First of all, I don't think you should neglect other things, you have to find the right balance to do things. And one of the, to my mind, most important balance is to balance science in the sense that you support applied science and fundamental science. To me, there's only one science, and there's a whole grey area, so it ranges from absolutely fundamental to absolutely applied. But you have to keep in mind there is a virtuous circle: you have fundamental science which drives innovation which drives applied science... and if you break this virtuous circle, you break something for mankind. So you have to be very careful not to break that circle somehow.
Secondly, in a more blunt statement, if there's no fundamental or basic science, then you lose the basis for applied science. And you should look around at how many things came out of the basic, "blue-sky" science compared to the applied science.
You have to get the right balance. If you have one sack of corn, do you eat it or do you plant it? In both cases you are going to starve and die. You have to find the balance: part of it you eat, and part of it you plant. And this balance has to be found...
And you should also see what comes out of this [basic] scientific innovation. I mean, 23 years ago, the World Wide Web was born here, and this has changed the world dramatically. It was born because we needed it, because we were doing our science.
So if you take all of this together, I think there's a lot of justification, once you find the right balance, but the right balance cannot mean that you suppress either fundamental or that you suppress applied science.
