Slashdot Mirror
The President, The State of the Union, and Genetics
At last night's State of the Union, the president said "Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos."
Jamie happened onto a link today which humorously and insightfully
addresses this bit from the speech. It's worth your time. Relatedly segphault writes "Ars Technica has an interesting look at scientific research and technology proposals included in Bush's State of the Union address."
Well he did. But he pronounced it wrong.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
... but humans *are* animals.
Here's another one: Money Talks.
.....The biggest increase in NSF's FY05 budget goes to its Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account, which receives a 37.6-percent increase, bringing its funding level to $213.2 million in 2004.
The NSF's budget has increased every year during the Bush administration. From 2001-2003, for example, the NSF granted more money to more researchers every year. Last year's budget proposed by Bush, according to the ACS included similar increases:
The FY05 administration request for NSF is $5.7 billion, a 3-percent increase or $167 million over the FY04 budget.....a 4.7-percent increase for the NSF Research & Related Activities account.
The FY05 NSF increases would bring the average annual research grant award size to approximately $142,000, up $3,000 over FY04. Average annual grant duration would continue to be 3 years.
Oh yeah, and the NIH budget doubled[pdf] from 1999 to 2003. For several of those years, a man named George W. Bush was president.
WMDs, well first off we knew he had them because we sold them to him. It wasn't a question of weather or not he had them it was weather or not he was still ready to use them and what he was going to do with them. We just had Sadam's #2 state that they did have WMDs as recently as 2002 but they were shipped out as discretly as possible. It wasn't only the US that said they had WMDs either it was pretty much everybody. Of course France and Germany had their heads so far up Sadams ass to get oil that they like to change what they had said. If Sadam didn't have any he was going out of his way to make people think he did.
Oil? where is this mythical oil that the US is suppose to be getting? Why is Bush saying we need to get rid of our dependancy on oil? Or are you just paroting lies from the other side.
Pork barrel spending is something that congress does. Bush has attacked it at every point that he can. Congres has been rejecting everything he has suggested because it would kill their little pork projects.
I'm still trying to figure out what he's lied about with the wire taps? He seems to be telling congress pretty much everything. He belives he has the right under executive power in a time of war, they think he was wrong and should fill out extra paper work. If you don't want to be wire tapped then don't communicate with terrists. It's really that simple.
All this and I really don't like Bush. Go figure, I just pay attention.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.