STEMing The Cool Culture -- Good Luck With That

clipped from www.wired.com Sure, we’re all plugged in and online 24/7. But fewer American kids are growing up to be bona fide computer geeks. And that poses a serious security risk for the country, according to the Defense Department. The Pentagon’s far-out research arm Darpa is soliciting proposals for initiatives that would attract teens to careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with an emphasis on computing. According to the Computer Research Association, computer science enrollment dropped 43 percent between 2003 and 2006. Darpa’s worried that America’s “ability to compete in the increasingly internationalized stage will be hindered without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come…. Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of DoD [Department of Defense] systems that include software development.”

Of course it's worse than just this. Once you are a geek Du'O's tax policies will make sure your job is located in China.

Even with that said, there is a great program that does exactly what they're asking for and I've been running it at my local middle school. It's called First Lego League and it rocks. Thank Dean Kamen.