Barbara Lamar <altamira@texas.net> said:
>
> James Rogers wrote:
>
> <<There are escalating issues and competing forces today which threaten to
> severely blunt our goals, thereby
> rendering us helpless to stop even greater threats than those which most
> people think about. ... My goal in surviving isn't to survive another day,
> but to win
> the game. Destroying terrorism isn't a win, but merely a draw; spending
> effort doing so in no way ensures my long-term survival and may indeed
> hamper it. >>
>
> It might be useful to look more closely at how the "war against terrorism"
> could hamper the goal of long-term survival, winning the game. At the very
> least, it will divert resources from more productive activities.
I dunno...a lot of very productive reseach was carried out during wartime
conditions, and also later, during the Cold War. OTOH, market driven
(really, VC & stock market driven...) research seems to be directed to
generating publicity and subsequent VC funding or stock price increases,
whereas if we have a real enemey, actually killing some of us, and literally
threatening our lives (cf the recent cropduster-bioattack events coming up on
our radar), we would be more motivated to provide funding for "basic"
research where we are really interested in getting solid results....
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:56 MDT