Interesting interview on the state of science

[gturner]

That's why the government shouldn't be allowed to do business with or employ married people - I guess.

But back to reality, Elon's divorce didn't hurt the company a bit (corporations have legal personhood, and thus their own separate love lives), and it hardly even made a blip in the news.

But inside big government entities like NASA, they instead had an astronaut put on diapers and drive from Florida to Houston to murder a romantic rival, an episode so bizarre that politicians canceled the entire Shuttle program, canceled its replacement because the Ares-I looked too phallic as a follow-on to a diaper-clad astronaut sex scandal, and then they decided to delay launching astronauts into space on a US government rocket until perhaps the year 2021, just to give an entire generation time to forget about the incident.

Private sector divorces are much less damaging.

Also, one of the best ways to mess up a giant aerospace company is to get it dependent on Pentagon contracts. Pick a letter, any letter. C is for Consolidated, Convair, and Chance-Vought.

 

[Yminale]

Was going to post this on it's own thread but the article seems to apply to the discussion.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/16/science-brain-drain_n_5161295.html

 

[gturner]

Can you provide a synopsis? None of my installed browsers has ever survived a trip to Huffpo for the past year or so, and they all lock up so quickly that I can't identify which URL's to block to keep it from happening.

 

[Yminale]

Can you provide a synopsis?

Here you go

But if the week was supposed to laud the forthcoming generation of amazing scientific discovery, the mood around the group was more dour. At a Tuesday conference organized by the Science Coalition at the National Press Club, 10 of these best and brightest warned that science in America is under a significant strain.

At the heart of their concerns were sequestration cuts and a budget that, even with some of those cuts fixed, is still stagnant. In 2013, the National Institutes of Health budget was reduced by $1.55 billion. Even after a budget deal at the end of the year restored some of those funds, the money was still $714 million short of the amount budgeted for 2013 before sequestration hit. It was also lower than where the funding stood during Obama's first year in office. Adjusted for inflation, the money allocated for 2014 was lower than every year but the first of the George W. Bush administration.
...
With more competition and fewer opportunities, the science and medical communities have watched a promising generation of young researchers leave their ranks -- disenchanted or lured to better opportunities elsewhere.
...
Goodman, meanwhile, spoke of the "brain drain" in more stark and concrete terms than others. Rather than watching colleagues leave for greener pastures abroad, he said, he's been watching them leave the field entirely.

"The people whose work has not been funded, they sort of disappear," he said. "Their website is gone. They don’t come to the meetings, and that's the last I hear about it."

 

[publiusr]

But inside big government entities like NASA, they instead had an astronaut put on diapers...Private sector divorces are much less damaging..

People go nuts in both public and private worlds, and as for Private sector divorces being less damaging, I give you the Dodgers: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-wife-wants-dodger-divorce-142907650.html

Now you mentioned Vought and other companies. They are gone, but the Air Force (sadly) remains. The tanker contract scandal shows how much Boeing is in bed with the USAF, as is ULA in general, much to Musk's disgust.

In the past, where polarization was less than now, we had the best of both worlds.

Kelly Johnson got money from Uncle Sam, but was allowed a free hand.

Everyone has more hoops to go through now--public and private.