Archive for the ‘Science & Tech’ Category
The Chinese are coming! (maybe)
A couple of articles this week indicate that the Chinese economic presence in the US may be increasing in the near future. First, an article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal reported that “Chinese companies are increasingly looking to invest in the US, and state and local governments are scrambling to win a share of the [...]
Misanthropic greens call for “no kids”
In the environmental website Grist (“we’re making lemonade out of looming climate apocalypse”), Lisa Hymas espouses her GINK Manifesto – Green Inclinations, No Kids: I am thoroughly delighted by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all. Making the green choice too often feels like [...]
Google: don’t be holier-than-thou
Google has been applauded for its anti-censorship stand against China. But it’s not the role of companies to take moral or political stands, and we shouldn’t praise them when they do In January Google announced that it would no longer self-censor its search engine in China, referencing attacks from hackers to access Chinese political activists’ emails. This past [...]
Battle over humanism at the science museum
The New York Times published an excellent article by Edward Rothstein last week on the science museum. He visited science museums in the US and internationally, and discovered a variety of conflicting approaches, which he speculates may be “a sign of the science museum’s struggle to define itself.” One of Rothstein’s most interesting findings [...]
Why we need to talk about innovation now: the Big Potatoes manifesto
A new manifesto “thinks big” with the aim of kick-starting a debate over innovation. In these times of financial crisis and severe economic downturn, we are constantly told by the powers that be that now is not the time for long-term investments. Our energies need to focused on putting out the fires: stop the banks from falling [...]
In defense of the dot-com bubble, ten years on
It has been ten years since the dot-com bubble burst. On March 10, 2000 the tech-dominated Nasdaq index peaked at 5048.62. Today it closed at less than half that level, at 2358.95. Many now see the end of the tech boom as the beginning of the most recent financial crisis. On the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal today, author and [...]
Who says China isn’t innovative?
Writing in Fortune, Michael Elliott questions China’s record of innovation to date: “Sure, China can grow, but can its companies innovate? Can they build products that will compete in the global marketplace?” Elliott seems to suggest that, if growth does not come from private companies, it doesn’t count as innovation: Venture capitalists talk about the sheer thrill [...]
Obama to NASA: don’t boldly go
At the end of January, President Obama announced a major change to NASA’s space program when he put forward his budget request to congress. This week congressmen from both parties criticized the White House plans, and took it out on NASA chief Charles Bolden, who appeared before House and Senate committee hearings to try to [...]