This Dutch economic analysis group called ECR had this to say about the US economy, back in February:

Compared to other old industrial nations, the United States possesses the most flexible economy and labour market, which facilitates the re-allocation of capital and labour away from old sectors to more modern fields. However, in recent years there has been a dearth of new ideas, risk-taking, risk capital, etc. A reason for this could be that education (anything below the top layer of the top universities) has clearly deteriorated in the United States. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, there has also clearly been a lower influx of excellent foreign students and researchers into the United States, probably because of more extensive security measures (in other words, there is lower mobility of human capital). Therefore much more investment is needed in this respect, as well as in areas such as Research & Development, collaborations between businesses and universities, etc.

I am jealous of their ability to look dispassionately at the mistakes Bush is making, spending so much on war instead of education. In the report I received, they have some pretty graphs showing our defense spending climbing from about $325B when Bush took office to about $425B now. $100 billion would buy three, maybe even four low-income university scholarships, I bet...

One cannot escape noticing the change in the tone of US news outlets as approval ratings for Bush have dropped. As many others have commented, reporters' questions have become more aggressive and their skepticism at the freeze-dried answers more pronounced. It alters my view of the role of the 4th estate to think that they now act only as an accelerant to movements in a president's popularity, not as the catalyst for that change. Has it always been this way?

The latest US education war has officially begun with a court fight over intelligent design in Pennsylvania. Of course the first signs of the war appeared in Kansas months ago. And some have identified alternative creation theories that I will confess I find more compelling. (Full disclosure: I love pasta.) But America is a nation that looks to its court battles to sort things out, so I see this trial as the formal start. Note that everyone still argues about abortion while the new war starts.

A colleague at work passed along a remark he heard that the first job of science should be to explain how things happen. Intelligent design, he pointed out, does not explain the how of anything. Worse, to me, is that proponents of this theory have taken an already lazy theory and used the lazy end run of politics to get around all existing science. I might, for example, argue that evolution could not explain a mutation as drastic as a spider, creating webs to catch food. I might go explore that hypothesis and prove evolution wrong. Or I might try to cut off debate by winning enough school board elections.