It's my term, I just made it up. I saw a talk by Richard Smalley, nobel lauriate at Rice University. He seemed to think that if the U.S. didn't maintain an overwhelming (per capita) advantage in the number of science majors, that we're doomed. DOOOMED!

""China has six times as many engineering grads as the United States.""

Hmm. At about 6 times the U.S. population and given their national renassance of sorts lately is it that suprizing?

"The standard soothing reply to all this doom and gloom: We'll come back through "High Tech". What "High Tech" will that be? Aerospace is mostly dead. There's almost no profit left in semiconductors. The Dot Com wiped out information technology as a path to riches. Nanotechnology is just hype, smoke and mirrors. Biotech is exciting but will it serve as our next economic enigine? That sums it up: Our three future options are biotech, biotech and biotech. However what happens if biotech is too hard to commercialize? I wish we had options."

Now that does smack of Smalleyism.

You're joking right? I'm sorry you feel this way. The future is not a wash cause you feel gloomy and have poisioned your brain with blog negativity. You may have been there and done that with TPS, but you should try to stay within your expertise. It's almost the characture of the grumpy old man.