According to a report released by UNESCO (the U.N. Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization – really? That’s a combination?) today, emerging ecnonomies such as China, India, and South Korea have increased their R&D spending as a percentage of their GDP. The data reports these countries increasing the spending from 27 to 32 percent of GDP while America, Japan and the E.U. all reporting decreases. These “top” countries still are the preferred locations for researchers and scientists as well as the sources for the greatest number of patent filings.

While we’ll take this with a grain of salt given the source could benefit from a growth in emerging economies, the report is a disturbing trend for the United States. Innovation, largely stemming from R&D, is the means to break open new markets through new products and services. This would represent real growth in jobs and wealth within the economy. R&D is usually an easy target for budget cutters when faced with the hard times. We need to resist serious cuts to the innovation budgets within the U.S. and strive to lead the world in a variety of fields.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.