{"id":1994,"date":"2009-02-02T20:17:45","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T20:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2009-02-02T20:19:06","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T20:19:06","slug":"jerry_pournelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1994","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Pournelle, Bill Gates, and Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t usually read Jerry Pournelle’s blog; I’ve read a couple of books he’s co-authored, but haven’t been excited enough about what he puts on the blog to devote scare attention to it.<\/p>\n

I may consider changing that…<\/p>\n

On one of my email lists, they cited a post he did on the challenge our educational system presents to the American future<\/a> – and it’s not the challenge you think it is.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“I said that to make sure you’ll stay awake for the rest of my talk.
\nAnd understand, I know Bill Gates, and he is not evil nor does he have
\nany bad intentions; my conclusions about him are connected to what I
\nbelieve to be the worst threat to the country.”<\/p>\n

I won’t go into the main body of what I talked about, but my
\nconclusions were simple: I believe that the worst threat to the United
\nStates is our failure adequately to educate the smartest 25% of our
\nstudents; that there are no hopeful counter trends; and the result will
\nbe disaster. Add to that our failure to train or teach skills to the
\nlower half of the population, and the disaster is made worse. These
\ntrends have related causes.<\/p>\n

The underlying cause is our attempt to provide every public school
\nchild with a university prep education. Bill Gates becomes involved
\nbecause his foundations promote the idea that “every American child
\ndeserves a world class university prep education”; and the attempt to
\ndo that insures that very few American children will receive a world
\nclass university prep education, and most of the smarter children will
\nreceive an education that is indifferent at best. The failure of our
\nschools to educate the smart kids will put the United States into a
\nterrible competitive position that will only get worse. We will
\ncontinue to live off our capital, both intellectual and financial.
<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    
\nThat hit me pretty hard.<\/p>\n

Last week, I went to a dinner featuring Stephen Squyers, one of the
\nmanagers of the Mars Rover program, where he presented the state of the
\nrovers and some cool images and video – massively cool, as a matter of
\nfact.<\/p>\n

(sidebar: a surprise guest was some older, white-haired guy<\/a> with a bit of a deserved swagger in his walk.)<\/p>\n

In the discussion afterward, he was asked what – given an unlimited
\nbudget and as a #1 national priority – he would do to further explore
\nMars. he outlined an ambitious, multi-trillion dollar program to build
\na long-duration base on Mars which sounded immensely attractive to me,
\nat least.<\/p>\n

But I had one concern.<\/p>\n

“Look in 1961, Kennedy had the infrastructure from World War II and the
\nCold War to build on. Engineers, factories, laboratories. So dumping a
\nfew billion into the machine to go to the Moon was adding fuel to an
\nexisting engine. Do we have the engine today to do this, even with the
\nkind of funding you’re talking about? Do we have the trained talent,
\nnot just for the top 5% of the jobs in the program, but literally at
\nthe nuts and bolts level??<\/i>“<\/p>\n

He believed that we do.<\/p>\n

I’m not so sure.<\/p>\n

And while I don’t think that’s as bad as Pournelle makes it out to be, I think it’s a damn bad thing that we need to correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal worries about nuts and bolts. Jerry Pournelle is involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}