Comments on: Zombie Zakaria Has Some “Ideas” For You

By: Roger Chaillet

Roger Chaillet — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:08:36 +0000

The German work ethic is, well, G-E-R-M-A-N!

No one buys a car because of its Yemeni engineering. Duh.

As for Thomas Friedman, I hammered that buffoon but good. http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2010/04/04/american-high-iq-risk-takers-why-thomas-friedman-is-an-ass/print/

By the way, Friedman lives in the affluent, majority white suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Friedman

Too bad he doesn’t move across county to working class Wheaton. http://helpsavemaryland.blogspot.com/2009/07/montgomery-county-invaded-by-illegals.html

By: Barbara Grant

Barbara Grant — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:46:07 +0000

Wrong; simply wrong on Mr. Zakaria’s part, because the majority of workforce employment during the prime decades of DoD spending (the Cold War) went not to R & D, but to manufacturing. It was manufacturing on a large scale that employed many people, technologists, technicians and support personnel; and most were never a part of “blue-sky,” or “pie-in-the-sky” research. Rather, they toiled in the technical trenches building planes, missiles, land vehicles, and other products that enhanced the U. S. mission of the time (defeating the Soviets.)

It’s incorrect to argue that spending more government money on R & D will increase the worth of the middle class, or lead to greater employment. One need only look at recent history to see how wrong Mr. Zakaria is. He is much like Vivek Wadhwa, http://wadhwa.com/blog/2010/07/10/bloomberg-businessweek-why-andy-grove-is-wrong-about-job-growth/ who argued (albeit intelligently) for breaking the “logjam” of university research in order to create jobs on a massive scale. Didn’t happen during the Cold War; won’t happen now, the prime reason being that it is not R & D that creates jobs, it’s manufacturing. R & D provides employment for a few, but not for many.

By: Myron Pauli

Myron Pauli — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:28:48 +0000

GPS came out of Timation concepts invented at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and then funded by ARPA (forerunner of DARPA):

http://www.gpsinventor.com/

however, DARPA generally does not send money to NRL anymore because of some intergovernmental politics.

In general, nothing terrible about the feelgood mush by Zakaria and his CEO’s and surprisingly, they ignored the usual glop about how to solve America’s problems by recruiting more Aleutian Islander physicists:

http://www.aps.org/programs/minorities/recruitment/index.cfm

The fact is that most physics departments are dominated by Cosmic Superstring Theorists who have not even a third hand relation to anything practical – not to mention the fact that most of them (a) DESPISE teaching students and (b) probably do not have English as a first language. So this “spend more on basic science R&D” may be just nice sounding blather.

Oh, but what the heck! It is a reprise from Olbermann and Hannity and the usual partisan bloviation. And they did mention the trillions wasted on “liberating” Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, we can waste it on the teachers unions or on brand new Mac computers for ghetto illiterates. Or {oops!} maybe we could actually spend less, reduce the deficit, and stabilize the currency – but that might be too revolutionary!

By: George Pal

George Pal — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:37:08 +0000

It’s not that the likes of Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman constantly arrive at the same idée fixe that’s remarkable; it’s that so many of them can fill their sails with their own wind to get there. [Such a comment reminds me of how much I miss my readers when I'm away.---IM]

By: james huggins

james huggins — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:30:43 +0000

“suffocating unionization in education, third world immigration and affirmitive action.” One could write a very strong article with that line alone.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:34:05 +0000

Damn, Ilana, you cut right to the quick.

“As ZZ narrated the above passage, images of industrious German factory workers flashed on the screen, and were contrasted with the long lines of the unemployed in America. Guess what the American assembly and unemployment lines look like? You are right: By comparison, the German workforce so famous for its industry looked relatively homogeneous.”

You mean that the German workforce is still German? B-but all of our omniscient economists assured me that no developed economy could prosper without massive third world immigration!!! What happened to all the jobs that Germans simply will not do?