From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 01:14:35 MDT
Andy wrote:
>amara: i decided to take the linz, ceske budejovice, stutgart rail routing
>out of central europe (met some communists and superstars); and am now
>economically safe in dallas. [tt][/tt] thanks for your advice, everything
>looked beautiful and was totally optimized.
Neat! Was probably rainy though?
>has everyone seen this technology proposal?
> http://www.transrapid.de/de/index.html
About transrapid.de .... is it still just a concept or is something
actually being built? The idea has been around for a long time, in
any case.
Back in 1998, my friend Ralph gave me a private tutorial about the
state of the Germany economy and productiveness (and also why so few
women go into science and math here). I don't think that alot has
changed with the exception of a more active bio-industry and perhaps
more telecom competition. I also know that more people are enrolling
in the astronomy/physics univ. departments in the last year, up from the
later 1990s. Maybe the Germans on this list can add or correct Ralph's
words/me, adding some optimistic notes, because I think many positive
things can be said about Germany too.
I quote:
"Germany is at the moment ranked #47 in the international math competition.
Third world countries like the Philippines are higher ranked than the
country of Leibniz, Euler, Gauss, Goedel and Moebius. The country world
famous for excellent engineered products, cars, nuclear power plants,
inventions. 80% of the population of Germany work today in mainly 10
companies: Mercedes Benz Holding, Siemens Holding, Bosch Holding, car
industry (MB, BMW, Audi, Porsche, VW, Opel), steel industry (Krupps,
Hoesch, Thyssen), chemical industry (BASF, Hoechst, Boehringer) to name
just a few. Imagine how Germany would look without the inventions of the
Siemens brothers, Daimler and Benz, etc. The next 25 years will be a
nightmare for my country.
Germany has no computer production on it's own. We do not make any
chips (except some ASICs and RAMs). We do not make any operating
systems (except some influence in SAP R3). Out of the 2700
standardisation proposals for the internet, none (0) came from
Germany.
Genetic technology is considered to be 'against nature'. Our law allows
only research on one (1) bacteria species: EC bacteria. Imagine electrical
engineering using only one transistor ....
Biological research suffers from cutback in funding by 80%.
Funding for research in physics and chemistry is down by 45%.
The space industry cut back 14500 jobs during the last 4 years.
Germany has nearly no defense contractors anymore.
No new nuclear power plant in the last 20 years.
Breeding technology (Kalkar) stopped by political worries.
Governmental funding for fusion technology reduced by 10 billion DM.
The list is endless ....
The Deutsche Bahn tried to sell the ICE high speed train technology
to Korea, Australia, California, Russia etc. Without success. We
have an even faster train waiting to be constructed: the
Magnetschwebebahn Transrapid glides on a magnetic field with 300 mph
only on a test track for the last 20 years ....."
(end quote)
Anyway, my male astronomy colleagues here are struggling as always for
the almost impossible-to-find astronomy job that isn't on soft money
and has some long-term prospects and I don't know any German women
astronomers here (they mostly don't exist). However, I should add that I
never did try to find long-term work here, with the exception of some
shorter term contracts that supported me well during the last few years.
Amara
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:12 MST