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Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' Urges Letters To Obama To Restore NASA Budget Cuts
MarkWhittington writes "Bill Nye, once known as 'The Science Guy' for his 1990s PBS educational television show, has cut a YouTube video in his current capacity of CEO of the Planetary Society urging people to write to President Obama to restore cuts to planetary science. The budget cuts were enacted by the president last February, causing consternation in the scientific community. Nye writes, 'If that proposal continues the steep decline in funding to NASA's planetary program it will gravely endanger the unique capabilities and outstanding people that have delivered U.S. leadership in space. We will lose a capability that took decades to develop and may never be replaced.'"
He was "Bill Nye the Science Guy" back when he was a role player on "Almost Live!", which was a Seattle-area comic sketch show in the 80s and 90s.
Most of the time he was just a stock player, but occasionally he'd do a science-comedy mashup; and for each year's New Year's special episode he'd rig up some Rube Goldberg sciency contraption that'd be used to count down to the new year.
Although I think I liked him best as Speed Walker, who fought crime while adhering to the conventions of the International Speed Walking Association.
#DeleteChrome
Tthe Race Card...now why didn't I see that coming?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
More accurately, the American governmental structure has failed in this age of computer generated gerrymandering and microtargeted "news" networks and sites. The voters hear only what reinforces their exiting biases and elect representatives to resist the "evil" of the other side, not compromise. The House can pass fully partisan bills with no cooperation from the minority party so it appears to function, but since the legislation passed in the House can't be passed in the Senate then the House's efforts are only for show. If the House passed more bi-partisan bills, then they may have a chance in the Senate. The Senate has its problems from arcane rules, most glaringly that a minority (and sometimes a single Senator) can block any progress at all. This is all exacerbated by the "winner take all" type of elections the US has where a winner of an election by 50.1% can govern like he got a mandate -- the poster child for this was the first term of GW Bush, who won election with fewer total votes than the loser but governed like he had got 80% of the vote -- his VP famously said, "Elections have consequences". There is no incentive for any lawmaker to compromise any more. The federal system is totally broken. Interestingly, California may have found a way out of this disaster with their new primary system which rewards centrists, we'll see...