Word: basic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...comes to the war on drugs, Morales is just a realist: he defends the right of Bolivians to make a decent living, something already quite hard in the so-called “developing” latitudes. Poor peasants with few acres of land grow coca because of basic Smithian economics: the market equilibrium price is far higher than other crops like coffee or soy. Washington’s “Apocalypse Now”-like burning of fields might work in areas with violent seditious guerrillas like Colombia’s FARC, but in Bolivia, aerial spraying destroys...
...basic idea is a course to give students life strategies—not just relaxation, not just dealing with stress—just being a more effective person,” said Adams Wellness tutor Sarah E. Henrickson ’01, who was formerly a Crimson photo chair. “It’s a perfect example of the kind of things the Wellness program...
That means not only that Americans have to be better than the rest of the world at inventing things but also that we have to be better at the basic research that precedes invention. Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, people like Edison, Morse and the Wright brothers proved that Americans were pretty good at creating useful technology. But all of it was based on fundamental science done in places like Britain, Germany and France, where the true intellectual action...
...learned that pure research like atomic and electromagnetic physics, combined with massive government funding, could lead to dramatic breakthroughs in military technology. Because the Soviet Union almost immediately became just as ominous a threat as Nazi Germany had been, Congress created the National Science Foundation in 1950 to fund basic and applied science, mostly at universities, "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense ..." In 1958 it founded NASA in response to renewed fears of Soviet technical competition ignited by the launch of Sputnik the previous year. Also...
Nonmilitary research grants, meanwhile, have been essentially flat for the past 15 years. The one exception: the National Institutes of Health, whose budget doubled from 1998 to 2003. "Unless there's an emotional appeal, basic research is well beyond the time span of the next election," says Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel. "There is a very emotional attachment to research on cancer or chronic illnesses. It's much more difficult to say, What will the structure of the transistor look like in the next 15 years...