Wanted: A Gravedigger for NASA?

[tw]

Originally posted by OnyxCougar
I don't watch Jay Leno.

But..you keep saying that the ISS isn't doing any science. I posted a link to the ISS science experimentation page and posted information from that page in this thread.

I too could perform an experiment in space to see if I can make grass grow straight up in space. That is not science. And yet that is how desperate most of the 'so called' science is on the ISS. Useless nonsense that could not be cost justified anywhere else - except that ISS needs something to justify the $80+ billion.

I periodically get NASA tech breifs - a summary of new inventions and technologies. I have yet to read one from an ISS experiment. Many from space lab - on the shuttle. Nothing from ISS. And most done down here on earth. IOW the amount of science being done on ISS is - rounded to the nearest third significant digit - is Zero.

In the meantime, whether you watch Leno is completely irrelevant. Only posted to diffuse the issue. The issue is what is portrayed on "Jay Walking" - and not what OnyxCougar watches on TV.

Originally posted by OnyxCougar
SO WHAT if we don't hold a monopoly on glory? The US is the only one allowed to have glory now? SO WHAT if Japan has more patents then us? Please explain to me how this is so horrific a thing, because I am missing something here. And please...please for the love of all that's good in the world, please...don't get personal and call me retarded or an imbecile. Please. Keep it friendly. I'm just trying to understand what you're saying and I'm asking for clarification.

Do you know what has happened to the American economy? We don't make things. Our income is based almost entirely on innovation and measured by the number of patents and copyrights. Have you been watching what is happening to Tiawan? They too are moving up into businesses that require knowledge. Most every business report shows the rows of Tiawan factories shut down and moved to mainland China. The rest of the world now makes things - and should be growing our crops (and direct reference to the recent Cancum conference that I need not define because it was well reported in decent newspapers).

More than ever, we must keep moving up the food chain - stay ahead of Tiawan - which means even more of the world's innovations must come from America - or else we too suffer deprecession, downsizing, and bankruptcies.

To maintain an income, that income comes mostly from the intellecutal value found only in innovation. But if less patents come from the US, then you must take a severe pay cut - because we innovate less. Pay cuts are usually instituted by inflation, drop of the dollar on world markets, corporate bankruptcy (complete with golden parachutes), and layoffs. Pay cuts and job losses come directly from a loss of innovation - as indicated by a reduction in US patents.

This nation would not be a world leader without the greater CA region - OR, WA, AZ, CO, TX - where most innovations and therefore patents come from. Only a person without basic economic knowledge would associate patents with glory. We don't produce. We invent - innovate. Why the US has been so prosperous since 1992. Rather scary that you don't understand significance of that decrease in patents since it takes us back to the recession of 1990 - and even worse to the terrible times called the 1970s - when an engineer could not get a job to save his soul - except in the greater CA area.

The patents and copyrights we don't produce today means no jobs in four years. Only the ill informed would associate patents with glory. When there is no innovation, then we have identified anti-American industries (ie. big steel that George Jr protects at the expense of American jobs).

George Jr also does not understand why number of patents is a precursor to serious economic problems- a leading indicator of future diminished economic growth. George Jr is an MBA meaning he would not comprehend the importance of that last sentence. Value of a patents cannot be mesured on spread sheets or by a technically ignorant president. Please don't associate yourself with a mental midget president. Appreciate the serious future problem indicated by a serious drop in US patents - as has already been demonstrated in 1990 and the 1970s.