Fly Me to the Moon(NYT..FRIEDMAN.....NSF cut $105 millon for 2005)

[RedEarth]

Fly Me to the Moon
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Of all the irresponsible aspects of the 2005 budget bill that the Republican-led Congress just passed, nothing could be more irresponsible than the fact that funding for the National Science Foundation was cut by nearly 2 percent, or $105 million.

Think about this. We are facing a mounting crisis in science and engineering education. The generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who were spurred to get advanced degrees by the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik and the challenge by President John Kennedy to put a man on the moon is slowly retiring.

But because of the steady erosion of science, math and engineering education in U.S. high schools, our cold war generation of American scientists is not being fully replenished. We traditionally filled the gap with Indian, Chinese and other immigrant brainpower. But post-9/11, many of these foreign engineers are not coming here anymore, and, because the world is now flat and wired, many others can stay home and innovate without having to emigrate.

If we don't do something soon and dramatic to reverse this "erosion," Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told me, we are not going to have the scientific foundation to sustain our high standard of living in 15 or 20 years.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print&position=

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Why should the U.S. government pay OUR scientist for

research and development when they can outsource for cheap the jobs to India?

[gnofg]

2. pray

we don't need no stinkin science we can just pray and we will be saved

[Benhurst]

3. Ho-hum. Wake up and smell the strudel, Tom. This is

BushAmerica. The Leader knows what is best. You've been a good little mediawhore in the past. Time to get back on message, big time.

[seasat]

4. NSF cuts are just the tip of the iceberg.

They've cut NOAA, EPA, DOE, NASA EOS, military nonweapons research, and others. Environmental studies and basic research have been are going to increasingly be underfunded by Shrub Inc. Unless there is a major turnaround in the mid term elections and we get rid of some of these idiots, the US is going to lose its leadership in science.