Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' Urges Letters To Obama To Restore NASA Budget Cuts

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Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' Urges Letters To Obama To Restore NASA Budget Cuts

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 13, 2012 @10:57AM from the or-send-twenties dept.

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.'"

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Romney too. by xzvf · 2012-10-13 11:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

Write them both, either could be president in January, and maybe they'll bring up NASA funding around job creation during the election.
1. Re:Romney too. by LostCluster2.0 · 2012-10-13 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  However, Romney has no credibility on budgets... he claimed that he left MA with a $20 Billion "Rainy Day Fund" when actually that was $20 Million in a debate just before the NH Primary that was televised by CNN.
  
  --
  I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
2. Re:Romney too. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-13 11:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You know, I'll harken you back to your own side's statement at the recent VP debate. Ryan waxed eloquently on how there was a difference between a person who only had criticism and somebody who had a solution, presenting himself as a solution provider.
  Yet like him, you have only offered criticism and attacks, empty ones that you probably don't even support. Seriously, Obama compromised with Republicans on the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and you still attack him on it?
  Show some integrity.
  Not that any of your other attacks are necessarily valid, but that one is especially void.
  BTW, I prefer not letting a religion dictate to me what the laws are going to be. If you want to call making a decision on the laws based on objective principles and not the whims of a cranky old man in Rome to be a war on religion, that's on you.
3. Re:Romney too. by ohnocitizen · 2012-10-13 11:59 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Still Obama. You don't seem to understand credibility vs ability. Romney's budgets in MA, and his proposed budgets for the US are full of lies that don't add up. Obama's budget - and his inability to find funding for planetary science (and fight those in both parties who oppose such funding) is an issue of ability. He's not making up numbers.
4. Re:Romney too. by jamstar7 · 2012-10-13 12:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  As compared to President Obama and a democratic majority in the Senate who create no budgets and spend $1 Trillion in deficits each year, yet can't manage to fund planetary science. Who has credibility then?
  Except budgets are started in the House per Federal law, which has been packed with Teaparty & Teaparty wannabes the last 2 years. Also, the Senate has enough Repubs & Teapartiers to fillibuster a call to vote for lunch and the 'Democratic majority' doesn't have the votes to get them to shut the fuck up. Nice strawman. Try again.
  
  --
  Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
5. Re:Romney too. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-13 12:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Yes it is pathetic: the Republicans sponsored a bill that they called the president's budget when it of course was not, and it was unsurprisingly defeated 97-0. The 99-0 vote was a repeat of the same pathetic Republican political antics. You have to be stupid to believe that zero Democratic Senators would be willing to vote for an actual White House budget.
6. Re:Romney too. by sycodon · 2012-10-13 12:59 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  So...Republicans did NOT work with the Democrat Bill Clinton to pass the (now gutted by Executive Order) Welfare Reform which helped launch several years of balanced budgets (at least as balanced as they get in D.C.)
  No, you are playing the race card, plain and simple. Congratulations, you won the race to the bottom.
  
  --
  When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
7. Re:Romney too. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-13 13:41 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  There have been tax cuts for the past 10 years. Where are the goddamn jobs at? Oh right, they're in India and China. How is giving the rich another tax break going to help the middle class? Face it, trickle down doesn't work and is one of the biggest lies foisted on the American people. It's not a cooincidence that the standard of living in this country started going to shit after Reagan.
8. Re:Romney too. by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-10-13 13:53 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Well, they might actually try working with them instead of trying to get them to "shut the fuck up".
  Democrats seem to be all about compromise as long as it's the Republicans doing the compromising.
  Your statement is so completely opposed to reality that I have to wonder what color the sky is on your planet.
  The simple fact is that the Republicans in Congress have voted as a unified bloc, over and over, ever since Obama took office, while the Democrats have not. That's about as objective a measure of (un)willingness to compromise as you can find. The Democrats have compromised over and over again in a futile attempt to get the Republicans to agree to something--anything!--to help fix the mess the Republicans created, and which the Republicans are clearly determined to maintain. The Republican definition of compromise is "do everything I tell you, and I might hold off on calling you an America-hating socialist terrorist-lover for a day or so."
  
  --
  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
9. Re:Romney too. by Zagnar · 2012-10-13 14:54 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Maybe it's feeding trolls here but this is correct. The budget wasn't the president's, it was put forth by an Alaskan senator. We're all civilized people here, perhaps we should check that our sources aren't from far left news sites next time. Here's a source from a local newspaper, not some dreadfully slanted news site. http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_20640869/senate-rejects-budget-passed-by-republicans-house
10. Re:Romney too. by thrich81 · 2012-10-13 17:03 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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...
11. Re:Romney too. by Rockoon · 2012-10-13 21:05 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  So...Republicans did NOT work with the Democrat Bill Clinton to pass the (now gutted by Executive Order) Welfare Reform
  To be quite fair, the Republicans forced Clinton into a balanced budget by shutting down the government and threatening to shut it down again. The Democrats have been saying that Clinton was responsible for the balanced budget for so long now, that even people such as yourself that contradict that belief still give him some credit.
  
  It all started with a document called Contract With America, and while we may no longer like Newt because of his womanizing and corruption, he still got real beneficial stuff done while Speaker of the House. Very smart man, with certainly questionable ethics. Nobody is perfect, but we benefited.
  
  All-in-all tho, the most credit for the balanced budget should go to the tech bubble, not to Newt, the Republicans, and certainly not to Clinton.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
12. Re:Romney too. by Rockoon · 2012-10-13 21:41 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The simple fact is that the Republicans in Congress have voted as a unified bloc, over and over, ever since Obama took office, while the Democrats have not.
  
  The actual voting record says that BOTH parties have behaved as a unified block on the exact same issues.
  
  These are the very last 10 House votes, no cherry picking of any kind.. I just picked the last 10.
  
  Roll Call 603 Republicans 214-13, Democrats 19-162
  Roll Call 602 Republicans 0-227, Democrats 173-6
  Roll Call 601 Republicans 215-10, Democrats 11-171
  Roll Call 600 Republicans 218-11, Democrats 10-172
  Roll Call 599 Republicans 7-222, Democrats 161-21
  Roll Call 598 Republicans 3-225, Democrats 157-25
  Roll Call 597 Republicans 224-4, Democrats 23-159
  Roll Call 596 Republicans 2-227, Democrats 162-20
  Roll Call 595 Republicans 0-228, Democrats 164-18
  Roll Call 594 Republicans 222-6, Democrats 20-162
  
  These are the actual numbers, not just some pundit bullshit. Notice that the largest deviation from "uniform block" on the Democrat side was only 1 out of 7.28. Sure, the Republicans are a bit more partisan, but the Democrat voting record hardly paints the picture that you are trying to paint.
  
  It almost seems like you just believe whatever Democrat pundits will tell you. I check up on claims like these because I know for a fact that the media will not, while you just repeat whatever bullshit your party tells you to repeat. What does that tell you about the difference between people like me and people like you, and will this demonstration that should be wholly embarrassing for you effect your future critical thinking when listening to Democrat pundits? Will you just repeat a lie next time when you arent sure what the facts actually are? I wonder.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
13. Re:Romney too. by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-10-14 04:31 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Aaaand now you've demonstrated the complete Republican departure from reality. Did you actually look at the numbers you posted? It is absolutely clear from that list that far more Democrats are willing to vote against the majority of their fellow party members than Republicans are. Let's look at the numbers in terms of percentage of members breaking from the party line:
  603: Republicans 6% / Democrats 10%
  602: Republicans 0% / Democrats 3%
  601: Republicans 4% / Democrats 6%
  600: Republicans 5% / Democrats 5%
  599: Republicans 3% / Democrats 12%
  598: Republicans 1% / Democrats 14%
  597: Republicans 2% / Democrats 13%
  596: Republicans 1% / Democrats 11%
  595: Republicans 0% / Democrats 10%
  594: Republicans 3% / Democrats 11%
  On average, again just going from your own numbers, Democrats are willing to vote against their party line 10% of the time, Republicans 2%, a fivefold difference, and more than enough to make the difference in a close vote. If even 8% of Republicans were as willing to compromise as their Democratic colleagues are, the country wouldn't be in the mess it's in right now.
  Oh yeah, here's the R code in case you want to accuse me of playing games:
  # index rollcall = 603:594
  # 1 indicates members voting with party majority, 2 indicates members voting against r1 = c(215, 227, 215, 218, 222, 225, 224, 227, 228, 222) r2 = c(13, 0, 10, 11, 7, 3, 4, 2, 0, 6) d1 = c(162, 173, 171, 172, 161, 157, 159, 162, 164, 162) d2 = c(19, 6, 11, 10, 21, 25, 23, 20, 18, 20)
  # capital letters indicate ratios of members voting against party majority to total part members voting, expressed as percentages R = 100 * r2 / (r1 + r2) D = 100 * d2 / (d1 + d2)
  # package it up report = data.frame(rollcall, R, D) print(round(report))
  # mean percentages print(round(colMeans(report[c("R", "D")])))
  That should be enough to get you started for running some significance tests if you like.
  
  --
  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Read the Constitution... by CajunArson · 2012-10-13 11:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

The House is the body responsible for spending authorizations. If you want an increase in NASA's budget, write to your local congressman/woman first. The nice thing about the House is that with 435 members, it's theoretically possible that you might get some sort of response if there is enough constituent interest on the issue.

--
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Re:Bill Nye by Riceballsan · 2012-10-13 11:43 · Score: 4, Informative

Umm... Bill Nye actually has a job as executive director of the planetary society, has a degree in mechanical engineering and he's worked as an engineer at boeing. The man knows his physics, just because his acting is why he is well known, does not effect his actual qualifications.
Wait, what? by wonkey_monkey · 2012-10-13 11:47 · Score: 4, Informative

Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' Urges Letters To Obama To Restore NASA Budget Cuts
"Restoring cuts" sounds like NASA getting less money.

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
NASA broke even and even made money by danbuter · 2012-10-13 11:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Unlike just about every other branch of government, NASA routinely either broke even or even made money, thanks to all of the stuff they invented. Heck, if they had patented all of it, the government would have a huge cash cow in NASA.
Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks by sumdumass · 2012-10-13 13:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

You obviously do not know what science is. Science is not religion and does not say anything to religion because religion is full of supernatural claims that Science cannot prove or disprove.
Anyone who truly knows what science is would be indifferent about religion. They simply wouldn't care about it as it does not effect science at all.
NASA has almost never been funded very much. by Seumas · 2012-10-13 14:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

Except for the couple of years immediately after the president insisted we needed to go to the moon, where NASA consumed more than 4% of the national budget (but still wasn't very much), it has almost never accounted for a significant part of the budget in any way. For the entire life of the agency, the average budget (in 2007's dollars) has been something like $17,000,000,000/yr.
Hell, since 9/11, we have spent TWICE as much conducting war in the middle east as NASA has spent in its entire fifty-five year live time, in which it developed rocket technology. Developed shuttle technology. Helped improve countless other technologies (including those for the military). Helped generate entire new private industries. Shot a man into space. Shot around the moon. Landed men on the moon several times. Built space-suit-jets for men in space. Conducted space walks. Built a space car. Built and deployed a telescope to see to the beginning of time. Built and manned a space station. Built one (wait, two?) little RC cars that we landed on the surface of Mars. Then built an SUV that we landed on Mars. Not to mention the satellites above our heads. The satellites far out in space, exploring the universe for decades, now. . .
All of that is in *today's* dollars.
So, let's not fool ourselves into believing NASA has ever had a "ton of funding". But, just think what we could accomplish if we blew up a few less brown people or facilitated a few fewer corporate (Haliburtin, KDR, etc) contracts in Afghanistan or Iraq with government resources and just funneled that little bit of money to NASA. Maybe push 5% of that "searchin' for WMDs" money over to NASA. Who knows what fucking amazing shit we could do?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Private industry yadda yadda. That'd be fine, if we apply that consistently. But if we're going to be debating what's worth funding, how the fuck is pursuing one of the most primitive needs of mankind not near the top of the list?
Instead, we have to bank the whole of our space exploration on the guy who ships books and kindles to your doorstep, the guy behind Doom and Rage, and the guy behind PayPal. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but . . .
Re:Not sure I care what Bill Nye thinks by tbird81 · 2012-10-13 17:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Examples of "supernatural" (a.k.a. bullshit) claims that science can help answer:
* Does prayer work to cure the sick? Sciences indicates no.
* Was the world formed in six days? Science indicates no.
* Did Noah get every species onto a boat? Science indicates no.
* Are we reincarnated? Sciences indicates no.
These can all be proved negative to my satisfaction.
I didn't say science has anything to say about religion. Science is merely the act of trying to find answers with reason, and proving it with evidence. It's not a religion - it doesn't say a thing.
I said "Anyone who truly understands science is..." not "Science is...".
People who understand science see people being swindled by religion all the time - people are hurt by religion. Think about the babies raped in Africa to "cure HIV" - this is an extreme example of a false belief that is widely shared - basically a disorganised religion. If these people thought scientifically, they wouldn't do that. Same with faith healers, fortune telling, cold reading, greedy evangelists, stoned women etc.