Yes, and the War was a great
success; it ended the WMD problem, so taxpayers can be reimbursed.
Bernanke: Why not cut the taxes they haven't paid? Bush: Oh, cut those
too; you can't cut too many taxes.
At a dark energy workshop in September, Steve Weinberg talked about
an "infantile fixation on putting people into space." At the American
Astronomical Society meeting in Austin last week, an angry Mike Griffin
showed the astronomy community what Weinberg meant. "I hope this is what
you want," he sneered, referring to a congressional edict requiring NASA
to spend $60M on the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), rather than the
$22M it had planned. Griffin promised steep cuts in: the James Webb space
telescope, dark-energy searches, x-ray astronomy and gravity waves in
return. The most exciting discovery in astronomy in this century has been
the abundance of extra-solar planets, even as hope of finding extra-
terrestrial life in the solar system fades. Most of the extra-solar
planets have been huge or we couldn't see them, which would make life as
we know it impossible. With an interferometer baseline of 9 meters SIM
should easily detect Earth-sized planets.
In September, WN wrote about production of a documentary "Expelled: No
intelligence allowed," featuring creepy narrator Ben Stein. It's the
story of poor Guillermo Gonzalez, denied tenure at Iowa State
(WN 28 Sep 07) just because he learned
nothing in college. Gonzales coauthored "Privileged Planet," a screwy
take on the screwy anthropic principle: "If things were different, things
wouldn't be the way things are." He got $58,000 from the Templeton
Foundation for this kind of deep thinking.
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