Summary # 3

In "Are We Losing Our Edge?" Michael D. Lemonick talks about how America is starting to slack when it comes things like science, technology and research and development while the rest of the world is improving. He discusses how more and more often people are coming to the United States to receive their degree and then leaving back to other countries to use them. He states that "America is starting to lose ground to other nations."(464). This means that after being on top for so long other countries are starting to catch up to America in terms of science and technology. This has very harmful consequences as Stanford University president John Hennessy states in Lemonick's essay " 'Imagine that the next round of innovations in networking is done in India or China. How many years is it before either Cisco relocates to India or China and grows most of its new jobs there or the next Cisco is actually created there?' "(468). That statement means that if we keep being sluggish about these issues we are going to lose jobs and corporations to other nations. Lemonick accounts for the pause in America to three things: the federal government cutting back funding for research and development, the short term product goals for corporations and the drop in quality of education in math and science at the elementary and high school levels. (465). He describes how these three forces contributed to 9/11. Lemonick then describes how the competition between democrats and republicans to address the issue of how bad our situation had become after not really being involved. He argues that the United States used to be ahead of the game but is now slacking. There is an upside, according to Lemonick, people in America are now starting to see our problem and make changes. Let's just hope we keep up our enthusiasm.

Summary #2

In "The World is Flat" Thomas L. Friedman compares his trip to Bangalore, India to Christopher Columbus's trip to America. He does, however, find one difference: when Columbus sailed to America he discovered that the world is round and when Friedman flies to India he comes to the conclusion that the world is flat. He comes to this conclusion because he discovers that the "playing field is being flattened." (427). Technology has produced equal opportunities for people all over the world and has made the time it takes for someone in a different country to do something for someone else much faster. This realization makes the author nervous and excited at the same time. He is nervous because it allows terrorists to converse faster, easier and with more people around the world. On the other hand, Friedman also views this as a positive thing because as he says, "what the flattening of the world means is that we are now connecting all the knowledge centers of the planet into a single global network, which - if politics and terrorism do not get in the way - could usher an amazing era of prosperity and innovation." (428). He is saying that globalization will allow us new and faster ways of improvement. Friedman explains how each of his three eras of globalization are different than the last and how each era makes the world smaller and flatter He goes on to express how the last era changed "rules, roles and relationships more quickly than we could have imagined." (438). Friedman believes that our task now, due to this inevitable actualization, is to absorb this change in a way that is not overwhelming but that does not leave people behind.

Summary #1

I chose to summarize the first essay "A Fire in the Bathroom" by Bob Herbert. The essays introduction was about an eleven year old little girl who was talking to the police. He uses this story, which included the girl getting wrongly convicted and put in jail for three years, to hint at his thesis which is that the United States is collapsing. He is not saying that the United States is folding in just one specific ways but in many ways.
He uses stories like an actor in New York being arrested, although he did nothing wrong, because the police did not want to take the time out to perform the investigation at the time. He continues by describing how the war with Iraq is harmful to the United States. He discusses how the war "will not be characterized by history as the noble campaign of a powerful nation striding toward greatness"(399). He is saying that the war will not be remembered as a righteous war that was constructive.
Herbert explains how funding is going to the war while middle class families are struggling to survive. He also presents the example of an Oregon School district being shut down because of budget problems and the statement from the physics teacher he interviewed that "During the Great Depression we didn't close schools...We didn't close schools during World War II" to show the struggle going on in America(396). He is saying that the problems now are causing effects that some of the major issues of the past didn't cause.
Herbert uses different accounts to show that with the United States the way it is now the rich is getting richer while the lower class is forced into desperate and often illegal means to carry on. He states "That can-do era sputtered to an end, and we let the selfish, the vain, the greedy, and the incompetent take control of our nation"(402). He is saying that we used to strive for greatness and now we have let people who don't have good values control our counrty.
Bob Herbert ends by stating that "There's a fire in the basement of the United States and we're behaving as if we cannot even smell the smoke." (403). He is insisting that there is a danger within our country that needs to be addressed before it progresses.