Disney impersonations we weren't even trying to do...

Maximillian from the Black Hole:

Us parasailing over Bay Lake in Walt Disney World, May '07.

It the paritsans agree on *stupid* things, then bipartisanship isn't a virtue...

Pharyngula: Cutting science already?:

Read this: wherever Obama has proposed stimulus spending for science, conservative senators propose chopping back massively. The increase in support for NSF? Gone completely. NASA's boost? Cut in half. And on and on.

These cuts have not passed yet, but they will soon if you don't howl at your senators.

Science Gets the Shaft - The Panda's Thumb:

US Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are proposing to cut the stimulus/spending package by roughly 10%. Their staff have identified several “useless” programs included in the bill, and it appears that they consider science funding to be one of those useless pursuits.

Over the last 50 years, much of our economic development has been driven by science, and at a time when the US is faced with losing its scientific dominance to China and the EU, the US needs increased science funding. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime. Fund fishing research, and your children all eat for a lifetime.

From the list of stimulus projects that are on the cutting block:

* NSF 100% cut ($1,402,000,000)
* NASA exploration 50% cut ($750,000,000)
* NOAA 34.94% cut ($427,000,000)
* NIST 37.91% cut ($218,000,000)
* DOE energy efficiency & renewable energy 38% cut ($1,000,000,000)
* DOE office of science 100% cut ($100,000,000)

If you have an opinion about these cuts, you should make it known to your Senators because they will soon be voting on this proposal.

Mind, you, NSF already has plenty of "shovel-ready" grants to give, projects that have been in holding patterns for a couple of years now given the anti-science bias of the current Republican party. Senators should keep in mind that those grants don't stay trapped in DC (or, well, Balston). They go to the science and engineering schools in their own states.  Remind them of that, while you're at it.

The Great HOWEVER...

Pure Pedantry : Scientists Should Be Skeptical of Funding Through the Stimulus Package:

David Goldston, writing in Nature, echoes a point I have been trying to make about the science provisions of the economic stimulus package. He lists some reasons why scientists should be wary of getting our funding this way:

A couple of big items to ponder:

[Goldstein:] inclusion in the stimulus bill means the science money must be awarded with unusual, perhaps even reckless, speed. With the exception of the NIH, research agencies under the House bill will have to spend the funds within 120 days. That means that the National Science Foundation (NSF), for example, would have to allocate $3 billion -- a 50% increase in its budget -- in four months. As of last week, the NSF was still figuring out how it could do that -- whether to make more awards in whatever grant competitions it happens to have ongoing when a bill is signed, whether to revive worthy proposals from past competitions that were rejected because of lack of funds or whether to try some other strategy.

[...]

For starters, we are risking creating a market bubble in young researchers much like what happened in the Clinton and early Bush administration. Having graduate programs increase their size just to shrink again doesn't benefit anyone -- not young researchers, not programs, and not the public. Funding stability should be just as much a priority as funding size.

[...]

Third, we can't spend that much money both quickly and efficiently. Even after we get through the backlog of unfunded grants, there is going to be a lot of waste. As Goldston points out, all of that waste is going to be publicized eventually. If we end up funding even a little pseudoscience with this gush of money, we are going to pay for it in credibility. People will focus on the the minority of wasteful or misguided projects rather than the mostly good science.

What I want -- what I think we should all ask for -- is a decade-long commitment to scientific funding from Congress. While I understand scientists' glee at finally getting out of the sparer years of the Bush administration, the stimulus package is not a good way to fund science and may end up doing more harm than good.

This is not to say that the cuts were proposed because "wiser heads prevailed" and considered these points (likely not a single one came to mind to any Senator). The cuts are still the result of pig-ignorance, putting budgets (and anti-science politics) ahead of science, reason, and our future.

after hearing these same claims against unemployment benefits for, well, 80 years...

...i'm really getting sick of them and the ignorant and hateful attitude behind them

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Dumbass Quote of the Week #2:

From former House speaker Dennis Hastert:

Basically, a big part of that (stimulus package) went for extending unemployment. It's a nice thing to do, but when you extend unemployment, you take the incentive away from people to go out and get a job. So it almost has a counter negative effect.

Right. Because all those unemployed people are just sitting around eating bon bons. They just don't want to find a job in this booming economy. What an asshole.

And an asshole from the supposedly "American Christian" party at that. Sickens me how people act as though they never read a word written by Him yet claim to "read it every day".

yeah, i'm just weird...

(image by cyberkender, originally meant to be a Cthulu Brain, but, well, I saw something different and ran with it...)

They're Pinky and The Ood 
Yes, Pinky and The Ood
One is a genius
He's also a nice dude.
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced
They're dinky
They're Pinky and The Ood, Ood, Ood, Ood
Ood, Ood, Ood, Ood
Ood. 

Before each night is done
Dinner plans will be unfurled
By the dawning of the sun
They'll serve coffee to the world.

They're Pinky and The Ood
Yes, Pinky and The Ood
Their easy going mood
Is served up with the food.
To prove their mousey worth

Serving cocktails to the Earth
They're dinky
They're Pinky and The Ood, Ood, Ood, Ood
Ood, Ood, Ood, Ood
My Pleasure!