Comments on: Congress Wastes Funds Investigating Funds Not Being Wasted!!11!!

By: dogmatichaos

dogmatichaos — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:31:28 +0000

I remember very well hearing about the supposed “shrimp on a treadmill” while listening to talk radio. My one thought was: “why am I 99.99% certain there’s much more to the story than what you seem to be making out.”

By: Melody Kohut

Melody Kohut — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:21:51 +0000

With this attitude, why not fire all mathematicians? I mean, abstract concepts with so much jargon most people have no idea what a given paper is even talking about. It's not like abstract maths has ever yielded practical applications.

By: Artor

Artor — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:20:32 +0000

Bobby Jindal tried his hand at this a few years ago and failed miserably. “Who needs to spend X-million dollars on ‘volcano monitoring’? *snark*” 2 weeks before the unpronounceable volcano in Iceland went off and disrupted air traffic patterns over a couple continents. Unfortunately for us, not every Teabagging congressman is as unfortunate as Jindal.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:19:27 +0000

The one about toenail clippings was pretty funny because evidently the Congresscritter’s staff wasn’t aware that your fingernails toenails and hair carry what is essentially a record of your exposure to many chemicals, including nicotine and drugs.

I want to know what happened if the reporter pointed this out. But maybe that’s too much to hope for.

I dunno, sometimes I am in the camp of “you get the government you deserve.” Then I realize that every one of these anti-science Congressmen stands for things that would make us into a semi-fascist nation.

By: Fred Magyar

Fred Magyar — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 01:40:59 +0000

Congress is in charge of the federal budget. That is a constitutional reality.

And here is the consequence of that reality!

http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

One of the best info graphics I’ve ever seen!

A picture that’s worth multiple trillions of words…

By: John Huey

John Huey — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 19:18:53 +0000

I remember one of the Golden Fleece Awards going to a study of why butterfly wings are so colorful. Proxmire thought that such a study was just ridiculous and completely useless. Well, several years later the results of that study went into making the reflective paint on roads much better.

Again, here we have a basic science question that on the surface has no particular usefulness, other that to let us understand the world better, that ends up having a practical application that makes the world safer.

Has someone reviewed all the GFA studies to see how many of them lead to useful applications?

By: SLC

SLC — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 19:12:34 +0000

Having been employed in an agency that received two golden fleece awards, I have some familiarity with the process. In some fairness to the late Senator Proxmire, before issuing the “award”, a member of his staff would call the individual listed as being in charge of the study and give him/her a chance to defend it. Today, this is no longer the case as the anti-science clowns in Congress have no interest in what the person in charge has to say for himself/herself.