MacArthur 'Genius' Grant Winners

Probably not. You'd have spend longer on individual projects than you'd be comfortable with.

Probably not. Technology changes what is possible, but changing the way soc iety works means putting enough capital into the hands of the less well-off to let them exploit new technology.

The US talks about freedom revolutionising society, but Pekitty points out that the US had a lot more land than people, which made land cheap, which c reated a much larger middle class, who had enough money to invest in techno logy, and no strong political interest in stopping other people getting ric h.

Freedom was a consequence of access to a lot of land, rather than any kind of political choice.

This doesn't seem to be true any longer.

The industrial revolution didn't play out all that differently in the US th an it did in Europe - the US had the largest single market, which made thei r manufacturers bigger, with better access to economies of scale.

Technical expertise proved to be remarkably mobile. Nikola Tesla came to th e US from Croatia. If technology was what was driving progress he would hav e been able to drive it just as fast in Croatia.

$600/month isn't even much of a toy budget.

Progressing technology made a societal change (for some societies) for the better (for some definitions of "better.") As you seem to admit, a personal value judgment comes into play, and you could say you'd have to be a lunatic to not want good vision or central heat compared to the alternatives of the past. Fair enough, but change almost never comes without losing things of the past you wanted along with the things you don't.

One could say this is just splitting hairs and too subtle but I think making a distinction between what things "progress" and what things "change" is an important distinction to make. Particularly when terms like "progress" are applied to doctrines of politics or religions that insist humanity is to progress towards some more perfect state away from some historical non-perfect state.

In that context "progress" is often used as if the concept when applied to humanity as a whole has some kind of scientific validity, when it's in fact religion/philosophy at best and pseudo-scientific fraud at worst.

y.

You get what you measure, but concentrating on what's easy to measure doesn 't necessarily get you what you want.

Human progress probably ought to be measured int terms of individual people being able to do what they are best at, but how do you measure that? You t hink that you are good at circuit design, but a more objective observer mig ht see you as good at claiming that your circuits were insanely good (which isn't quite the same thing).

I *said* that technological progress is the real one. You seem to be arguing that political and religious "progress" is bogus, which was precisely my point.

Mo went to a little store and bought a salmon fillet and a beef fillet. Drove it home in her car. I cooked it out on the deck over an instant-start propane bbq. We ate it in a beautiful warm room, under LED lights, with a wonderful white wine and clean water, and dumped the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Leftovers are in the fridge.

That's progress.

From what? Progression necessarily involve change, and you haven't specified where you started.

$ 7200 a year, $ 720,000 in ten years. Enough that finding a place to put the toys would take some effort.

Dan

Soft-studies??? LOL_ that's a new one. Here's the deal: the soft-studies guy is the illumination architect, the engineer is the guy climbing the ladder installing fixtures and bulbs.

As little as possible and then some.

Engineers don't install bulbs, we design them. If it were up to architects, we'd still be using artistic fireplaces in picturesque wood lean-tos for heat and light.

Sounds boring.

They do no such thing.

OMG- maybe 500 years ago but not today, it's very scientific.

^-- Extra zero

Big toys come in small packages. ;-)