[bjterry]

I had a different but related reaction to point 8 specifically. He seems to imply (although it's not totally clear since he treats the academy as a single unit) that people who have come up with theory should turn their individual attention to practical applications after it's well-developed. But it may be that people who are good at theory simply aren't good at applications. It could be better if once something was ready for practical applications, those theory-people went and worked on developing theory in a different area, rather than trying to become applied. If we aren't seeing enough practical application, perhaps it's because we aren't rewarding application sufficiently (seems unlikely), or people aren't being rewarded sufficiently for practical applications of other people's theories (seems possible?), so we have less appliers than is optimal.