...Bin Jin...bested 4,200 other competitors...to win TopCoder's annual algorithm contest. He and others delivered a Sputnik-style beat-down to the United States in the process.
Of the 70 finalists, 20 were Chinese. Ten were Russian. Six were Indonesian. Six more came from Ukraine. Four of the finalists were Canadian. Poland (population 38 million), the Philippines (92 million), and Argentina (40 million) placed three programmers apiece in the finals. The number of U.S. finalists: two. The number of U.S. champions in the nine events: none.
Experts say it's further proof that science and math illiteracy are endangering U.S. global competitiveness, and could even threaten U.S. national security.
How can America possibly be bad at science when so many of us are so rightly convinced that genes are bunk, evolution isn't reality, the Earth's climate isn't changing, and none of it matters anyway because Jesus is returning soon?
