We’ve **never ** been to the moon!
Looks to the left, looks to the right, flips up his trenchcoat collar and backs slowly into the shadows of the parking garage
Well we WERE there almost 40 years ago, which I think was the point.
Currently the United States is only country capable of a multi-vehicle pile-up on Mars and we’re 3 for 3 on the last group of landers (knock on wood).
We get a lot of grief for the Space Shuttle but it’s the only vehicle capable of retrieving satellites for repair.
Daggett suggests we’re getting our asses kicked in science.
*Bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering make up sixty percent of the total degrees earned in China.
Five percent of the degrees earned in the United States last year were in science and engineering.
This year, China alone will graduate 350,000 engineers.
By 2010 it is predicted that 90 percent of all the world’s scientists and engineers will be in Asia.
U.S. enrollment in science and engineering has dropped by 12 percent in the last five years.
Nearly one-half of all U.S. enrollments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are students who are non-U.S. citizens.
In 1975, the United States ranked third in the world in the percentage of its students who were received degrees in science and engineering. Today we are 17th.*
One area in which I’ve heard another culture point to us as an example: race relations. A few years ago there were stories in the news about the car burnings in France, which were attributed to unemployed ethnic youths. Someone was quoted as saying that they had to improve their race relations, be more like the U.S. I never thought of us as an oasis in that regard.
I was going to post a variant on the question a week or so ago, after seeing “But in the Netherlands, blah blah blah sunshine and flowers” waaaaay too many times …
"Are there any examples of any aspect of U.S. society, culture, governance, and so on, is considered more progressive than that of the Netherlands?"
Anyhow, from what I’ve heard, the US is admired for its transparency, even with its problems. Sure, torture of “war criminals” is horrible, but it’s generally admitted that it happens. In other countries, it would be covered up and denied at all levels.
Thirty minutes or less pizza delivery?
That is mostly true but the question in the OP is slightly different. Most of the real professors at our universities are U.S. citizens of long-term residents. It isn’t like someone can just fly in from China, teach at the professor level at MIT for a while and then leave on a whim.
The list I gave shows that the depth of knowledge at U.S. universities is incredibly dominant. The scientific achievements of a handful of schools like Harvard and MIT are impressive on their own. Combine that with hundreds of others and it adds up in a big way.
Has the SDMB Clog Faction been so obnoxious about it lately ? 
There are plenty of things where the US is different from the Netherlands. It is hard to say though, which of the two policies is more progressive. Often they’re just different, and the differences are part of even larger social differences. (anyone want me to list them in a new thread?).
Take, for example, our social services, with welfare benefits for many. The reason for that “security net” is that here in Holland, it is hard to get an entry level job. Even entry level jobs here require more education, and workers here are so well protected against being fired, and so expensive in taxes, that employers think twice befire hiring anyone in the first place. So, less jobs. Where in the US, most people can get jobs. Which is better?
It’s not the SDMB … it’s seemingly everywhere. The latest examples I’ve heard are along the lines of:
“In the evil, capitalist United States, most of the timber available comes from virgin rainforest harvested by exploited workers in the most environmentally insensitive manner possible, but in the progressive, forward-thinking Netherlands, every piece of wood in the country, right down to every toothpick, is FSC certified, and harvested onbly in the most environmentally sensitive manner by indigenous peoples who are paid according to the best fair trade practices.”
“In the evil, capitalist United States, roads are falling apart, but in the progressive, forward-thinking Netherlands, a special type of pavement is used that makes the roads in the country among the smoothest in the world; they’re even the envy of Germany. Also, the pavement comes mostly from renewable materials, and is certified as greener than the organic produce grown by hippie farmers Stateside.”
Basically, in the US the Netherlands is often depicted as a utopia where every supermarket makes Whole Foods seem ghetto, everybody drives Pruises, everything is tolerated, and so on.
Frankly, our best known consumer products and services seem to be the ones aimed at the masses–think fast food, non-microbrew beer, and the like. I can’t think of a single consumer product that is known the way that French wine, German beer and cars, or Dutch cheese is. Not that there aren’t American examples of such products that are of excellent quality, but it’s not what we are known for.
Before tobacco was condemned, American tobacco and cigarettes were very highly regarded.
Actually, a reasonable number of other countries have cribbed big sections of it for their own manifestos.
Well, the major American engineering achievements of the 20th Century continue to set the bar.
Sponsored by the US Government, we have off the top of my head:
- The atomic bomb
- The Apollo manned missions to the moon
- The development of the Space Shuttle
- The Hoover Dam
- The Internet (which has its origins in the US DoD’s ARPANET)
And from the private sector,
- The transistor
- The “modern” general-purpose (Turing-complete) computer
- The modern, mass-produced automobile
- Heavier-than-air aircraft
And many more.
Many of these scientific and engineering achievements saw major contributions from, or were accomplished by people of foreign origin who came to the US. And that speaks to the biggest thing to hold up as an example of where the US leads the way: a practical example of the advantages of an open society, one that is a draw for the best and brightest from around the world, lets them freely exchange ideas as well as goods, and gives them the opportunity to reap the rewards of their industry and ingenuity.
Of course there are potential downsides as well, such as being able to effectuate something for the long-term greater good of all that is not reflected in the sum of the short-term good of the individuals… But that is an discussion for the GD forum.
Well, to put a bit of a spin on it, the fact that we often consider ourselves collectively and our ideals to be inherently on the side of righteousness is the primary reason why we often do manage to correct those sins ourselves.
It’s often hypocritical and insufferable I’ll grant, but that attitude you cite is in and of itself an impetus for much of the positive change we manage. If there’s one thing you can say about us it’s that we are a damned self-analytical bunch.
The only downside is that the example has to be so glaring so that you look stupid denying it. Free speech really helps in this process.
Extraordinary rendition? No one cares.
Abu Ghraib pictures? Um, yeah, ok, that is definitely ***not ***cool.
The U.S. gave us baseball, rock music, and the Internet.
What else could we possibly ask for?
Ragtime, jazz, and blues.
Oh yeah, right.
Although when looking at the origins of these genres, we have to confront issues of racial segregation and prejudice, and an indefensible legacy of slavery.
Well, all matters pertaining individual freedom and the use of land/space.
We in Holland have the most awful, narrowminded, intruding, micromanaging building regulations, for instance.
My upstairs neighbor wanted to put a rail on his balcony. A neat, basic, ten-yard lenght of rail, installed by a professional company. In a place no-one but himself saw it. If his neigbors wanted to see it, they’d have to stick their heads out of their attic roof windows and crane their necks.
He had to put the design up for inspection by a county official, twice. Who still has turned him down, on the grounds that the rail should be one yard closer to the edge of the roof than it is now. :rolleyes:
Military spending? Heck, spending on anything.
Do poor peoples still look at America as a land of opportunity?
True, but the US isn’t the only country that has mistreated black people. Also, there’s currently an (agonizingly) even chance that, in about five months, when we make a list of every self-made black man from a broken home who’s ever been the leader of the free world, it’ll mostly be a hyperlink to www.us.gov.
Was the OP even a serious question? It was posted on a message board on the Internet using a computer – all invented in the US. My first impulse was to do a quick look on Wikipedia (invented in the US) and Google (ditto), but honestly the list would be too long to be of any use.
It would almost take less time to list the things not invented in the US. Sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads would have no lasers if not for the US. We couldn’t have the best inventions since sliced bread without the US, because the bread slicer was invented here. If you come up with a good idea, a light bulb appears above your head. That was invented in New Jersey. Textiles, manufacturing and agriculture – the US brought these to unprecedented heights.
We didn’t just land on the moon, we drove cars on the moon. We crashed a probe into a comet a few years ago just to see what we could learn from it. We’ve sent probes to fly by/orbit/land on/crash into (sometimes on purpose) every planet in the solar system. We haven’t actually reached Pluto, but that one (New Horizon) is already en route. It’s about a billion miles away just now, and it’ll get there in seven years. In the United States, intelligent adults sat around a table and, with straight faces, agreed to launch a probe to a destination so far away that it would take nine years to get there. In 2015, when it reaches Pluto, you’re probably going to be bored with the images it sends back, because the US has made these miracles so routine.
Voyager 1 is officially in interstellar space, about 10 trillion miles from Earth, and Voyager 2 is hot on its trail at about 8 trillion miles. These aren’t joke numbers like a bajillion or anything, they’re actually trillions of miles away. Both are still kinda working, 30 years after they were launched. They still send us small bits of data, and it takes something like 30 hours at the speed of light to get to the Earth. I don’t want to turn this into a link-fest, but if you go here, you might see some neat pictures, but the pictures aren’t the whole story. The real achievement is that we had the audacity to consider these ideas, and the capability and will to follow through with them. We may have looked foolish when our Mars orbiter crashed a few years ago, but we were only able to fail because we actually tried to do it. I think that almost says more about the US than our outright successes.
If you’re talking about politics, culture or education, the US has an incredible record on those fronts. The current political & social bickering is nothing compared to life even 40 years ago. We’re always fucking things up, always figuring out why and always fixing things, because we are always pushing the envelope. We fail in spectacular ways because we try to achieve spectacular things. You may have standards about how well an enlightened, egalitarian society might function, but chances are that many measures you use are only meaningful because the US set these standards in the first place.
I don’t know how exactly to express this, but we get disappointed when the US doesn’t manage to give equal opportunity to every single person, but we’re only disappointed because, without exception, we expect the US to get it right, and any lesser goal is unacceptable.
If you think we have a screwed up economy, corrupt politicians and bad race relations, I invite you to visit any other country in the world and make a comparison. Yes, some countries are more progressive on some fronts, but the US is trying to make things work for a population of 300 million people; the only fair comparisons should be with China, India, South America (as a whole) and Europe (ditto) – you’ll find pockets of prosperity and tranquility, but they don’t have long-term solutions that work on really large populations. It’s difficult to compare the US with Australia – they wrestle crocodiles and split the beer atom, whereas we just cured polio. We could start listing competing celebrities from different countries, but it’s a red herring – all of them became celebrities by coming to the US.
Which is another point. When you read about some incredible accomplishment by Bruno Krastafaristijian, the first two thoughts running through your head are likely to be, “What the hell is that?” and “Probably an American; they’ll let anyone in.” We kinda end up with all the people who get kicked out of (or run screaming from) their home countries. I work with a 14 year old girl who swears she’s 28; her mother escaped Cambodia, lived in refugee camps in Indonesia for a couple of years, and ended up in Little Saigon (in Orange County). Her daughter, my coworker, works a (figurative) million miles away. In her down-time, she tries to explain cryptography to me, but today her biggest concern was gathering the right evidence that a NIC driver was not dealing with message contention very effectively. In one generation, her family went from, “I hope we don’t get killed tonight” to “that idiot doesn’t understand the memory controller. There’s no point in setting up a DMA if all you’re going to do is interrupt it ten clocks later.” (Or something that sounded like that).
If you take a utilitarian view and try to do the most good for the most people, I think the US measures up well. We in the US are safe, prosperous and healthy to such a degree that we almost shouldn’t be using the same words when comparing ourselves to other countries.
(And this is how I feel when I’ve been pissed off at my government for the past seven years…)
The American ability to see truly revolutionary technologies, and fund them well, is often regarded as admirable. Two examples, often cited, are the jet engine and the general purpose computer, two technologies where the United Kingdom had an early lead, but failed to invest in adequately, leaving America to clean up.
Your point stands, but I don’t think that’s an actual worldwide ranking of universities. Looking at their methodology, it becomes plain to see that the ranking is not concerned with academic achievement, rather “Internet visibility”—the number of pages linking to that intstitution’s website.
Try this instead.