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To: RealMuLan who wrote (50143)	5/18/2004 9:56:35 PM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

I come across many Taiwanese who went into business in search of big bucks after they got their PhD's in engineering. And the language itself makes them think in broader terms (good for developing applications), and not bogged down with prepositions, adverbs, punctuations, conjuntions, etc, etc.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (50143)	5/19/2004 2:58:30 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

<"Laziness of wealth", > Yiwu, on the contrary, the wealthy do more. Irwin Jacobs was wealthy when he started QUALCOMM. He is now over 70 and very, very wealthy, but still works as CEO. $ill Gates has been wealthy for decades but shows no signs of going to sleep on the job. The wealthy get involved with philanthropic investing = high risk things which other more worried mortals can't afford to take a chance on. If the risk pays off, they make even more money. The wealthy buy innovative, expensive technology, which then becomes available to median humans as the price comes down as the technology and markets develop. Wealthy people aren't necessarily lazy, they are energized. Those who earned it themselves anyway. Mqurice

To: RealMuLan who wrote (50143)	5/19/2004 4:09:47 AM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

There were two times when science and engineering became fashionable - 1) during early part of the space race, up to about the second moon landing. 2) About the time Apple computer went public, then for about 2 years. This lead to the idea that there was real money to be made in tech. Nanotechnology may attrack some bright minds.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (50143)	5/19/2004 10:34:57 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 74559

<<<I don't think it have much to do with genes, but "Laziness of wealth", and cultural effect do play plenty of roles here. The peer pressure in k-12 schools in the US is NOT to study hard, but dating hard, partying hard, working hard for some minimum wage at some non-skilled job just to be able to buy some brand name clothing or shoes or cosmetics to satisfy their vanity.>>> It is probably a little of both - gene pool and culture. Both countries have a lot going for it that other countries do not. China has a pretty good gene pool to begin with and the numbers make it even more compelling. Combine all that with the Confucious work ethic, you could have terrific potential. China has always had this terrific potential but for the last 4 or 500 hundred years has not done much with it, but now that they have a benchmark (western science an technology) to aim for, they could get things going much faster. The United States however, is not as homogenized. The openness of the US has probably attracted the best and the worst the world has to offer. At the top level, you have people with a lot of ambition and a lot of energy who left everything behind and traveled to a distant new world. That group had to be genetically different. Also, all the scientific genius who came to the US because of the freedom to do their work adds to and energize the gene pool. Diversity really works. On top of all this, you have a culture that adopted the best from everywhere in the world. Just as an example, you can go to any large metropolitan city in the US and you can walk up and down the main thourough fare and sample food from every corner of planet. That is probably a good barometer or proxy for anything that is any good, we will accept. You go to China and you will get mostly Chinese food. You could probably find foreign food, but that is probably mostly for foreigners. You could probably easily mistake US for being too fat and too lazy, but you are probably missing the big picture. What you don't see are all the fitness centers and all the people in amazingly good shape. Look at all the marathon races that are run in every major city in the US and see the turn out of all the fit people. I doubt Beijing or Shanghai could turn out the same number of the really fit. Again, in academics you see low test scores. One reason for that is that we try to teach everyone as if they were going to go on to get their phd in physics. Whereas in other countries, your role in life may be predetermined at an early age - where you don't need to go to school because you are going to be a laborer of some kind. I think test scores are somewhat skewed based on that. But, if you can stay clear headed enough and see what this country can produce at the top level, you are not going to be so complacent about your (China's) competitiveness. There is both good and bad in the US system. Everybody gets at least one chance. Some people get a second and third chances. There is less rigidity in the teaching philosophy. In Japanese schools, for instance, there is a lot of learning by rote, and it is very demanding at an early age. As aresult many kids get burnt our at an early age. Very few have anything left after they have studied and crammed for their college entrance. Once that is over with, their education stops. As a consequence, very litt of the very best creative scientifc research comes out of Japan. However, the Japanese are very much aware of this, and they are loosening up their system.