To be fair, raj doesn’t exactly represent the general public, and it’s hard for me to read most of his posts with a straight face.
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I’m following @therajraj’s free-market logic where it leads.
Personally, I think we should fund defense and NPR, PBS and Meals on Wheels.
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Ha ha you really do have a fixation with that name don’t you? Anyway, I am a strong believer in the arts. I was a business major in College, but had a theatre minor. Also, my daughter is a professional in broadcasting and also does acting on the side. My wife has her degree in English Literature.
Okay…
since this is PWI this stuff never comes up. But I am a very strong supporter of the arts. I donate both locally and statewide.
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It’s tough to judge people by what they say in the PWI forum. I am a hard ass most of the time in here. And I have my reasons for that. But otherwise…yeah we’d get along I’m sure.
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You just want the border laws enforced. HOW DARE YOU!
I think it’s pretty clear Raj’s desires go far beyond just border protection.
Like…most of the time!
Well said. There is so much terribly wrong with that last post I just do not have the energy. I mean…fuck.
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I literally do not know where to even start with the question he asked.
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That is really really awesome. I have seen art change people’s lives. I once took a new friend of mine to a Shakespeare play at the university–one of my favorite types of theaters, in the round, where the audience almost encircles the stage. It was Hamlet.
She was in the army and had never been to a play before and was kinda taken aback because she thought Shakespeare confusing and boring (from middle school assigned in English class). I have no idea why she said she would go but…
She had an ABSOLUTE BALL. She was dying of laughter during some of the banter and loving the play, loving the soliloquy and the tragedy. She came out of the play practically bubbling with enthusiasm. Went back and saw it again two days later without me, and now loves to read the playwright and visit theaters.
Total life changer that I got to be part of. I am a huge fan of the arts.
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If you can stand it please stick around, I’d love to hear your opinions. We need more chemists around here. If I may, what is your current area of interest in mechanistics? My very first lab experience as a freshman and sophomore was in a supramolecular chemistry lab and I have retained an interest since. One of my most recent purchases was a great old (80s) Organic text by Loudon for brushing back up. My own work was biochemistry and molecular biophysics (specifically proteins and peptides), with a side of protein engineering. Currently working in pharmacology and drug metabolism but contemplating a return to other pastures.
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By definition, though, Big Science, like fusion and curing cancer, entails massive multi-decade endeavors that promise returns in the distant future, if ever. Only government can support that kind of basic R&D. And as Steven Weinberg, the winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, observed in an important 2012 essay in the New York Review of Books, that support is drying up: as the questions about the nature of the universe become trickier and trickier, and breakthroughs become rarer, and the equipment needed to achieve them gets bigger and more complex (see, for example, the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest of Big Science projects), the willingness of the public and politicians to pay for them dwindles. “I do not believe that we can make significant progress [in elementary particle physics] without also pushing back the frontier of high energy,” wrote Weinberg. “So in the next decade we may see the search for the laws of nature slow to a halt, not to be resumed again in our lifetimes.”
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The means under which scientific research would occur would be different but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t occur in the private market. From 1890 to 1940 the US was the richest country in the world and there was absolutely no funding for scientific research yet amazing discoveries continued to occur - The Wright Brothers, Edison etc.Where’s the evidence not publicly funding science would greatly hinder the amount of discoveries from taking place? I mean the Soviet Union greatly funded science and and plenty had lots of Nobel Laureates, would you want to live there?
Secondly as public funding for science occurs, it shows repeatedly that it crowds out private funding for R&D in the private sector. Publicly funded science actually kills economic growth which is what lifts millions of people out of poverty. Think about how many people were helped by the industrial revolution for example and not to mention how many things were invented during that period where public funding for science didn’t exist.
Lastly, there’s this huge canard that people will not fund science unless they’re forced to. This is untrue as before public funding people actually felt an obligation to donate to science and even in modern times people routinely donate to scientific causes. Examples:
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The cyclotron was privately funded for a million of dollars (a lot of money back then)
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People routinely donate to causes for projects they want to support - Kickstarter and even Patreon for things they get for free
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Do you have kids? Kids are economically a terrible decision yet people continue to have them. Clearly people are willing to pay for things that they consider valuable outside of the economic realm.
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier publicly funded science creates the fuckery I mentioned above as well as loads of junk science.
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I don’t blame your question, but as a scientist it is disheartening to think that this could be asked with a straight face (I assume you’re serious with your question). We must do a better job at getting this across to the general public.[/quote]
This stuff annoys me, scientists today have reached peak Chutzpah. I swear scientists think they’re basically priests where they they’re in a position to tell people what’s best for them and sadly much of the population treats them this way. No it’s for people to freely decide how they want to spend their money. If your scientific research is so goddamn important people will recognize that and fund it.
Gorsuch is killing his hearings. The evidence for Trump’s wiretapping allegations being proved fallacious and this healthcare bill’s favourability are killing the administration.
This week could go very well for Trump or very bad.
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It’s a shame that some High School teachers ruin that experience for the kids. I was fortunate in that regard.
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Well did anyone really believe that Obama wiretapped Trump Towers? That is about as real as Trump being a Russian puppet. As I have said repeatedly it is all part of the game.
Game or no game, if people weren’t in favor of Obama breaking the law, they shouldn’t be in favor of Trump breaking the law.
I know laws don’t actually apply to rich people and politicians, but still.
Who broke the law?
As was I. My high school English lit teachers were some of my favorite, and also most demanding, teachers.
I don’t think that many people outside his hardcore supporters did, no. But belief or no belief it doesn’t matter–this behavior is beneath the office of the POTUS and beneath the stature of the man supposed to be POTUS. I don’t consider Trump’s behavior to be justifiable. I believe he is lowering the bar for behavior of all future pols and potuses and I very much dislike it. Besides which, if anything is going to concern our allies and the countries across the pond his behavior is certainly going to do the job.
He needs to stop campaigning and start governing. And this kind of behavior should never have been part of his campaign in the first place.
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Well your complete ignorance annoys me, but there doesn’t seem to be any cure for that.
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