On top of that, the people running the funding agencies and universities are, for the most part, not mathematically adept. There are good researchers, but they are buried in a sea of mediocrity, and are forced to do low-quality work in order to obtain funding. Fundamental research is frowned upon while computer-generated visualizations and unvalidated algorithms abound.

To make up for the poor education we Americans give to our own children, we have been bringing in huge numbers of foreign (mostly Asian) international students to fill our graduate programs

The essential problem is that the quality of mathematical education in the US has been declining for half a century. This decline now affects the entire scientific and engineering enterprise. To make up for the poor education we Americans give to our own children, we have been bringing in huge numbers of foreign (mostly Asian) international students to fill our graduate programs (81% of graduate students in electrical engineering are foreign). Some go on to be our leading faculty and researchers.

Yet while these students often arrive with excellent mathematical training, certainly superior to what they would get in our universities, they then must suffer through our graduate education, which is mathematically inferior to what they would have encountered in 1965.

Because scientific knowledge involves relations between quantitative variables, it is framed in mathematical formulae. By carrying a big mathematical toolbox, a scientist or engineer enhances his ability to construct scientific theories.

Given that the systems we work with today are more complex and are beset by greater uncertainty in their behavior than those studied 50 years ago (one might think of a human cell), a scientist or engineer should possess a greater knowledge of mathematics than his counterpart back then; however, he will likely possess substantially less.

Recently in Texas, Samuel Little, 78, has been confessing to more than 90 murders spanning 35 years. Now serving three life sentences for the murders of three Los Angeles women in the 1980s, he has been giving police details that seem to validate his claim to have killed in at least 14 states. A Texas district attorney says “we anticipate that Samuel Little will be confirmed as one of the most prolific serial killers in American history,” and the New York Times observes, “How a serial murderer could go on killing for years, apparently without anyone noticing a pattern, seems perplexing.”

That Gosnell could have been a much more prolific killer than Little is not perplexing, for two reasons. People who should have known did not want to know because knowing would have forced them to answer questions about when in an infant’s gestation it is preposterous to deny that a baby is present. And given that most “

Pretty sure I wrote about the coming decline of parties in my grad comps and got pooh-poohed at the time. LoL. It wasn't hard to see coming

Part two... And I'm still not sure what Henry's trying to do with these columns

also contrast with the new chron ed board member

After Donald Trump won narrowly in 2016, a consensus formed that his support had come from “forgotten” men and women. That’s for sure. That three-decades-ago convention in Texas is as good a marker as any for when Democrats and liberal opinion started a long political and cultural distancing from much of the American middle class.

Times change. Family values have been displaced by a more media-driven agenda: racism, identity, gender, immigration, tariffs. Taxes are a constant, but if President Trump raises taxes next year in a compromise with the Pelosi Democrats, don’t expect the Beltway press to give him the same praise 41 is getting this week for reversing his no-new-taxes pledge.

Perhaps, like Bush, Donald Trump will be a one-term president, and for the same reason—a slowing U.S. economy. But if you want to discover why America lost the personal and political values of George H.W. Bush, forget Donald Trump. Look deeper.

// Contrast with that nasty bit from the new Chron ed board member

True, But very untoward, imo

Re-upping since he's being feted by media after his recent Trump comments

This guy really didn't do a great job running a great company imo. And was a terrible secstate (though not as bad as Hillary)

TPOA has done this in recent elections

Note: need to bookmark this compiler as well

The poor Houston Chronicle gets scooped on THIS. That's sad even by Chron standards