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Ted Cruz To Oversee NASA and US Science Programs
romanval sends word that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) will become the new chairman of the subcommittee that oversees NASA and government scientific research. Cruz has both spoken in favor of NASA and attempted to cut its budget, but he's most notable for his opposition to the science supporting climate change. From the article:
His vociferous opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and his support of extreme budget cuts could spell trouble for NASA's less prominent programs, such as its own climate research and sophisticated supercomputers. His role on the front lines of the 2013 government shutdown, which critics say had lasting negative effects on public safety, NASA research and EPA scientists' ability to visit contaminated sites, also suggests at best a narrow focus on NASA's largest projects and at worst a disregard for agencies that require science funding.
Hello pork projects for Boeing.
Joel Osteen to head committee on Evolution?
This is what democracy is all about.
If this wasn't so sad, it'd be funny. NASA's new prime directive: find evidence that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago. :(
maybe we can buy a few more stealth fighters and beat the chinese at the superpower game.
Why do we keep putting people who have a history of being enemies of the scientific community to the scientific subcommittees in Congress? This does nothing productive except give people like Jon Stewart more material.
Will now be running the daycare on Capital Hill
Thank goodness the democrats didn't nominate for this post, otherwise it would have been a black guy who thinks NASA's purpose is to make Muslim's feel good.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
All part of our new program to send a rocket to heaven! It's what Jesus and Pat Robertson would want.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So government gets shut down, pausing pork programs etc etc, and NASA becomes an unfortunate casualty. Yet the summary (and the vitriol around the webs) makes it sound like the shutdown was targeted specifically at NASA
Also, explain to this Canadian why NASA is researching climate. Isn't NOAA supposed to be the agency for that? Isn't it National Aeronautics and Space Administration, responsible for air and space flight, not everything under the sun?
you put socialists in charge of monetary policy, so what the fuck did you expect?
So much for intelligent life on Earth. Forget about the rest of the universe.
After some thought, I think that would in fact be better than Ted Cruz. All we would have to do was tell him the commies are building X and we would get funding to build X twice as big.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Just NUKE the fucking USA already!
It makes sense that they'd get to make this guy the chair.
There's Obama and a handful of dems between you and this shit stain crook from dumbfuckistan, USA.
Big fuck you to the limp wristed mealy mouthed "Both parties are the same!" cowards. Participate or shut the fuck up and let the adults tell you what to do.
Real bad.
Nigeria is laughing at us. I'm waiting for other nations to start sending us foreign aid.
Surely, next time I look up the definition of irony in the dictionary, it will contain the quote "Ted Cruz heading Science Committee" -- or perhaps that's an oxymoron, like "Military Intelligence" or "Jumbo Shrimp".
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
But we see yet again that the ignorant, superstitious, anti-science, theocratic throwbacks are concentrated in the Republican party, and have driven everyone with an IQ over room-temperature out. "Conservative" is clearly a subset of "stupid."
Yo, Ted Cruz doesn't care about science people.
-- drops mike
We're talking about Houston, not Houston, beeotches.
Republicans in charge of NASA's budget. What could go wrong?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Who amongst us is the biggest bible thumper?
That would be Ted Cruz..
Good, he has the job.. Now we can blame all of the stuff Nasa doesn't do on Obama in the next election and cut Nasa funding at the same time!
But wait, you say, This is Obamas last term, he can't run again..
But you also forget, Jeb Bush is going to try to run for president so the republican mandate is to screw up as many things as they can while Obama still is president so the right wing can do what it has been doing since 2008, which is to blame anything and everything on Obama.
It does not matter that anything remotely scientific is so far out of Cruz's wheelhouse to be ridiculous.
I want out of this idiotic country!
After all, apocalyptic Global Warming made exclusively by evil white racist Republicans -- oh but I repeat myself --- is a proven scientific fact and anyone who disagrees is just an infidel -- uh I mean "right wing religious extremist denier scum".
Why waste government money studying Settled Science (TM)?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
To the average American, NASA is just a huge portion of the budget (Billions! of dollars) spent to put some clown in orbit a couple of times a year. This is, in fact, exactly what they want based on their knowledge of what NASA does. All the technology gained by what NASA has learned over the decades by doing the hard and impossible things is entirely lost on Joe Sixpack. And, unfortunately, government / private interaction is not an efficient (in the economic sense) sense, so that the effects of cuts won't be felt where the average person lives for 20 years. It's our own damned fault for living in a country filled with morons.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Conservative" is clearly a subset of "stupid."
You've just put down 35% - 50% (depending on definition of 'Conservative') of your fellow countrymen. Good job.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You might not be excited about it, but Senator Cruz is ready to get to work! He's going to start by tasking NASA with finding where all those letters and numbers go when the teachers wipe them off the whiteboards, and if Obama is involved somehow.
Just because he doesn't want the EPA running around making overbearing rules that help no-one, doesn't mean he has anything against further NASA climate research and ESPECIALLY means nothing about being against a bank of supercomputers, which can you realize be used for any purpose?
The very fact he;s spoken in favor of NASA before is a GOOD THING. It didn't have to be that way and there are plenty (Democrat and Republican) that would not be nearly so favorable of NASA.
Bad press you see around Cruz in generally farmed up by people trying to prevent him running for president.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is what democracy is all about.
You get what you pay for - oh, you're not paying? Then you're probably not getting. Welcome to the Corporatocracy (tm).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Just curious, is there anybody on any point of the right/left political spectrum, who doesn't see this as a bad thing?
Even if you're basically against the idea of the government pointing guns at peoples' heads to take money away from them, and spending it on scientific research (I'm sort of on the fence on that, but mostly against it; I'd rather science be more privatized) how can putting a dishonest moron in IN CHARGE be anything other than a disaster? Whether his political opinions happen to fall on the right or left, being an observations-denier simply means he will spending money stupidly. It's not like being anti-science is going to end up serving a conservative agenda, where people get their money back.
Or will it? That's the question. Does spending money in a blatantly anti-science way, serve a tax-cutting agenda? I suppose the idea is that if the money isn't merely taken unfairly, but taken unfairly and foolishly, it might encourage more people to vote to end the taxation? Is that the big-picture strategy here?
(Whether or not we as a society should force a pro-science agenda upon unconsenting taxpayers who think climbing out of ignorance has opportunity costs (i.e. knowledge costs freedom), I understand can be right/left political. But what you see when you look at lots of thermometers, surely can't be a function of whether you prefer Burke to Marx.)
> I'm waiting for other nations to start sending us foreign aid.
You can stop waiting. Foreign aid is most commonly in the form of loans. We've been borrowing from China for decades. As Slash would say, "First we did a little, but a little wouldn't do, so the little got more and more."
The SETI program should have terminated when scans for a 21 cm radio wave turned up negative, about a decade ago. It was a nice experiment, but it came up negative. Nearby aliens are not looking around to establish contact on that obvious wavelength. Lets accept it, and terminate the SETI program.
What can anyone (republicans, libertarians, etc.) have to gain from this choice? Couldn't they have put, literally, anyone else in this spot? Even Ted Cruz has to understand that defunding science hurts everyone. Is the goal to just make everything shit over the next two years?
Fuck this. I'm sick of it. All we seem to be doing in politics anymore is just trying to piss the other guy off and it's infuriating. Can't we strive for ANY sort of progress that isn't to just oppose the other guy, or is that too much to ask?
I smell a big Carly Fiona moment coming...
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Ever wonder why people who say climate change is not happening are so hell bent on making sure no one studies it? If they are right, the science would back them up. Clearly the only logical conclusion is that they know they are wrong.
Tyson / Nye 2016! WRITE IT IN! Bring science into the White House before we all die from some easily avoidable global disaster.
Ted Cruz is likely to take it rather badly
If dollars command power in the Congress this is quite a slap in the Ego
And, there aren't that many NASA Lobbyist with deep pockets
As for real space efforts.. at least there's still SpaceX
It's Slashdot stories like this that turns Slashdot into a retarded version of the DailyKOS.
The warmingists have always said 'the science is done'. So, I guess no more research money, right?
The saying "May all your wishes be granted" is a Chinese curse.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not "Nasa", fer chrissakes.
.
So, will we see another round of "The authorizing committees are free to set their agency budgets, and that includes NASA." - while attempting to get NASA heavily defunded? This is somewhat scary, and makes little sense to me. I suppose that's the point? I'm Canadian, so not trying to pick a side of the road here, but it seems somewhat awkward that a person with an accomplished history of hating science is put into a science chair. Is this strategy to make Obama look bad, so when they hopefully get a republican president they can swoop in and fix things? (looking for education here -- just speculating as I am not well versed in the US political system)
IT Professional.
That fits somehow but I have trouble understanding what that is suppose to achieve.
You'd think plutocrats would be helpful to NASA.
Table-ized A.I.
The reason that NASA and just about every other scientific organization in the world is now focusing on climate change results from the fact that the rate at which the Earth is now heating is 36 times faster than it was during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, some 55 million years ago, when in just a mere 10-30,000 years, Wyoming went from having redwood forests to having palm forests and nearly entire mammalian fauna in the Northern Hemisphere died out and was replaced by other species. Keep in mind that the current 36 times rate is just the current rate, which is increasing exponentially. Based on simple extrapolation, by the end of the century with just an increase of 1.5 deg C, some 1 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide will be released by melting permafrost and another trillion tons will be released as a result of increasing peat and coal seam fires more than tripling the annual production of human generated greenhouse gas, which is now about 33.5 Gt/yr. In some areas such as Indonesia, where slash and burn agricultural practices have caused peat deposits to combust spontaneously, such fires already account for about 7-10% of greenhouse gas production.
The good news is that this won't raise the global mean temperature much beyond 4-7 deg C in the next fifty to hundred years, but it will increase the temperature beyond that by about 7-15 deg C in the second hundred. If this news wasn't bad enough, with most molecules of carbon dioxide going into the oceans, the pH of the oceans will likely become about 30% more acidic than they are now, having increased hydronium ion concentrations about this much over the past 150 years. This rate of change should worry everyone, since humans derive about 50% of their protein from the world oceans. As if this weren't bad enough news, in 200 years temperatures of the relatively shallow arctic sea will begin to reach the point at which the 10-11,000 Gt of methane will be released from marine clathrates, where it is presently stored in cold sediments, so that in as little as 300-500 years, global mean temperatures will accelerate towards those seen on Venus if present trends continue unabated.
At least all those biologists wandering around will have something to study, the greatest extinction on planet Earth since the Permian. So no, it isn't just you, there are plenty of uneducated people out there. The good or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that there will be plenty of seats at the School of Hard Knocks.
NASA could send Ted Cruz to Mars.
Yes but those two words are missing the important part- the (tm) at the end. Without that (tm), how am I supposed to make a living wage from suing users into oblivion?
http://imgur.com/rABQgOI
Why don't we hire chimpanzees to do experimental brain surgery? Same reason you don't ask Cruz to do this job.
We could end up with no launch vehicles that could take Americans into space if he decimates their budget... wait... That already happened while Democrats poured more and more cash in to NASA. Where was all this emotional heat-break when that happened? Like hitching rides with the Russians you through sanctions at?
I say fire him!
Ted Cruz is also BFFs with Peter Thiel, who is a major investor is SpaceX. Remember it's the conservative republicans that are pushing for manned space exploration, like Newt Gingrich's plans for Mars. Personally I find manned exploration stupid and wasteful compared to drones and earth science, but what do I know.
http://valleywag.gawker.com/re...
http://gawker.com/5034178/pete...
Glad to see that regardless of circumstance, he's going to get a fair shake around here. You guys are like my wife and vegetables. She never met a vegetable she ever liked, and she's never tried one that I've seen without her face all screwed up, ready to eject it out as soon as it lands.
This is a pretty simple situation. If Cruz makes the NASA budget all about what he wants, he's going to fail. If he listens to some reason when applying priorities (because we don't have infinite resources, unlike Stallone's weapons in any of his movies), works with educated professionals with the bills, and is able to bring more solid, long-term funding to more viable and useful projects and cut some of the crap (seriously, who didn't want the tower to nowhere cut?), he will succeed.
He hasn't failed yet.
1) Shutdown the Goddard Institute of "Space" Sciences in New York City, that was Hansen's and now Gavin's LSD joint.
And don't just farm-out pieces to other NASA facilities; fire all employees and re-nig the building floor contracts at zero-occupancy.
I voted for Kodos.
Your are incorect sir. The Coperate tax rate is 35% in the USA but with loop holes and hiding profits off shore they only pay 19%
http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/sorrystateofcorptaxes.php
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
The joke story posts are early this year.
What, you mean this is not a joke post?
"I'm learning Chinese" said Werner Von Braun.
No more a victory for the USSR than covering your balls with honey, poking a stick in an anthill, then sitting on it is a victory for the ants.
Which went into Turkey and Italy - oh wait - they didn't did they, because there had been a backdown.
Instead of warming up a lost argument I suggest you apologize to Microlith for your hypocritical attack. "Pavlovian response"? You really can hand it out but can't seem to take the slightest criticism yourself.
There's a HUGE difference between anti-deficit and anti-science.
Well, seeing as 50% of all people are below average, that sounds about right...
Not necessarily.
Imagine a room full of 49 regular people and Bill Gates. The average wealth of a person in that room would multi-millions, because you have one enormous outlier. As result, it might well be the case that 98% of the sample is below the average.
On the other hand, 50% of all people are always below the median.
Here's the link - his post not mine:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6666339&cid=48770271
Whatever worth that opinion has aside they are not my words so we have a shameless liar building a strawman on our hands.
What an utterly pathetic person. You owe me and Microlith an apology. You made some noise about being old enough in 1962 to know more about the political situation than everything I've read about it, so why act like a poorly raised ten year old?
Well in the interest of accuracy and comedy
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Removal of the missiles from Cuba was a major strategic setback for the USSR
(Dbills reply: Bullshit - it was tit for tat posturing and it was most likely over before any missiles could even get off the boat
.
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
Precisely, that is my point - despite the vast superiority Kennedy caved in which is an illustration of the nuclear threat not deterring the USSR anywhere near as much as is assumed by soundbite history.
I have to wonder what you are going to do next to top this ?
You might want to learn how to make a hyperlink that works.
So me quoting you is supposed to be me expressing my view? Who are you trying to fool with that stupidity? Please apologize now for your blatant lie.
Also what's wrong with using a URL in a post on the internet?
Sure...and attempts to study the weather should have terminated when someone looked out the window and didn't see any clouds. Because nothing changes... Ever.
If we're 'typical' for civilizations, there's a pretty narrow window to detect a civilization based on it's radio signals.
A century ago, someone looking for *us* by our radio transmissions wouldn't have been able to find us. 20 years ago, we were blasting clear, distinguishable signals into deep space. These days, you've got to know how we're encoding (general technique, not specific protocols) our radio signals to be able to distinguish it from noise.
If this results in Ted Cruz being sent on a one-way mission to Mars, I'm all for it.
Of course, let's not forget what Cruz's role in the shutdown was: here's the voting roll where he voted against ending the funding process while the Democrats voted for shutdown.
http://www.senate.gov/legislat...
Your comment has evidencist bias. Their (stated) point of view is that they're right and science will not back them up, because the very essence of science is deception.
You can't trust your senses; they will lie to you. Listen to the voice in your head.
While you're probably right that they're liars, they claim to be merely batshit insane.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Even in Canada, we have had some crazy political appointments that made little sense, and are pretty embarrassing.
Off the top of my head we've had a Education Minister that never graduated from High School, a Science and Technology Minister, who was a creationist and believed the world was 5,000 years old, a Minister of the Environment that was a a right wing business talk show host, etc... Though some of that might be a mix of both Federal and Provincial governments.
I see the progressive fascists are alive and well on slashdot...just maybe Senator Cruz gets science unlike the fascists trying to steal science from humanity
The NASA budget sounds like a lot of money, but it is very small (about 2%) compared to say military.
Some of the big ones (http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/p/nasa_budget_cost.htm):
DOD $756.4 billion
Health and Human services $73.7 billion
Education $68.6 billion
NASA $17.5 billion
Okey, so it is more than department of interior ($11.5 billion) but not by much.
you just gotta look, and geeks like numbers.
as a Native Texan I am embarrassed to have him as my Senator on so many levels.
NASA: "Ted we found that God lives on Mars. Would you like to meet him?"
Ted Cruz: "Yes, definitely"
NASA: "Can you leave tomorrow morning?"
Ted: Yup!
Problem solved!
A lot of you people have completely concocted and believe the lie that republicans/conservatives by-in-large are zealots and anti-science. You are so so so wrong.
A few months ago, I was having lunch with two of my coworkers. Let's say their names are "Sean" and "Nate". Nate is a seriously hard core conservative; I'm guessing he's a Tea Partier, but he may be just your typical Republican.
At one point, Sean notices Nate is wearing a jacket in the style of a uniform from the original Star Trek - a blue one. Sean asks, "Why blue?". Nate replies, "Science officer."
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
"Actually, I was born in Canada, I just *work* in outer space."
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Cruz was born in Canada, his mother was American, his father was Cuban. Obama was born in Hawaii, his mother was American, his father was Kenyan.
Cruz's father only became a US citizen a few years ago, and Ted was at least talking about giving up his Canadian citizenship because of all the right-wing ranters, though I'm not sure he followed through.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Nowadays us, the Western countries, such as the EU countries, the USA, Canada, etc are building our future on top level innovation, another source of income is attracting outside talent and students. A good example of that is my country, Holland, a pretty solid revenue for our universities are students from all over the world who come here to study and this means not only benefits for the universities but also for the rest of the economy, from housing to shopping.
But more importantly than that maybe is being able to create an environment that attracts both foreign talent and companies and this too works in synergy with the universities.
Large prestige operations such as ESA, CERN, etc are not only important for the scientists and basic research, they are important because they serve to showcase the level of infrastructure of a region and it's ability to house other projects and companies and the interest of these regions in maintaining and nurturing innovation.
With two radical anti-scientists such as Jim Inhofe and Ted Cruz in charge of institutions like NASA and similar the USA have already suffered a mayor damage to their image, just by their presence. And I am afraid that international talent will not be very attracted to your country if the conditions for them to work there are not attractive enough. Not to speak of possible reductions to agencies such as NOAA for instance given the hate this two fellows have against climate science and with disregard to the fact that predicting weather and climate is vital for the physical safety of your country.
Pity, but I take the opportunity to recall everybody that here in Good Old Europe we are open for business, and learning Dutch or German is still easier than learning Chinese ;)
-- 29A the number of the Beast
This is wrong. We can make it right. Sign the petition. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-ted-cruz-position-nasa-oversight-subcommittee-space-science-and-competitiveness/0hj7fRCY