"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything..." (Richard Feynman)
Craig Venter might be a "maverick scientist" and I do not agree with the attempts to patent biological organisms. Nevertheless I agree very much with the positions he takes in the Dimbleby Lecture, blaming the western societies for having lost their enthusiasm for science and for not understanding that science will be the key lever to tackle the problems of the world
"As venture capitalist John Doerr once remarked to me 'You talk to the leadership in China and they are all engineers, and they get what is going on immediately. The Americans don't, because they are all lawyers'. Added Bill Gates: ' The Chinese have risk taking down, hard work down, education, and when you meet with Chinese politicians, they are all scientists and engineers. You can have a numeric discussion with them - --"
The attached article from "The Spiegel" is interesting. If the facts and numbers are true (and the Spiegel should not dare to invent such stories), then we have another good piece how the link between science and human progress has been attacked by a certain cultural tendency of the left in the last decades.
The Gini Coefficient measurs inequality in countries (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient). A high Gini coefficient means high inequality. The lowest Gini coefficient among industrialized countries has Norwegia with 19, many countries in Latin America are high upto 60, the extremest measured values. China went up from values in the 20 during communism to a 44 by the Deng reforms (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality) The West European Countries have lower Gini coefficients than the USA.
I just finished reading the book "The Sun, the Genome and the Internet", a passionate plea of an astrophysicist in his 80s that only science can bring freedom and prosperity to humankind:
An interesting point is that he tells that the alliance between science and craft industry was that what made the former so developing in the 20th century. His hypothesis is that only a strong development in solar energy combined with genetic technology and the extension of the internet to all individuum will be able to resolve the problems of a world with 6 billion people.
I am participating at the moment in the conference titled above. The openig keynote from Bruce Perens was very interesting in discussing the economic importance of openSource software. He pointed out that no software development that is crucial for the business success of a company will be open, he called that differentiating technology, but that, in the moment a software goes on sale, is not differentiating any more. In these cases the openSource model shows to be more powerful.
I am quite concerned about several aspects in the politic of the democratic candidates for the presidency, especially their tendency against globalization and in support of American protectionism. Another problem I have with them is their huge dependency from public sector unions. But look to the attached YouGov polls published in the Economist!
One of the points is striking and alarming: To the question if creationism should be taught in public schools, 80% of Republican voters answered yes, but also 50% of Democratic voters. Devastating!
