The Air Force is bankrolling a Hollywood screenwriting class. A screenwriting class for PhDs. No, seriously.
The Christian Science Monitor explains:
America, it turns out, is suffering from a science and engineering shortage. Students are bypassing the sciences for sexier and more lucrative jobs…
This creates something of a national security problem… According to Dr. Barker, who works in the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, those who manage the national labs and others who conduct sensitive research have been saying for years “how hard it is to find qualified graduate students who are US citizens…“
Barker notes that 50 percent of America’s scientific-and-engineering workforce will be eligible to retire in the next five years. Who’s going to replace them?…
Hollywood… [may] be part of the solution. By writing and producing movies that have more scientific themes — and more authentic and appealing science protagonists — boosters think the US could encourage more young people to pursue careers in plasma physics, molecular biology, and other fields…
So what they’ve done for the past three years is convene a three-to-five-day screenwriting class at the venerated American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Called the Catalyst Workshop, it’s a lot like other screenwriting classes that have become a cottage industry across the nation. But here’s the twist — all participants in this one are actually scientists. Hardcore, PhD-laden, lab-certified scientists.
Now, the government has dabbled in the movie business before. The CIA, for instance, produced an animated version of Animal Farm. After 9/11, the BBC notes, Die Hard screenwriter Steve de Souza was one of two dozen writers and directors who were “commissioned to brainstorm with Pentagon advisers” about possible terror plots. The Army currently works with a bunch of Hollywood types at USC to build next-generation simulators.
And this isn’t the only unusual source the Pentagon is tapping for its know-how. As USA Today reports, Defense Department officials are growing increasingly interested in Craigslist, YouTube, and other fast-moving start-ups, for ideas about how terror groups operate.
The military is paying closer attention to business… because the world of geopolitics has discovered itself to be on the same road that business has been on for some time. That road is flatter, more networked and more decentralized than ever.
Large companies are groping for strategies to fend off disruptive competitors, including YouTube, Kazaa, Skype and Wikipedia, companies that are giving away video, music, long-distance and information while eroding the revenue stream of companies that charge for it. YouTube is a website where users swap millions of free videos. With fewer than 100 employees, it has created anxiety throughout the giant industries of film and TV…
How large, traditional companies fare in this fight may prove invaluable in developing a strategy against al-Qaeda. That’s why the military is going to school. A book making the rounds at the Pentagon is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. It was written for a business audience, but military strategists are saying, “This is the best thing I’ve read that applies to counterterrorism,” says Lt. Col. Rudolph Atallah, a Defense Department director in international affairs.
The premise of The Starfish and the Spider is that centralized organizations are like spiders and can be destroyed with an attack to the head. Decentralized organizations transfer decision-making to leaders in the field. They are like starfish. No single blow will kill them, and parts that are destroyed will grow back.
When Starfish co-author Rod Beckstrom arrived at USA TODAY’s suburban Washington, D.C., headquarters for an interview in November, he said he had just come from meetings with representatives at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the “intelligence community.” He said he was contacted “out of the blue” in September by one of the highest-ranking officers in special operations, and more recently by a high-ranking special operations officer at Fort Bragg, N.C.
The Air Force/Hollywood screenwriting science class is pretty old — the NY Times reported on it in 2005:
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB0814FD345B0C778CDDA10894DD404482
It’s behind the “cough-up” firewall now, but if you trust me, the article’s dated August 4, 2005 and titled, “Pentagon’s New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts.” The CS monitor (and the other news outlets that seem to have picked up on this today) don’t look like they’re picking up on anything new like a radical expansion of the program or anything, but I admit I haven’t sat down and read their article very thoroughly.
I’m glad to hear the folks at the Pentagon are catching up to the fact that modern terrorist organizations often don’t follow traditional bureaucratic structures — a fact that’s been noticed already by everyone from counterterrorism experts to The Onion — http://www.theonion.com/content/node/44900. But other than that, the USA Today article is mostly a collection of cliches and non-sequiturs. “Terrorism is decentralized. The new internet economy is decentralized. Therefore, there’s something about one of them that can teach us something about the other if we just do something.“
Take this lovely graf: “When Sandy Weill was CEO of Citigroup he took steps to decentralize a company that today has 300,000 employees in 100 countries by letting divisions compete freely against each other. To defeat terrorism, young people must believe they have opportunity in the world, or they will blow themselves up to get to the next, says Weill, who helped raise $100 million for victims of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan, a country known as a breeding ground for terrorism.” What if anything does the first sentence, about decentralizing Citigroup, have to do with the second, about poverty being a supposed motivator for terror?
Then there’s this gem: “Centralize the decentralized opponent. An example of this would be to let Hezbollah go ahead and govern in Lebanon. Hezbollah is defined as a terrorist organization by the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Israel. But it is more centralized than al-Qaeda and is funded by the centralized government of Iran. Centralized governments are easier to persuade and/or defeat than independent cells, Beckstrom said.“
As they point out, Hez, unlike al Qaeda, is rather centralized, except perhaps at the tactical level on the battlefield. So… what exactly does letting it run Lebanon (as opposed to only half of Lebanon) prove about “centralizing” decentralized opponents?
I guess this is Americas punishment for fostering a spoilt generation, here in europe too the trend is the same but I suppose with the growing muslim population here and the increasing exodus of our scientific minds America will be a good place for them to migrate to.
But I fear for Americas future if your unable to within the next 10–25 years to foster a new generation of scientists.
“But I fear for Americas future if your unable to within the next 10–25 years to foster a new generation of scientists.“
Posted by: AmericaFirst
Right now getting a Ph.D. in the sciences/engineering doesn’t mean that one is employable; many tech jobs are being offshored; corporations in the USA regard engineers as a cost, to be regularly purged; age discrimination starts at 40.
Given all that, why would a rational person go into science/engineering? And if they did to the point of getting a BS, why not switch fields, to something where a BS in science/engineering gives them a leg up, rather than being no big deal?
Also note that engineers typically from middle class backgrounds and with hard work can become moderately wealthy. However, the tax code is quite abusive to people in these 80k to 120k range who are without alot of assets to start. If you cannot make the jump to the big numbers obatainable by lwyers and management you will not become comfortable or have much of a net against layoff.
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Players will experience amazing adventures as they solo their team of characters in the wilderness, feud against individual rivals in family vs. family duels, group with other players in dungeons to defeat epic bosses, and unite with fellow clan members in massive city vs. city conflicts. This is Sword of the New World Vis, and this is what MMORPGs should be.
he spend much money to buy 2moons dil, I was very affect. But because some reason I left the game, now I am afraid to return the game, I worried that he can not excuse me or already forgot me.
Now I only can do one thing, that is forget you, I will never play this game again, I will send all my cabal money to my friends, I will let you know that I was a innocent, naive, not sensible kids.
I also know that they all did not had enough money, so when they hope that they can helped me in the game of gave me some dofus gold, I often refuse them.