The National Science Board released its Science and Engineering Indicators, 2008, and absolutely everything I've been saying about America's coming third world status is backed up:

• U.S. grade school students continue to lag behind other developed countries in science and math.
• In 2000, the United States held about one quarter of the world's 194 million tertiary degrees. Twenty years earlier, the U.S. share was closer to one third.
• From 1994 to 2004, U.S. firms increased the number of people they employed in R&D jobs outside the United States by 76%. Foreign firms increased their investment in US R&D by only 18%.
• Federal obligations for all academic research, basic and applied, declined in real terms between 2004 and 2005 and are expected to drop further in 2006 and 2007.
• Several Asian countries, led by China, experienced more rapid growth in knowledge-based industries than did the United States in 2004 and 2005.
• The U.S. comparative advantage in exports of high-technology products has eroded: the U.S. trade balance in advanced technology products shifted from surplus to deficit starting in 2002.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is nothing wrong with the minds of the citizens of Asia, India, or Africa. The only way the United States can stay competitive against other nations is to create acadamic and industrial environments so attractive those minds want to come and produce their research and developmental miracles here. We are not doing that. Intelligent design is my bugaboo, but it's just one of the thousands of ways our country manages to look idiotic to the rest of the world.

Tags: education, intelligent design, shrill
Current Mood: furious
Current Music: The Go! Team, Doing It Right