Are YOU an Ostrich?

Read this first about the oversupply of specialists in STEM:

Do We Really Have a Scientist Shortage?
by Daniel Luzer

Are YOU an Ostrich?
by Steven H. Colyer

"It’s not that America’s science and engineering firms don’t have enough applicants. They have plenty. They just want to ensure a steady oversupply of trained STEM professionals so they can continue to employ them cheaply.

"Of course that makes a lot of sense for such firms, but let’s be careful about using a few companies’ human resource desires to formulate national education policy. "

I had a dog and his name was .... BINGO !!

Damn straight. The T & E in STEM (Scientists, Technologists, Engineers, and Mathematicians) are the most important to commerce and the government (military). America is an aggressive, military-industrial nation. Oh, you don't like that? Well too frigging bad then and no soup for you, because that's the way it is. Next!

A few weeks ago, while I was walking around Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia, Monticello, one of several personal Meccas for me and which was a damned fine spiritual experience as well since it was my first time there, hearing of Jefferson's love of all things Voltaire and Locke and freedom of speech and of the right to worship (or not) as one pleases, seeing his University of Virginia laid out like a map below his mountaintop home and his love of Education, reminded me that we used to stand for something else. Something we don't anymore.

A few years ago I went to Plymouth, MA, and I went to Jamestown, VA the day before Monticello, also for the first time. Those visits drove home in me that which our country was built on: Co-operation among us, people helping people, in order to survive, against all odds.

Back then the forces against us were Nature. Today it's human nature: unchecked greed by the monopolists who will crush, and do crush, all competition. The 1%-ers won. They're still winning.

And what are any of you doing about it, other than bitching? Or worse, you can be like my wife, who is most common and typical of most Americans, and be a human ostrich, and spend your evenings allowing Alex Trebeck, Pat Sajek and Vanna White, and Simon Cowell and Cee-lo take your mind off your troubles.

And that ain't a life folks, that's just putting in time until the Grim Reaper comes to call. That's want the 1% want you to do.

Oh, and don't forget to vote Republican, the party of the One-Percent that control 99% of American Wealth! Pfft, hell no. What jerks.

"Every man dies. Not every man lives."
.... William Wallace

Amen.

P.S. Thanks to Neil Bates of Newport News, VA, for the link and his continued inspiration.

Now excuse me, while I go out and actually DO SOMETHING today.