U. S. Losing High Tech Jobs to Asia

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In a trend noted before on this blog, America is losing the race for new high tech - and high paying - jobs which are moving to Asia. Yes, part of the problem is the attractiveness of lower wages in Asia, but the bigger problem is the dumbing down of the American work force. And the trend will likely not improve given the soaring costs of a college education and the continued abysmal showing of the nation's schools in science. The latter situation likely to get worse as lunatic Christianists continue to push to have creationism - i.e., religion - taught instead of hard science. I'm not sure how to turn the situation around, but I do know that the active embrace of ignorance seen with the GOP base and the Christian Right is not the answer for a prosperous America in the future. Here are highlights from a Washington Post story:

The United States lost more than a quarter of its high-tech manufacturing jobs during the past decade as U.S.-based multinational companies placed a growing percentage of their research-and-development operations overseas, the National Science Board reported Tuesday.

The rapid expansion of science and engineering capabilities in China and its neighbors pose a more formidable economic challenge to the United States, according to the group, with Asia rapidly boosting the number of engineering doctorates it produces and research dollars it spends.

The report comes as the Obama administration is seeking to make U.S. manufacturing more competitive through engineering and innovation. In June, it announced its Advanced Manufacturing Partnership and sank $500 million into the effort.

But as the National Science Board publication shows, vast government efforts in Asia are working along similar lines. It offered abundant evidence Asia’s efforts to attract and develop engineering outfits, and not just low-wage factories, have paid off. Since 2000:

•Research-and-development expenditures in China and nine other Asian countries have risen to match that of the United States.

• The number of doctoral degrees in engineering awarded in China has more than doubled, and now far exceeds the number awarded in the United States.

• The number of research workers for U.S.-based multinationals working overseas has more than doubled.

The number of high-tech manufacturing jobs in the United States has declined by 687,000, or 28 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to the report.

The far right likes to pontificate about "American exceptionalism" but a public embracing science and accurate and true education is needed if this troubling trend is to be halted.

Steve Jobs Dies at 56

There are already many articles up in the media about computer visionary Steve Jobs who lost his battle to cancer yesterday. Suffice it to say, Jobs helped to revolutionize so many aspects of our lives with his never ending push to enhance technology and changed the way business and society works and interacts. He will be a continuing example of why thinking outside of the box and refusing to be satisfied with the status quo are a mind set that needs to be embraced rather than fled from merely because it disrupts one's comfort zone. Here are some brief excerpts from a Washington Post article:

Jobs died Wednesday at age 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer that his wasting form came to wear as familiarly as his preference for outdated jeans and black turtlenecks. When news of his death broke around 7:30 p.m. on the East Coast, a good number of us sought immediate solace (to say nothing of information) from our Apple stuff.

That is what Steve Jobs gave us: the future. A sense of ourselves moving forward into this century, which has proved especially hard to do, with its lack of employment opportunities and its addiction to panic. He gave us a look at the future and all the ambivalence and worry that comes with it. It was the most elegant form of social disruption, . .

Under his leadership, Apple’s subliminal selling point was: Let it go. Let go of the uneasiness about computers. Let go of ugly, antique technology. . . . . In 2011, so much of our culture — as well as our politics — feels as though we’re losing grip on the old, beloved things.

Jobs had been teaching us to say goodbye to all that for decades — we just didn’t know it. Some of us said goodbye to typewriters in the 1980s when we finished term papers using MacWrite on a Macintosh Plus for the first time. Some of us said goodbye when we made PTA fliers and “Lost Dog” posters that were far and away better than their Sharpie-scrawled predecessors. Let it go, let it go. . .

Letting go of the old is difficult for some (e.g., Christianists and Tea Party loons) but it's not something to fear. It's called progress.

Time to Reboot America

I book marked Tom Friedman's latest column in the New York Times a fee days ago because it looks at what I believe should be among the highest priorities of the Obama administration - in addition to health care insurance reforms - because it will help on both the employment front and, I believe, in bolstering confidence again in the country/economy. What is it? A public works effort to rebuild are aging and dilapidated national infrastructure. Compared to other nations, much of our public works infrastructure is old, out dated and falling apart. Moreover, as in the Great Depression a well thought out and disciplined public works campaign would provide jobs and much needed improvements. Here are some highlights from Friedman's column:

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I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America. It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop. Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones.

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The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span. All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity?

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My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

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{o]ur present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us. That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover.

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[W]e must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely. It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants.

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America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

Change Need at HRC

Like many, I am disappointed at the way HRC - and for that matter, the NGLTF as well - were caught completely flat footed on Proposition 8. So too, in the aftermath of the election defeat on Proposition 8, HRC seems to be chasing after the initiative of grass roots individuals who on their own began the protest actions through Join the Impact, etc. Sadly, all too often HRC seems more worried about not offending the sensibilities of elected political officials rather than forcefully representing the interests of LGBT citizens. It's pathetic now that I am receiving e-mails from HRC talking about the protest efforts as if somehow HRC had anything to do with their taking place or success.

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As I have briefly commented before, my own experience with HRC is not good. For example, in a pending matter for one of my clients involving the enforcement of Executive Order 1 (2006) signed by Governor Timothy Kaine granting employment non-discrimination protections to state employees who are LGBT, HRC's biggest concern was not upsetting Governor Kaine with whom they said they had good relations. Their attitude was in effect, to Hell with the wrongfully discharged employee while we play "nicey nicey" with the Governor. This mindset must change. Here are some highlights from Chris Crain's blog:

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A number of influential voices are echoing the view raised here (and here) about the need for fundamental change of mindset and personnel at the leadership of the gay rights movement. . . . . [I]t turns out that James Dobson's Focus on the Family is facing layoffs of more than 200 staffers because it pumped $539,000 into the Proposition 8 battle in California. Can anyone imagine HRC giving till it hurts like that?

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It's particularly disappointing to see how behind the curve HRC is on the use of technology to push grassroots advocacy, given the dozens and dozens of young, tech-savvy staffers who work at the agency. It just goes to show you how the top-down approach to politics pushed by Smith, Joe Solmonese and other HRC leaders results in in-house management that further cripples the group's effectiveness.

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Change may well be coming to HRC, for no other reason but that many of its leaders are no doubt jockeying for jobs in the incoming Obama administration. (Query whether they will be embraced by the White House, given how obviously they sided with Hillary Clinton during the primaries. It's noteworthy that none of the seven out gay politicos with roles in the Obama transition team hail from HRC.)

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Either way, the gay rights movement is moving on with a retooled HRC or without it. The question is whether the D.C.-based gay groups want to remain relevant to the constituents and the movement they claim to lead.

Hedy Lamarr: How a Famous Actress Revolutionized Weapons Systems

I remember reading articles back in early 2000 at the time of her death about how Heddy Lamar, the famous actress was much more than just a pretty face. In fact she and a co-venturer had developed and patented a radio frequency hopping device that led the way to technologies in weapons guidance systems including a new kind of guidance system for torpedos. Under their patent, the receiver and the transmitter would have the frequency-hopping codes on a tape or roll, which was fed through a sensing mechanism, very similar to the way a player piano roll carries musical information. The system made jamming very difficult. Sadly, the U.S. military did not take them seriously soon enough.

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By the 1950's, the patent on their device had expired when engineers at Sylvania "re-discovered" frequency-hopping. They called it "spread spectrum." These electronic devices were designed for use during the Cuban Missile crisis in the sixties. Now, a new play is playing in New York City that looks at the development of the system by Lamar and her partner.Here are highlights about the play from the Scientific American:

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Hedy Lamarr wasn't just a beautiful movie star. According to a new play, Frequency Hopping, she was also a shrewd inventor who devised a signal technology that millions of people use every day. Lamarr—born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria in 1914—developed a passion for helping the U.S. military after walking away from an unhappy marriage to an Austrian Fascist weapons manufacturer in 1937. In an attempt to stall her acting career, he had brought her to his business meetings, where she found herself continuously listening to "fat bastards argue antiaircraft this, vacuum tube that," explains Lamarr's character—played by Erica Newhouse—in the play, Frequency Hopping. In the meetings, they had talked about developing detection devices to listen to, and jam, the radio signals that American aircraft and weapons used to communicate with one another; and Lamarr wanted to foil their plans.

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Lamarr realized that by transmitting radio signals along rapidly changing, or "hopping," frequencies, American radio-guided weapons would be far more resilient to detection and jamming. The sequence of frequencies would be known by both the transmitter and receiver ahead of time, but to the German detectors their message would seem like gibberish. "No jammer could detect it, no German code-breaker could decipher a completely random code," she says in the play.

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The technology, says Singer, was far ahead of its time. Although her ideas were at first ignored, the technology (which she and Antheil patented in 1942) was later used by the military—during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, for example—and more recently, it has been employed in wireless technologies like cell phones. It was eventually recognized in 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored Lamarr with a special Pioneer Award and she became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention's BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award.