Damon Hill wrote:

:Ian Parker wrote in

ups.com:
:

Ian is an idiot, which he is about to prove once again. Why waste
time rebutting his lunacy?

:
: I think the US is falling behind both Europe and Asia. I
: think there are a number of reasons.
:
: 1) The failure to build a supercollider.
:
:Too busy building advanced semiconductor fabs--those are
:hugely expensive.
:

Well, no. Semiconductor fabs are privately funded. The supercollider
was publicly funded. Not even money out of the same pocket.

In point of fact, it cost more to shut the supercollider project down
than it would have cost to finish it. It got shut down by a
Democratic Congress that was ****ed off that Texas dared to replace a
Democratic Senator (Bob Krueger, appointed by Ann Richards to replace
Lloyd Bentsen) with a Republican (Kay Bailey Hutchison) and wanted to
exact a revenge against the State of Texas.

: 2) Creationalism, the view that the World is no older than
: the Ice Age.
:
:Quite a lot of people here, most in fact, don't believe in
:that. Still, the fundamentalist conservatives are inhibiting
rogress.
:

How?

: 3) Governmenr interference with things like Stem Cell
: research.
:
:Got more specific examples; this seems trivial by itself.
:

It's less than trivial. There's been no "government interference".
There's merely been a lack of government interference in the opposite
direction; a failure to subsidize it, rather than interference to
prevent it.

: 4) The US is now a lot less welcoming to foreigners than it
: was in the time of Kennedy.
:
:You don't live here, do you? Spanish has become the 2nd
:national language by default. We're not as bilingual as
:Canada but our economic wealth attracts much immigration.
:

And 'foreigners' who actually have something to offer don't find it
difficult at all to come here.

As usual, Ian couldn't be more wrong if he planned it that way.

--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine