Sequestration, Greed, Hypocrisy, and Treason

This is a response to an excellent article found on ThinkProgress.com about the effects that are already happening under sequestration. The article can be found at the link here.

Don't think for a second that this result of sequestration is accidental or "collateral damage". The religiots and their fellow ignoratti in Congress knew that this would happen, and they desired it. Cutting research funding, that is to say funding for pure science, plays right into their hands in their push for religious dominance and in the ability to show their voters that they hold the upper hand in the battle against science. But it's the very voters who put these traitors in office that stand the most to lose.

Remember, there's a cycle that must occur before new technologies come to market: Pure science > applied science > engineering.

Before a product can be engineered and manufactured, scientists whose job it is to find applications for newly discovered materials or processes must take the results of pure science and study them, then create and test ways to use them. BUT before that can happen, researchers - pure scientists - must study new fields of science or push the bounds on existing fields in order to discover new materials and new processes never before encountered. That means that the raw, bleeding edge must always be out front expanding our base of knowledge. Sometimes, that research yields nothing, just like going into a jungle or rain forest somewhere to look for new sources of drugs might yield a treasure trove, or it might come up dry, but either way, you won't know until you go there. Exploration is essential not only to expand the knowledge base of science, but it is the fuel that powers the engines of our economy.

The US has lead the way in many or most fields of scientific exploration due to programs like NASA and ARPA, but since the Large Hadron Collider at CERN came online, we've taken a back seat to others in the field of physics who will now lead because some people think that research funding is wasted. They don't understand that studying monkeys for something seemingly arcane might result in a breakthrough in medicine or psychology, or something else that they would consider unrelated. They're told, and they believe, that the LHC and it's smaller cousin in Chicago, the Tevatron at Fermilab, have no value and are black holes for funding dollars. They will believe people who say we didn't go to the moon, but they line up for chemotherapy, MRIs, and use velcro, microwave ovens, cellular phones, and thousands of other technologies that have come from research into pure science. 

But here's how you know that it's greed and ignorance playing out, and not reason: When they get hurt, do they call for a priest, or do they call for someone who will use medical science to rescue them?

The ultimate forms of treason and hypocrisy are failing to support funding for the science that will move humanity forward in the times of our children and grandchildren, and the use of the technologies whose research was paid for by our parents and grandparents when they simultaneously deny the funding that will benefit future generations.

The ultrawealthy will be able to afford new medicines, and take advantage of technologies that they themselves fund, and which will be denied to those not themselves wealthy. The rest of us will go without because some among us refuse to pay their part of funding for the future. 

Greed. Hypocrisy. Treason.

The BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, are breathing down our necks and each wants to be the world's next superpower. If we stop funding, we stop leading. If we stop leading, we kill our economic engine, and that's just stupid.

Neil Armstrong: A hero not fallen, but risen

As I sit here, this morning, sipping my coffee and listening to 'CBS Sunday Morning', I have to keep picking up a tissue and blowing my nose and wiping my eyes. 

I'm a child of the 1960s, going to school not even an hour away from the Cape. When any mission launched, we stood in our front yard - as our neighbors stood in theirs - eyes cast to the east, awaiting the bright flame that men rode to take them to space. I remember every Mercury, Gemini and Apollo mission that launched in my cognizant-childhood because we followed them at home, and we followed them at school. We grew up in an era fed by the intellectual curiosity of a race - the human race - that wouldn't be chained to only one planet, but a race that yearned to journey among all the planets, among the stars. 

I remember the day that Neil Armstrong stepped forth on the Moon, and I remember that it was also the day that my parents announced to me that they were divorcing. 

The latter passed, but my curiosity never waned for the former.

Yesterday, a hero not just of one country but of all countries, not just of one celestial body but of two, passed away. With him went a part of our genetic makeup, that part that serves to drive our race forward. 

I sit here, this morning, in a stunned daze and I wonder if that moment of heroic achievement wasn't our finest. Have we fallen so far and devolved into the bitter rancor that has become the norm for how we get along with each other? Will we ever have the will to step forth again even on the same body that Neil Armstrong stood on over 3 decades ago? Will we have the willpower, the desire to show our technological prowess again, to boldly go to yet other planets?

From the viewpoint of politics, it seems not. We've given over the reins of the nation to cowardly know-nothings who would rather see the nation fail than the man who leads it succeed. 

From the viewpoint of technology, we seem to want to hand over the role of leader to any other country with the common sense to educate its children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. 

And from the viewpoint of leadership, we've abdicated that role completely, not even bothering to find a replacement.

Neil Armstrong was a hero of international - nay, interplanetary - dimensions. Who now will be our hero?

Response to post on NASA's Google+ page

You're absolutely right, (redacted) - it is a symptom of a far larger problem and no amount of head-in-the-sand ignorance is going to make it stop or go away.

A lot of climate-deniers claim that global warming is part of a natural cycle or that we can't do anything about it, but here's my take: If global warming was a car headed off a cliff and we were the passengers, rather than let the car go off the cliff while we sit around arguing about whether it's a cliff or whether the 1000' foot fall will kill us, we'd grab the wheel and try to steer the car back on the road. 

To those who say that it's too big a problem to fix, I say to you "ozone hole". In the 1970s, scientists began to warn us of the dangers that a depleted atmospheric ozone layer would pose to our environment. Over the ensuing years, governments worked to solve the problem of chlorofluorocarbon production and elimination culminating in 1987's Montreal Protocol. Since then, CFCs have been on the decline in the atmosphere and it is expected that the ozone layer will be repaired within 50 years.

So we can solve a global environmental problem if we all work together to do it. We have proof of that. Alternately, we can sit on our hands and let those who contribute most to the problem of greenhouse gases lead the debate rather than letting rational science lead us to a solution, and do so before it's too late.

What We Will Do If Climate Deniers Are Wrong

I've said consistently for the past couple years that if the climate change scenario was put into an 'off the cliff' scenario, we would fight to get the car under control and then worry about who was wrong later. But we're not because Big Money has paid scientists, the conservative media, and anyone else with influence to deny climate change. Criminally so.

So, when climate change gets to the undeniable point, here's what we will do: We will find the responsible parties. We will find the wealthy financiers. We will find the paid denier scientists. We will find the corporate executives. We will find major investors. And then we will have a trial. And then we will require them to build their own gallows. And then we will hang them by the necks until they're dead. In the public squares. And it will serve as a warning to generations to follow, in perpetuity, that if you lie and your lies affect the planet, humanity, our lives, or our livelihoods, we will find you, your family, and anyone who profited from your lies and we will execute them publicly, painfully, and to the last member of their families.

This is what we will do, and no power on Earth can stop us. You are warned.

For America, it's 'Make Stuff or Die'

I'm not really a fan of Apple, but I do understand why their products are manufactured and assembled in China. We, as a nation, have allowed religion to trump science in our nation's schools. God has become more important than advancing the human condition. As long as we allow that to continue, we will always ride backseat to China. 

Going back to the mid-80s, I've watched the US become a services-based economy. Services feed the need for domestic consumers, but largely aren't exportable - diners from Beijing, Tokyo, and Munich aren't coming to Wichita or Macon or Sioux Falls to eat dinner. They're not coming from Sao Paolo to get a tan in Ithaca. We don't export enough services to bring in foreign dollars.

Maybe the problem is that we're too busy entertaining ourselves, or perhaps distracting ourselves, to focus even momentarily on the issues that are tanking our nation. Even if we manage to pull out of the current economic morass, our economy will remain fragile until we begin to build and export. A nation's economy depends not on domestic consumption of goods and services but rather on how much money it can earn from other nations.

Take this analogy:  Suppose you have 4 teams of 3 people each. Each person has $10, so each team has $30 available to it. Let's say that Team A's people, Members 1, 2, and 3, each have to eat, but Team A doesn't produce food, it provides services, but only to one another, not to other teams. So they have to go to Team B, which produces food, and buy their groceries. Assume that those groceries cost 1/3 of Team A's funds, so it ran them $10. Now Team A only has $20 while Team B now has $40. Now imagine that Team A is the United States and Team B is China. See where this is headed? 

Pretty soon, the Team (nation) that has the most PRODUCTS that other Teams (nations) need has the most money. (Yes, you can export some services, but it's much easier for another nation to step in and underbid you, taking your clients). Remember who we've been borrowing money from? China. Which makes things. We provides services, they provide THINGS. 

We need to rebuild our heavy manufacturing base; ships, planes, heavy mining and earth moving equipment, trucks, cars...THINGS! Some economists have been warning us since the early-80s that what has happened would happen. Obviously they were right. And we're still not doing anything about it. In fact, we're digging a deeper hole by propping up the house of cards that collapsed, the financial sector, causing the Great Recession. 

Our great hope just might be green technology, but if we're going to export better, more efficient, cheaper products than other nations, we MUST get the ball rolling. We MUST focus on manufacturing exportable, durable goods. We MUST!

Failing that, the future doesn't look so bright.