Entries for February 07, 2006

Charles Krauthammer notes that only 30 percent of basic scientific research is funded by government today, as compared with 60 percent in the past. He notes, correctly, that this is not a sign of decline but of progress:

I attended a panel session at the Heritage Foundation yesterday featuring Paul Lettow, author of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, published in hardcover last year and now out in paperback. Paul is a recent graduate of Princeton who earned a Ph.D. at Oxford and a J.D. at Harvard. Several years ago, he worked for me as a research assistant — a classic case of hiring someone who's smarter than you. His book is an expanded version of his Ph.D. thesis, but it doesn't read like one. Paul interviewed almost all the living veterans of the Reagan foreign policy team and did original research in the documents — including the speeches Reagan delivered for General Electric and a speech draft Reagan prepared in the 1940s but was prevented from delivering by Warner Bros.