Science: Collision Course.

[Agnes Selby]

Please read:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/science/col ... 17m30.html

[JackC]

This is a great time for particle physics.

The LHC is the only game in town and will render Fermilab and others virtually obsolete.

I'm still pissed that Congress in the US cut off funds for the $20 billion collider that was being built in Texas, which would have been even more powerful than the LCHC.

It was really stupid for a country that had the money and NEEDS to remain a leader in scientific research!

[John F]

Remarkable!

[living_stradivarius]

This is a great time for particle physics.

The LHC is the only game in town and will render Fermilab and others virtually obsolete.

I'm still pissed that Congress in the US cut off funds for the $20 billion collider that was being built in Texas, which would have been even more powerful than the LCHC.

It was really stupid for a country that had the money and NEEDS to remain a leader in scientific research!

We have SLAC on top of Fermilab. Private research is still top notch.

[JackC]

This is a great time for particle physics.

The LHC is the only game in town and will render Fermilab and others virtually obsolete.

I'm still pissed that Congress in the US cut off funds for the $20 billion collider that was being built in Texas, which would have been even more powerful than the LCHC.

It was really stupid for a country that had the money and NEEDS to remain a leader in scientific research!

We have SLAC on top of Fermilab. Private research is still top notch.

In a couple of years the only real game with be in CERN and ALL aspiring young (and old) physicists will have there eyes fixed firmly on what is coming out of the LHC.

In a few months we will have to rely on Russia to launch our astronauts into space, and we have no new launch vehicle about to come online.

China now has the world's fastest super computer.

Our math and science scores are in the crapper.

We still have the best research institutions, but it's only a matter of time before that trends down too.

This country should always be the leader in science and exploration. We're pissing it away.

[HoustonDavid]

In the backwoods of British Columbia, Canada, in a high school that couldn't be
accredited by the Provincial Board of Eduction (it was too small) beginning in 1954,
as a Grade 10 student, I received three years of Math, one each of Physics, Biology,
and Chemistry, two years of French (minimum graduation requirement), four years
of English Literature and Grammar (two in Grade 12 alone), three years of Social
Studies and History, and I finished a correspondence course in Latin, and another in
Canadian History (I'd missed it because I wasn't yet a student there and had to catch
up). We had to take two-hour written Education Department examinations (no multiple
choice, thank you) in all of our Grade 12 courses to meet the minimum requirements
for enrollment at a Canadian university. The standards for students not interested in a
higher education were not quite so rigid but still quite strict. I graduated in 1956 with
28 others in my Grade 12 class.

I would like to see an American high school curriculum that remotely comes close to those
graduation requirements in this day and age. And we wonder why we have fallen to 35th
in the world in so many important subjects, like Math, Science, and Literature. History and
Social Studies are on the verge of being dropped in many schools - not important. Foreign
languages border on being "anti-American" because we are a one-language and exceptionally
provincial society. In some ways, multi-language Europe laughs at us for being so naive. We
still have the greatest universities and colleges, but we are fast losing American high school
graduates who are qualified to enroll. Foreign students are glad to take their places and return
to their countries of origin with a great education and a desire to compete with American
enterprises for the world's business. What has happened to the "greatest country on earth"?