This year, all the winners were white male Americans. Even worse, some of these are Jews. Thank God there are still Literature and Peace to go. Maybe we can get some diversity here. Cindy Sheehan for the Peace prize?

you have my complete attention.
(sorry Xiao, but you've just been back-burnered)

mountainous motorcyclist.

Can't you recognize saracsm and irony when you see it?

You are as monotonously predictable as the sunrise in your self-appointed role of Jewish Avenger on his Board.  That's why the Mossad and the ADL and the JDL/JDO and Abe Foxman exist. Go hop on the trike, hit an all-you-can-eat joint for a few hours, and then hook up a a couple of providers.  You'll feel way better afterwards.  Maybe if you're lucky you'll sideswipe Mel Gibson.

I'm beting that this fellow is a GOP rock-ribbed conservative and is making a statement via saracsm and irony.

Put away he Massada Complex, Doc, even if only for a triiionth of a nanosecond.

I agree with Xiao that this guy is a "...GOP rock-ribbed conservative and is making a statement via saracasm and irony...."

However, he is missing the real irony with his posting, which is another way of saying "..We're Number 1, in science and everything else.."

Nobel prizes in science are a reflection of not only the scientific achievements of the winners, but also the government and society that fosters them. In effect, it is a snapshot of the scientific environment not of today, but that of 20-30 years ago. Of course, those were the days when science was not viewed as a political football, but instead was supported by both the GOP and Democrats.

With the deep cuts in science budgets (i.e., NIH and NSF) that have been manifest in the George W. administration, it has become increasingly more difficult to recruit and train new scientists.

and therefore exempt from any requirement to express an idea or write coherently.

Yes, Bush and the GOP will be responsible for fewer American Nobel prize winners...although it may take a decade or two to become manifestly apparent.

Nobel prizes are given out for major advances in basic science. Although the announcement is made to a single person (or else split among people) prize winners, each modern Nobel Laureate actually represents a large team, or discipline, that has been funded by the U.S. government through one of its research arms (e.g., National Institutes of Health or National Science Foundation). It is a very expensive proposition to conduct world-class research. Significantly decrease basic science funding, as is now happening in the U.S. under George W./GOP, and our vaunted lead in science will collapse.

One example of future lost U.S. Nobel prizes will be those that come out of the European CERN supercollider. The U.S. essentially abandoned the high energy physics field to the Europeans when it cancelled the Texas supercollider.

So, if you are an American and want to do cutting edge research in high-energy physics, you head to Switzerland for the supercollider. If you want to do stem cell research, there's always South Korea or Singapore. Indeed, the old U.S. model of the government strongly supporting basic research has been taken to heart by other nations. We've taught them well.

This is detailed at some length by Chris Mooney's: "The Republican War on Science", available at amazon.com  
 

-- Modified on 10/9/2006 3:02:49 PM

you need to understand that all those secular humanists are just bigots and hate God, and endangering us by failing to send him tons of money via his agent and attorney-in-fact, that's me.

The only reason that Americans will get fewer Nobel Prizes is because they tossed the God-fearing people, Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, out of Washington.  If we had fair rules, written by these god-fearing people, we'd never have to worry about no goddamed foreigner winning any Nobel Prize.

You can't be thinking with your head.  What do you think God gave you an ass for?

...Hey, if they go after evolution more 'decisively', I'll be out of here.

Hard to do my AIDS research when I can't talk about the evolution of the AIDS virus to evade anti-viral drugs.

Good points, indeed.  Allow me to add some other stuff.

It's ironic as heck that, in many waze, the US is still feasting off of the scientific patrimony of the 1930s which fascism in Europe was kind enough to send our way.

To me it's amazing, this gov't disinvestment in basic scientific research, funding of advanced higher educcation in the physical sciences, and, as a byproduct of WTC 091101, a tightening of immigration quotas on many counries who send students to the US to study  these very things, and the fellows stay here, take out US citizenship, and help to build and develop another generation of sientific talent. [I saw a stat, appx 50% of all engineering degrees granted by US universities are granted to persons born in either China or India.  Amazing].

We have a self-perpetuating system of high level scientific  education and talemt, but, like so many other things POTUS Bush touches, it seems destined for decline if not destruction.

But since, as you note, it tkes decades to feel the effects of this, it's by no mean a lost cause.  Any administration willing to take even 5 minutes to study this issue would figure out what to do.  Any administration but this one i fear.

Some aditional comfort, but not much -- Victor Davis Hanson [?] writes somewhere that the US has become the world's military colussus because the US has made conventional war too expensive for all but a few other wealthy European countries [and Japan].  Likewise, basic and applied scientific research, and the Manhattan Project is the template, has also beccome too damn expensive for all but a small number of countries.  But how long can we skate  along on this?

Stayin number 1 is easy, and the key component is a consistent federal gov't effort to fund basic and applied scientific research, and to help to underwrite scientific education in this country.  It's nothing more than a basic investment in infrastructure, albeit one less visible than dams and highways and the like.  I can't believe we even have to discuss this. And it costs a lot less than endless generations of exotic weaponry designed to maintain our position -- whatever that might be -- of "world leaedership."

please spare us your rants.