Make Science! Make Science!

(apologies to Glen Hansard)

I've mentioned CERN here before. This month's (March) issue of National Geographic has a fantastic article on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) they are building on the Swiss/French border, & their search for the Higgs Boson (ie. the God Particle). the piece is fascinating, but it was a couple of paragraphs towards the end that really caught my eye:

"When the LHC starts smashing particles, Europe will suddenly become the dominant location for particle physics, and the United States will find itself struggling to figure out how to stay relevant. Perhaps that's a petty concern given the magnitude of what the LHC might turn up, but it's something people talk about. Since the Manhattan Project there's been a general notion that the U.S. dominates the world of physics. Until now, the energy frontier has been at Fermilab, home of the Tevatron. That collider has found some important particles, but it might not have quite enough juice to nail the Higgs.

Some U.S. money has gone into the LHC, which will cost billions of dollars: five, maybe ten—the exact number is elusive (the science will be precise, but the accounting apparently follows the Uncertainty Principle). But most of the engineering is being done by European firms. Jürgen Schukraft, who supervises an LHC experiment named ALICE (which will re-create conditions the same as those just after the big bang), said, "The brain drain that used to go from Europe to the States definitely has reversed." "

that last sentence is what really jumped off the page.
this may not be news to anyone who has been paying attention to what the policies of BushCo. have done to the U.S. scientific community over the past 7 plus years, but it should be alarming none-the-less. fingers crossed that when the next (Democratic) President comes into office these policies will change. in the meantime what can we do?
Well, the U. S. still lags far behind in science education internationally.
We can start by strongly urging our children to put down the Wii & Guitar Hero, put down the Triple Whopper w/Cheese Combo, get up off the couch & pick up a microscope &/or telescope. attack the problem of flabby bodies & flabby brains head on & Make Science!