I'd rather have an Android but will gladly go to the iPhone if it means getting a rocking phone that actually fits in my pocket
Maybe it's time to trade your oshkosh b'gosh for grown-up pants? You're a big kid now.
Kristy Kruger: It was about a group of five to seven people, kind of standing around the keg, just talking. And somehow a discussion of endangered species came up, in which I posed the question, is the unicorn endangered or extinct? And basically, there was a big gap of silence [...]and then everybody laughed. And then that laughter was followed by more silence when they realized I wasn't laughing. And I was like, yeah, oh God, unicorns aren't real? Oh no.
When it comes to top brains, on the other hand, USA is indeed #1 by a huge margin.
Actually that link shows it has several of the top universities, ranked by files they put up on the web (and the visibility thereof). Top brains? not proven. Even if those are the universities where the top brains congregate, it's far from clear that those brains are American ones.
It's also doing rather well in R&D
That source, a Wikipedia article whose own source is no longer accessible at the relevant hyperlink, says that the U.S. spent more than any other country on R+D in 2010. In percentage of GDP though, you're down around fifth or sixth. Ok, so you spend a lot on R+D. But is it effective? efficient? no answer there.
tech achievement
Ok well this is measured, in your source, by 4 things:
1) Patents granted and royalty license fees received from abroad, both per capita
2) Number of internet hosts per capita and percentage of exports that are "high or medium technology"
3) Telephones and electricity consumption per capita
4) Years of school and enrollment in math and sciences.
I'll give you number 2 and maybe even 4 as a reasonable measure of technological development, but with a broken patent system churning out meaningless patents, and a wealthy population hooked on cellphones and wasting electricity, the deck is stacked here in favor of the U.S. in a way that has nothing to do with technology. And you still come in behind Finland.
corporate governance
Wikipedia offers a spartan PDF with literally no context or explanation. Corporate governance by what metrics?
And for what it's worth, your suggestion that some people aren't important in an assessment of national intelligence is bunk. It's often up to the public to make informed political choices about scientific issues, from evolution to global warming to birth control to etc. etc.
It's important that the entire populace, hookers and all, is educated enough to make the right decisions.
[...]the One World Government/Police State that is proposed as the answer to totally regulate carbon, wrecking the first world, transferring most of the remaining wealth to the developing world, etc. leaves us an impoverished socialist hellhole[...]
Bunk!
So much bunk.
Maybe some people are proposing something like that. I've definitely seen quotes like "cap first world economic activity". But while you're arguing with an imagined, monolithic group of "greenies", people in the other corner are busy having a heated conversation that goes something like:
"Well, people don't believe science. So what ELSE can we do?"
Isn't this article proof enough that people are talking about lots of ways of addressing the problem? Government investment in green tech on a larger scale, that's one way to go. Nuclear is another, and despite what you think about "greenies", I'd bet that most people who've accepted the AGW science would also accept nuclear solutions. If that's not enough of a debate for you, there's also been plenty of research and discussion about "climate engineering" based solutions. Some people are even saying "preventative action is impossible... so how can we prepare?"
Honestly, there's a simple fact you've missed: you can't trust one side to report to you on what the other side is saying. Never trust fox about what a democrat said, or MSNBC about what a republican said, or Drudge about what AGW scientists say.
If you knew what the other side was actually saying, you wouldn't be having this ridiculous joust with a strawman.
Usually part 3 is the establishment of a neo-pol pot regime, or national socialism, or some financial scam to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, or most commonly meaningless feel good frippery that will do absolutely nothing but "raise awareness".
[...]
Despite my/our disagreement being with Part 3, we get slandered and our words are twisted around
YOU get slandered? Wow, how hard that must be for you. If only those Nazi libs knew what it felt like to be slandered, I'm sure they'd never do it you again.
By the way, the Pol Pot talking point is one that you might want to reconsider. It makes you sound like a foaming rabies case. Why parrot all the other fringe Repubs when there are plenty of other socialists both real and fictional to pick from?
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra