Large Hadron Collider, near GenevaInteresting, if not predictable, that Sir David King should say that the most brilliant minds should be directed to solving Earth's greatest challenges, such as climate change ... and that less time and money is spent on endeavours such as space exploration and particle physics.
The thrust was that the best minds should concentrate on solving climate change and presumably starvation in Africa and so on. He mentioned seemingly spurious but highly expensive research on such things as the Large Hadron Collider, with a spin-off, for example, being Tim Berners Lee's world wide web.
Surely that was worth the money?
Where do we start? It's the old "should we go to the moon when people are starving" argument all over again. We're all caught in an impasse. Governments and corporations can allocate billions on ostensibly innocent programmes like nuclear fission and the results are history. Certain groups get their hands on the best science and the result is destructive.
So it's all very well Sir David King saying that but the whole thing is geared in such a way that the money can buy the best researchers and the goal is not necessarily always philanthropic.
The argument then goes - well, the warmongers are at the controls, therefore we need to up our own research in mass destruction and conventional weaponry to offer an effective deterrent to them. Billions are poured in which might have been used to house the homeless and retrain them in new skills or to provide for single mums.
This blog doesn't necessarily accept that line holus bolus and the welfare fraud is staggering and yet I'm not far off that position myself of being homeless, jobless and on the street.
Turning the attention to allocation of funds by local councils, do they spend two million on a sculpture in the town square, in the interests of civic pride and everything looking lovely or do they allocate it to revamping housing and providing local services such as bin collection?
Is there some sort of compromise position perhaps?
The thrust was that the best minds should concentrate on solving climate change and presumably starvation in Africa and so on. He mentioned seemingly spurious but highly expensive research on such things as the Large Hadron Collider, with a spin-off, for example, being Tim Berners Lee's world wide web.
Surely that was worth the money?
Where do we start? It's the old "should we go to the moon when people are starving" argument all over again. We're all caught in an impasse. Governments and corporations can allocate billions on ostensibly innocent programmes like nuclear fission and the results are history. Certain groups get their hands on the best science and the result is destructive.
So it's all very well Sir David King saying that but the whole thing is geared in such a way that the money can buy the best researchers and the goal is not necessarily always philanthropic.
The argument then goes - well, the warmongers are at the controls, therefore we need to up our own research in mass destruction and conventional weaponry to offer an effective deterrent to them. Billions are poured in which might have been used to house the homeless and retrain them in new skills or to provide for single mums.
This blog doesn't necessarily accept that line holus bolus and the welfare fraud is staggering and yet I'm not far off that position myself of being homeless, jobless and on the street.
Turning the attention to allocation of funds by local councils, do they spend two million on a sculpture in the town square, in the interests of civic pride and everything looking lovely or do they allocate it to revamping housing and providing local services such as bin collection?
Is there some sort of compromise position perhaps?
do they spend two million on a sculpture in the town square, in the interests of civic pride and everything looking lovely or do they allocate it to revamping housing and providing local services such as bin collection?
ReplyDeleteWon't make any difference to bin collection, - comes from brussels.
Spending on a sculpture implies surplus to current rational needs, - therefor, give it back to rightful owners, - those that paid it.
Would it happen?
Can a snowball survive in hell?
Problem being is you can't solve the starvation, poverty question ever.
ReplyDeleteBut you can build a LHC that may revolutionise science.
That is -- if you agree with Malthus. Which I generally do.
It's certainly a dilemma, with no obvious solution.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't understand is on the one hand so much money is being spent on the welfare part of the state with lots of blogs banging on about that waste of money and how people should learn to be self sufficient, they're milking the system,blah, blah, blah. But on the other hand, on the blogs of those who need a helping hand from the state you read about how they seem to fall through the cracks and are in dire straits as they are treated shabbily by the bureaucracy and have great trouble getting what they should be entitled to.
As you know we may be all one step away from being in that situation, through no fault of our own. Why are they so quick to assume everyone is trying to bilk the system and make it so difficult for people in genuine hardship.
It is quite likely that the LHC could provide us with the most valuable spin-off of all time, that is the fundamental understanding of matter and therefore energy. Armed with this understanding we can take steps towards stepping away from the shadow of peak oil and the environmental collapse that our energy cycle has chained us to.
ReplyDeleteAfrica is a mineral rich and beautiful country that fed its inhabitants with ease when the European colonialists ran it. Africa needs governance not science, it was science that got it into the mess its in today by decimating the child mortality rate without reforming the social structure first.