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US House Approves Over $300 Million For Science Agencies
sciencehabit notes that the US House of Representatives has allotted an additional $337.5 million in budget increases divided amongst four science agencies. NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science will each receive an additional $62.5 million, and the National Institutes of Health will receive $150 million. The money will help to offset the decision to reduce budget increases earlier this year. Early plans for the money include the training of new math and science teachers, and another reprieve for FermiLab's financial troubles.
Somthing like that...
In other news, $162 billion was just approved for the war in Iraq. Oh, and a few more billion for some congress people's pet projects.
<sarcasm>Good to see we have our priorities straight. Also good to see the democrats following through on their promise to stop funding the "war" now that they're the majority. I'd hate to think democrats and republicans were both equally useless.</sarcasm>
Maybe not
NIH: A bunch of self-serving PhDs that make policies about public health then go on to corporations that benefit from those policies. The NIH has yet to do a scientific study on weight loss. (Note: combining diet /and/ exercise in a study is not scientific, as you can't tell if it was diet or exercise that produced the result.)
That's quite a bizarre statement. The NIH does really run any studies, it's a funding body. The have an entire center dedicated to funding obesity research. Here's an example of an NIH funded diet and weight loss study.
Obviously any trial of say diet and weight loss has to involve exercise as a factor to be held constant, otherwise you never will be able to separate the effects. Having said that since we know both diet and exercise affect obesity there isn't a lot of point studying them both separately any more. What is now needed and what the NIH is currently funding a lot of are studies to find ways to actually get people to eat properly and to exercise more by making global lifestyle changes. Kind of life this one".
Bush is hardly a tightwad, keep in mind, with one exception (stem cell bill) he never vetoed a spending bill before the Democrats took control.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
There is a lot we don't teach children. We don't teach them that the sun revolves around the earth. We don't teach them 2 + 2 = 5. We should also not teach them the fairytales of a few deranged retards that creationism is.
Science is based heavily on faith,,
It isn't. Don't fool yourself. What you might think is faith, is the gap between a model of reality and reality itself. Simplified it goes like this:
- Observe a phenomenon that you can't explain with current theory;
- Think what could/should be changed about the current model of reality (the theory) to make this fit;
- With this new model, predict some other phenomena;
- Experiment to check this;
- If there is experimental evidence, hooray! You now have a better theory! If not, go to step 2.
With this, you end up with a better theory, a better model of reality. And YES, scientist KNOW that this is not the truth, that everyday a rival theory could explain reality better, simpler or more complete. This is the scientific method. No faith required.There are always bits of evidence that don't fit our theories or models, and we have to be honest about that.
Yes, these gaps are what make good scientist go "hmmm, I wonder if...", right before they go off to do science.
Evolution isn't as obvious as people like to claim. If it is, then why did it take until 1859 for The Origin of Species to be published, which was more than 100 years after Linneaus described the systematic nature of biology?
The fact that the earth revolves around the sun isn't as obvious as people like to claim, If it is, why did it take until Galileo, which was more than thousands of years after the Greek had access to math?
The single most important handbrake on the development of human intellect has always been religion.
Abstract mathematics introduced as a series of logic puzzles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
No, not really.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
First of all, you can't dismiss the issue of whether it's viewed as science or not; that's the very crux of the problem! If all the creationists wanted was to have Christian mythology taught in the same context as Greek, Norse, and whatever other kind of mythology, then we wouldn't have a problem. But they don't. They want it to be taught as if it were (literally) the Gospel Truth, as part of (or rather, a replacement for) science class.
And that's what's wrong: whether creationism is True or not is irrelevant, because science isn't concerned with Truth. Science is concerned with rigor and proof instead. Science is nothing more or less than the application of the Scientific Method. Period. That's all.
In contrast, creationist arguments (including "Intelligent Design") explicitly reject the Scientific Method, choosing to instead assume that "because we don't know this, it must be unknowable and therefore God did it." Including such bullshit in science class would completely undermine it (which is exactly what the proponents of "Intelligent Design" want, of course), which is intolerable. Essentially, what the teachers would have to say is something like "Okay, so here's the Scientific Method, which is the fundamental basis of all science and which all scientific theories follow, except this theory (i.e., "ID") that doesn't but which the state says I have to claim is science anyway." I mean really, WTF?!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz