New Awards To Compete With Nobel Prizes 204
Tsalg writes "The Nobel prizes will soon have company. Fred Kavli, a Norwegian physicist, is funding new awards in the fields of astrophysics, neuroscience and nanotechnology. Kavli already funds several think tanks both in the U.S. and abroad, and intends the awards to help 'spread the word of science and get more students interested', as 'in many parts of the world that's a problem, from Norway to the United States...'"
The problem (Score:2, Insightful)
If our governments, US in particular, were to make science a priority ( real science. Not Bush science ), then we'd see interest in the student bo
I think someone is bitter.... (Score:2)
Kids want to be rich, be famous, and get laid. Scientists, by and large, lack a reputation for at least two of those.
If it takes a prize or two to motivate a generation of young people ("Oh, wow, I can win that prize I can't pronounce and get rich, be famous, and get laid all over the place!"), that's what it takes.
Re:I think someone is bitter.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate this attitude. Just because I choose to see the realities of our world doesn't mean I'm not an optimist. I choose to see the realities because I want to do something to improve them.
Kids want to be rich, be famous, and get laid. Scientists, by and large, lack a reputation for at least two of those.
Hate to break it to ya, sparky, but kids want what adults want: To feel important. Be that getting good grades, have social status, wh
Re:I think someone is bitter.... (Score:3, Interesting)
No problem. Reality is Bush and the current offices will be depopulated in 2-6 years due to that wonderful bit of democracy called elections. Bush can't run for office again, so just hope the Democrats can find a better candidate this round to beat whomever the Republicans nab to toss up for election. Hillary Clinton
Someone is still not smiling. (Score:2)
I really don't care for it myself. It was a joke. I meant to fill out the joke with a little humor, but I forgot
All administrations see science as a political tool. This one just uses it in a way you don't seem to like. Think Kennedy wanted to go the moon to answer the burning question of what the rocks were made from there? No, it was to make political hay in the Cold War.
I don't care, frown if you must. It's a futile, meaningless life, and in the end we return to d
Re:I think someone is bitter.... (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue that lack of preparation at the lowest levels has a lot to do with it, followed by lack of appreciation on the job.
The K-12 education system is a mess. Unfortunately, it isn't broken: it's working roughly as designed. It keeps the kids warehoused and off the labor market until age 18, which keeps unemployment rate down and the labor unions happy. It keeps the teachers' union strong. It provides free babysitting, which keeps the parents happy. It even provides a smattering of education to the children of the middle class, though that's only because of a few dedicated teachers who are doing their best to subvert the system.
It isn't a matter of money: every country which outscores us on standardized tests spends less money per student than we do. In 1998, the average per student expenditure for U.S. elementary and high schools was roughly the same as the per student expenditure at Harvard (NOT the tuition, but Harvard's expenditure).
The experience of recent immigrants suggests that cultural expectations are a big part of the problem: immigrants from the Caribbean usually do significantly better in school than American blacks in the same schools. Immigrants from China and Russia usually excel in the same schools in which American students avoid education. American schools foster an anti-intellectual culture which rewards ``students'' with popularity for almost anything but academic success.
Homeschoolers are educating their children to far higher standards than any public school, and at far less cost. While American public schools are spending over $7,000 per student, most homeshcoolers are spending less than $1,000 per student. That means they are spending roughly 1/10 the money, to get far better results. One big reason they are able to do this is is that they are able to socialize their children, in contrast to the public, warehouse schools, which anti-socialize them. Homeschooled children spend every day in society, seeing how adults value and reward work and learning. It's no wonder that they learn a very different lesson than the children in the warehouse schools.
Why are young Americans choosing any field but engineering and science? A big part of it is that the public schools don't prepare them adequately for anything, but especially not for the sciences. After teaching calculus to American engineering students at a competitive state university, I can say that even American engineering students are abysmally ill-prepared in math.
Then there's the problem of the reward on the job: why would any sensible person want to go into a field which requires long hours of hard study in school, followed by longer hours of harder work on the job, and rewards it with relatively low pay? Anyone who could make a good living as an engineer could make a much better living in something like financial engineering, accounting or actuary science, and the hours would be no worse.
Third, engineering is an ``up or out'' profession: after 5 to 10 years, most engineers are unemployable, since fresh graduates are available to do the same work (so their management thinks) for less money. Engineers who don't move into management eventually get laid off, and wind up flipping burgers. Why not coast through business school and go directly into management? You wind up in the same position, with less work and higher lifetime earnings.
If you become an engineer, you will work for managers who really believe that an engineer fresh out of school is better than an experienced engineer, because he's cheaper. Your management will sooner or later follow that to the logical conclusion that the engineer in China is ten times better than you, because he's ten times cheaper.
I got an engineering degree twenty years ago, but I never worked as an engineer, and today I'm an economist. What I've written abo
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I do know that Germany ``tracks'' students early. By about what would be middle school age here, the German kids' lives have been decided: either they are college material, or they're going into a trade. I think that most countries are closer to that system than to ours. Taiwan, for example, has high school entrance examinations, followed by college entrance exams. Both levels are highly competitive for the good schools.
I suspect that the U.S. practice of putting th
Re:The problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Ranting aside, parents of special needs have whined to their legislators and the courts, and it's steamrolled up from there. I'd love to see the educational system "rescued", but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
As for home-schooling, if you've been successful with it, my hat's off to you. When teaching, I encountered sev
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Homeschoolers have involved parents who encourage their children. Many parents who send their children to public schools don't provide the same level of involvement. Probably the biggest difference in education between the US and other countries is the parents and cultural emphasis on educatin.
Re:The problem (Score:2)
I think it was unforgivably bad moderation, by a lousy moderator, who probably won't have the grace to be ashamed of himself.
Re:The problem (Score:4, Insightful)
By definition, homeschooled children are taught at home by themselves or in small groups by a single parent or a handful of like-minded parents. Unless they spend their spare time working in a mall they aren't interacting with anywhere near the hundreds of other kids most public schoolers see on a daily basis.
As much as I'd like to believe that most homeschooled children are taught to be open-minded world travellers, the reverse is far more likely to be true. Most homeschooled children I've met are taught by parents who want to isolate them from what the parents see as harmful influences in public schools. That's not to say they're all xenophobic extremist zealots, but the majority are.
Sorry, please do go on about how bad public schools are.
Re:The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I can only think of two places where you are likely to be age tracked, and spend all your time with large groups of people your own age: the military, and prison. The age tracking isn't deliberate in those institutions, but there are some other parallels.
Socialization is what happens in society. Adults spend most of their time either at a job, working individually or in small groups, then they go home to their families. School takes kids out of society, into an artificial environment which has more in common with a prison than the real world. School prevents socialization. Remember that the Columbine killers were ``socialized'' in one of the public, warehouse schools.
The Moores [geocities.com] (see ``When Education Becomes Abuse: A Different Look at the Mental Health of Children'') did some research [geocities.com] (see ``School Can Wait") in the 1970s which showed that putting children into a school environment before about age 12 caused no end of pathologies. They became peer-dependent, they became alienated from their parents, they learned to hate anyone who wasn't a member of their group, and on and on.
Most homeschooled children I've met are taught by parents who want to isolate them from what the parents see as harmful influences in public schools.
What sort of irresponsible parent wouldn't? The Moores' work shows that simply sending your kids to a ``good'' school can do them harm. The fact that there are metal detectors at the door and armed guards in the halls and a lot of violence in spite of all that shouldn't worry me, I suppose? Should I get my kids a bunch of snuff movies and kiddie porn so they don't grow up ``sheltered''? Have you done that for your kids?
That's not to say they're [homeschooling parents] all xenophobic extremist zealots, but the majority are.
I'm afraid that I've never met an extremist zealot who homeschooled, and I've met hundreds of homeschooling families over the years. Unless you simply mean ``parents who want to shelter their kids until they're mature enough to take care of themselves''. If that's what you mean, I'm proud to be a xenophobic extremist zealot.
Re:The problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps extremist zealot isn't accurate here (No doubt that depends on who you ask.) but I might guess that some percentage go in for it as much for control as other benefits. I'm glad to hear that your experience differs, as I find it depressing that parents homeschool sheerly for the control-factor, but here's what I've encountered.
At the last church I attended homeschooling had a strong following, and the parents motivations for it
You are completely wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
These children see their parents for about 20 hours a week. The rest of their time is spent in a "Lord of the Flies" environment, where the older, stronger children prey upon the smaller, younger ones. If throwing your children into this mix is your ide
Home Schoolers (Score:2)
I think the type of home schooled child you meet depends strongly on where you live and who you socialize with. There are a lot of home schooled kids whose parents want to isolate them, but of those who have other motivations there's a lot of desire to get them out into the world.
Re:The problem (Score:2)
The reason nobody's picking these majors and making a career out of it is that despite all the government spending, the jobs don't pay enough to make it worthwhile. I mean, if it takes 6-8 years to get your PhD in one of the hard sciences only to come out and make 60k a year, why not get a BBA and start at 50? I
Re:The problem (Score:2)
At least in Europe, there doesn't seem to be enough mathematical education in primary school and early secondary school to allow later science courses at school to even spark interest. For most of the people on my course that I've talked to, university physics is nothing like the physics they did at school, primari
Re:The problem (Score:2)
then we'd see interest in the student body.
Oh, I don't know about that. I always had LOTS of interest in the student body when I was in school....
The problem... Salary (Score:5, Insightful)
After graduating with a bachleors in biochemistry, I worked for two years at a research institution as a technician making ~$20,000 per year. I then attended graduate school and made ~$18,000 per year. After five years I worked as a post-doc at an academic instituation and made ~$25,000 per year (The NIH recently increased the post-doc salary to $36,000 for a first year post-doc up to $46,000 for a fifth year post-doc). Now, as an assistant professor (which lasts for about 5 years at which point you're reviewed for tenure), I make ~$80,000 per year.
Contrast this with my wife and friends. Two years after graduating from college with an economics degree, my wife made over $80,000 per year. Each of my five friends with business degrees were making over $100,000 per year within four years after graduation. Of my biochemistry peers, those that chose a career outside of research (medicine excluded) did significantly better than those who either worked in science or continued on for their advanced degree. Of my peers with who I obtained a doctorate degree, those who joined industry are doing slightly better (on average ~$100,000 for those without post-docs, ~$120,000 who did) than those who stayed in academic, while those that left science are either doing much better (consulting and writing), or much worse (school teacher).
So, not only do those who presue science achieve a far, far less salary than those who do not, but they're also deeply hurt by all of the income they didn't make during their training. Why do scientists have such big egos? Because we have nothing else.
So, tell me - why should students join science? I'm a scientist, I love science, and I absolutely love my research - but I'd be lying if I said that I don't get frustrated by making far less than my friends while working much, much longer hours. It's not an issue money - it's an issue of compensation. We have advanced degree, we expand the economy, we save lives, and we work incredibly hard - please compensate us appropriately.
Re:The problem... Salary (Score:2)
Re:The problem... Salary (Score:2)
As you haven't already, you'll soon be amazed by the inability of people in 'positions who should know better' to communicate (either by writing or orally). While many of my peers are very good writers, I know others who are very poor writers and even c
Re:The problem... Salary (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Yeah, because nobody thought of abstinence before. Especially not the church, which is who is feeding Bush his entire platform.
about time (Score:4, Interesting)
For a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Often it can take that long to truly estimate the impact of the sort of truly revolutionary discoveries that would warrant a prize. Also, because it's not awarded posthumously, it sometimes seems a race to award the prize to older scientists before they die.
But the first reason I mentioned seems the more important one. It's hard to have perspective when the research is first done, and you want to make sure it stands up and has a truly significant impact. You don't want to give it to flashy but less sound science that was the "flavor of the month."
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
Doesn't the same logic that says awarding the prize to a dead scientist does the world little good suggest that awarding the prize to a nearly dead scientist does the world little good?
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
Eh? No. It's hard to have a ceremony for a corpse. And the prize is more a celebration than some sort of tool to save the world. Presumably you already did that, which is why you *have* the prize.
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
Um, no it isn't. I'd say there were thousands of ceremonies for corpses just in the United States today. Funerals.
There doesn't seem to me to be any rational reason to disqualify a person from recognition just because they are no longer living.
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
OK. It would be hard for a corpse to give a speech. Which is much of the point of the ceremony.
Re:For a reason (Score:3, Insightful)
At the heart of the issue, there are two (partially) conflicting goals at work. One is to promote sound science, and the other is to generate enthusiasm in order to create a new generation of scientists. There reason they conflict is because most science isn't considered very "exciting" I'd like to see a prize set up more like the Grammy's. The most groundbreaking, innovat
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
Yeah, that ain't it anymore. ;)
There reason they conflict is because most science isn't considered very "exciting" I'd like to see a prize set up more like the Grammy's. The most groundbreaking, innovative, or outright interesting research in a certain field in the last year. Plenty of glitz, some celebrities (Will Smith, George Lucas, and Steven Speilberg have made fortune
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
That might be what TFA says. But it's not at all what Nobel's final will and testament says:
"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, s
Re:For a reason (Score:2)
Well, no it's not in this case. The Nobel Foundation isn't some organization devoted to promoting science. They're merely the executors of Alfred Nobels will. They are legally bound to follow that will, or they'll be breaking the law.
And they've done a damn good job at it. After 100 years, the Nobel prizes are the most prestigious awards in the world. The Nobel fortune has been invested wisely,
Re:about time (Score:3, Interesting)
And how does that indicate that the Nobel committee isn't doing their job? It often takes 20 years to evaluate the importance of a discovery. Could you point out some prize-winners you don't feel are worthy? There is seldom any controversy over the winners. Which means that the Committee is indeed doing a good job.
Also, it's
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:about time (Score:2)
No no no. Arafat got Nobel price faster.
(you can get nominated if you stop doing something, too)
Re:about time (Score:2)
So, in addition to being slow, they are still wrong sometimes. Then why not be more timely?
Flavour of the month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Flavour of the month? (Score:2)
Re:Flavour of the month? (Score:2)
Re:Flavour of the month? (Score:2)
Re:Flavour of the month? (Score:2)
ob Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ob Simpsons (Score:2)
He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:3, Informative)
Re:He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, take this Wikipedia exerpt from the entry on 1974 Fields winner Enrico Bombieri [wikipedia.org]...
Did you get all that? No? Part of the problem is that 99.9% of people would have no clue what any of that meant, but mostly it's that there's no apparent or easily explainable relevance to things people care about.
Contrast the discovery of X-rays, or the obvious world effects of Peace Prize winners, or the Chemistry awards that let us understand and control the real world better, or the Physiology awards that help us know how the human body works. Obviously, most of the awards suffer a similar problem of being too technical for most people to understand, but you can still get their attention by explaining the practical consequences in a simple way.
Re:He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:2)
Mightbe it is becau
Re:He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:2)
Re:He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:2)
Simple: you show the kids a Stargate episode where the team saves the Earth by using a Bose-Einstein condensate to destroy the Ga'ould mothership.
Re:He'll need all the publicity he can get (Score:2)
is it the money (Score:3, Insightful)
That's nice... (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh? (Score:3, Funny)
A modest suggestion. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A modest suggestion. (Score:2)
Prestige for Research Institutions (Score:2)
Re:Prestige for Research Institutions (Score:2)
What do you mean "It is nowhere near the idea Mr Nobel had"? Did he have a section in his will that said "Those who recive my prize may not be proud of it?".
Or are you implying that the Nobel committee is corrupt? There certainly is very little evidence of that. The prizes which have been rewarded have largely been regarded as deserved. That is the whole reason the prize means anything and has any marketing value.
It's a ploy (Score:3, Funny)
(I have a feeling he'll have to settle for a Kalvi Prize)
but why is science so unpopular? (Score:4, Insightful)
The crucial question that I see is: why are students NOT attracted to the sciences more? I look around and see moral and scientific relativism, where something is right if you need it enough, or want it to be true. If this is the world children find themselves in, why WOULD they study a field which claims that the world is deterministic (down to the resolution of our ability to measure), that things ARE true or false, good or bad?
Re:but why is science so unpopular? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, that being said.. One can say that Darwinian Theory is still a theory.
Kavli Award? (Score:4, Funny)
So, two important science awards, both hosted by nordic countries?
Nobel at least sound somewhat like "noble". Makes you forget about him making all that money by producing explosives.
Kavli [kavli.se] sounds like some sort of low quality bread-spread...
Makes my think this is kind-of a cheesy award. :-)
I'll pass (Score:3, Funny)
Why nanotechnology? (Score:3, Insightful)
When Nobel picked physics, chemistry, physiology&medicine, literature and peace he got it mostly right. These are fundamental areas which will be important for a long time. Although, chemistry prize is often given these days to work related to biology and I can't remember many fundametal discoveries were made lately.
Re:Why nanotechnology? (Score:3, Insightful)
That has less to do with the prize and more to do with what's going on in chemistry nowadays. It's simply that more things are going on in biochemistry than in the more 'conventional' fields of chemistry.
Biochemistry is to chemistry now a bit like quantum physics was to physics in the 30's. A vast new field to be explored, with lots of new ground to break.
No, f
Re:Why nanotechnology? (Score:2)
Re:Why nanotechnology? (Score:2)
Ask that question in a decade or two, when all the "safe experiments" have gotten out of control and either unleashed hell on earth or turned the planet into gray goo. We'll be glad to have award-winning nanotechnologists then, I'll wager.
Awards don't attract students to science... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awards don't attract students to science... (Score:2)
So....eletron flow through boob implants? Was Dr. Hoffenheimer studying celebrity lightning strike victims??!!
Nobel, McArthur and this are the wrong kinds (Score:2)
The correct way to spend such money is demonstrated by the Ansari X-Prize [xprize.org], the Bowery [geocities.com]/CATS [space-frontier.org] prize and the fusion prize legislation submitted by Robert W. Bussard to Congress [geocities.com]. All of these set forth operational technical criteria for the award before it is known who will win the prize. It make it far harder for politicians posing as scientists and technologists to steal the credit and money due ot
Re:Nobel, McArthur and this are the wrong kinds (Score:2)
Re:Nobel, McArthur and this are the wrong kinds (Score:2, Interesting)
Try this thought experiment: come up ith a prize like the ones you mentionned (X-Prize, etc.) that will styill be relevant in 100 years. Any idea where science will be in a hundred years? Me neither. But the Nobel prize has been around for over a hundred years rewarding people who have made advances that the founders couldn't even imagine.
Re:Nobel, McArthur and this are the wrong kinds (Score:2)
stuff like the Methuselah mouse prize goes beyond politics. The Nobel has a problem in that
1) folks tend to get Nobel prizes when they are old
(so it doesn't facilitate their work)
2) a lot of the awards are very subjective
3) There is political aspect here-I can believe
folks don't get a nobel just because they
aren't well liked by their peers.
The Methuselah Mouse prize doesn't have that kind of problem.
Woo hoo! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Woo hoo! (Score:2)
Re:Woo hoo! (Score:2)
modern science cares ... about salaries (Score:2)
so how many forgo comfortable lifestyles in order to fund research?
to most scientists, it's just a job that provides good pay, nobody really cares about science
Re:modern science cares ... about salaries (Score:2)
You may be happy to scrape by on 18k, but you probably have no interest in things like girlfriends, marriage, kids, etc. Most people are interested in these things, and 18k simply isn't going to afford a lifestyle that includes reproduction, something most people consider a very important part of their lives, instead of sitting in a lab, making someone else rich.
I like sitting in a lab just as much as the next guy, but I like a lot of things. If I can ma
Re:modern science cares ... about salaries (Score:2)
alternative "big" prizes already (Score:2)
These just dont have the media prestige of the Nobels. The media and prize mutually bolster each other. Also there is a ctitical mass of a couple hundred living recipients. The number is large enough to have influence, but not so large to be diluted.
Compete with the Nobel prizes???? (Score:2)
I realize we've all become accustomed to the 'me too'-ness of award shows that take place every spring, which I gi=uess kinda 'compete' with the Academy Awards.
But is another group giving more prizes really competing?
Prizes don't motivate as much as you think (Score:5, Informative)
Professor Richard Hamming [chris-lott.org] was fond of saying that you can get money beyond your dreams if you solve any one of the 3 hardest problems in physics - timetravel, antigravity, or teleportation. Do you see Physics majors attacking these problems tooth & nail ? As Hammings explains, there's just no known attack.
Americans aren't warming up to the sciences simply because they have a choice. Students get to decide what they want to study. They look at the difficulty levels of the subject, the job market, ask their peers & parents, look at career prospects & evaluate their "sexiness", and decide to major in English & Communication & Marketing instead. In India, where I come from, you simply didn't have a choice, (well, not until you were 18 anyway, by which time it was too late for most of us). You were asked to digest megadoses of math & science in high school. Hell, I remember working on some "preliminary math" problems when I did my Masters in CompSci in the US. The problems were ones I had previously encountered when I was in my early teens, in my high school! But the Professor said American undergrads needed that sort of thing!!
You guys have a choice, so you study literature & photography & journalism & whatnot in your high school. In India, the only choices are math, more math & much more math. So I can comfortably handle a second order differential equation. But to this day I have not studied Shakespear ( spelling ? ), Rosseu, Homer ( not simpson, the pgilosopher chap), Keats, Byron or any other literary figures. I just know the names cause we crammed them for various "general knowledge" quizzes!
Education systems are broken all over the world. In places like India & China, we get a one-sided hard-core math-sci curricula with no literature. In the US/UK, you guys get liberal arts with less math/science than what Bill Gates wants [zdnet.com] to hire.
Prizes are not the answer (Nor is a $100 laptpop for developing nations). I don't know what is.
Re:Prizes don't motivate as much as you think (Score:2)
Just FYI: Homer was a Greek poet, not a philosopher.
Stupid norwegians (Score:2)
Uninterest, Science, Math, and Understanding (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Uninterest, Science, Math, and Understanding (Score:2)
Re:Uninterest, Science, Math, and Understanding (Score:3, Insightful)
We become, quite literally, educated fools
Thanks to modern mathematics, it is mathematically proven that mathematics is NOT just syntax and logic.
There are many deep and fundamental concepts in mathematics. Syntax is the necess
scientific prizes (Score:3, Insightful)
Most kids don't ask the questions that lead to discovery. You could blame that on the schools, but realize that public schools simply aren't for that type of thing. Public schools are for the sake of economic growth. When the economy grows more opportunities for scientific advancements are possible (believe it or not.)
Science isn't popular among youth because there are so many pleasures abound, and few opportunities to ask "what is going on here?" All they hear concerning academics is "do your homework." It's just something that "has to be done." Mathematics, easily the most astounding acheivement of human intellect, is taught merely algorithmically. Students are taught only to learn procedure, rather than to discover.
Re:Where? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where? (Score:2)
Re:More Prizes the Better (Score:2, Interesting)
Definitely. I for one would like to see the Evil Genius Awards. These would honor mad scientists in fields such as Death Ray Technology, Underground Lair Architecture, Mind Control, and Reanimation of Dead Tissue. Acceptance speeches would, of course, all
Re:Reward for Mathematics? (Score:4, Informative)
I thought the Field's medal was supposed to be the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics.
Re:Awards Show (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Science won't be popular until... (Score:2)
This isn't exactly true. While the government certainly spends a lot on weapons systems, ask the engineers that work at those defense contractors how much they're paid and you'll find they're not exactly seeing a lot of that money in their paychecks. Defense contracting jobs are very stable, but well-paid they are not (like every other engineerin