A mixed bag

[unixronin]

dafydd found this piece from Scientific American discussing the Bush administration's disdain for science.  Your scientific advisory council is telling you things you don't want to hear?  Dismiss them and get different scientists who'll bend the knee and meekly say, "Yes, m'lord.  It is even as thou sayest."

Today's word is "defenestration," class:  a teacher at a Newton County, Georgia school has resigned after ordering two students to throw a 14-year-old girl out of a classroom window.  The teacher hasn't been charged with anything yet, but investigations are ongoing.  The girl was taken to hospital with cuts and neck pain.  There is absolutely no truth to the vicious rumor that President Bush will put her in charge of the White House scientific advisory council.

Mark Jennings of Synergroup Systems is offering the services of US programmers at rates competitive with Indian and Philliline offshoring firms.  US corporations aren't interested.  The implication: It's not just about the money.

JPL has designed an optical quantum memory device that can store photonic qubits, and could also be used as a quantum transponder or repeater.

Eric Allman on SMTP and spam:  "Redesign SMTP to incorporate cryptography -- forget about DNS-based authentication."  I'm with him.  Gates, meanwhile, continues to babble unworkably stupid nonsense on the subject, while Brewster Kahle says, "Book'em, Danno.  Email fraud one."

Comments

[ttocs.livejournal.com]

Re Synergroup. I think it is still about the money. There are other factors regarding taxes and shelters that come into play based on where you spend money, and how you can hide it....

From what I understand the tax incentives not to have US residents contracted to you are fairly fantastic, not to mention the fact that you don't have to worry about US labor law...

[pernishus.livejournal.com]

I'll just make the brief remark that letters signed by prominent people may very well be mistaken -- the point should always be the argumentation and facts presented, not the prominence or previous achievements of the folks who sign the letter -- this with respect to the article in Scientific American. I might also register my personal opinion that Scientific American, like The New Yorker, has gone downhill in many respects since its glory days of the 1950s and 1960s.

None of which should be taken as indicating any radical disagreement with the basic point made in the letter -- although I would note that every administration I know of has done much the same thing... chosen its scientists and the results it wishes to listen to, that is...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I might also register my personal opinion that Scientific American, like The New Yorker, has gone downhill in many respects since its glory days of the 1950s and 1960s.

As, sad to say, has New Scientist. I remember when New Scientist was a hard-science journal for the educated layman -- there was some pretty heavy math in some of the physics articles, and back then (late '70s), I could follow most of it. Now, it's a popular-science magazine scarcely more technical than, say, Discover, or, well ... Scientific American.