For anyone who is wondering what is taking so long with curing paralysis, one complication is that mouse and rat models aren't super great. Their spinal cords recover to some degree on their own. Biologists are limited to measuring increased recovery rates. Obviously, a spinal cord that is healing itself is quite different from a spinal cord which is not. Young children seem to have some capacity to regenerate neurons of the spinal cord (though my main source there is a friend who worked on spinal cord regeneration, and this was over beers.) Obviously, no one has extensively tested that. I'm guessing that kids getting out of wheelchairs will happen before adults getting out of wheelchairs.
There's also promising work in preventing a lot of damage within hours of the initial injury. If you can prevent glial scarring, it seems you'll have a much better shot of recovering. However, that again isn't useful to people who are already paralyzed.
Anyway, research is moving fast enough to be excited about, but still slower than one would prefer.
most Americans are, wholly consumed with the mind-rot like Jersey Shore or Facebook.
I have yet to see the proof that mindless entertainment has a negative effect on people using their brains. I suspect it's one of those things that simply sounds reasonable and appeals to our ego, but there's absolutely no proof of. Like sex, drugs, and violence in the media causes those things in real life.
I suspect it's actually that most Americans are consumed with trying to get by, or are too discouraged by the news to try to make a difference. Honestly, where do you start being active? CISPA II, climate change, the NSA, the patriot act, the war on drugs, budget cuts, patent reform, education reform, health care reform, scaling back TSA, scaling back the rest of the government, regulating chewing gum additives, decreasing defense spending, pro choice or pro life debate, electoral college reform, campaign finance reform, the debate of the minute about taxes, EPA standards, the carbon tax, gun control (pro or con), term limits, gerrymandering, third party politics, national ID laws, net neutrality, affirmative action, immigration, etc. No matter what your political beliefs, no matter your news source, it's tough to flip on the news and not come to the conclusion that everything is going to hell. That's kind of the goal of the news. After a while, most people get burned out if they ever cared.
I have no proof that THAT is the reason people are clueless beyond that's why I often ignore politics, but it's more plausible to me than Jersey Shore (which, by the way, ended about a year ago) or other entertainment forms you don't personally like ruining America.
Flat out prohibition rarely works. In this case, it definitely would fail. Legislators absolutely must meet and talk with people to get information. The alternative is a nightmare. Can you imagine if congress were to start legislating on the tech industry WITHOUT talking to techheads?
It's like lawyers: there are bad corrupt ones AND good ones who are necessary. The bad ones give them all a bad name, but they are critical. Not all are the high-powered meet and schmooze and blackmail and funnel bribery to corrupt politicians. With formal lobbyists it can be regulated, bad lobbyists could theoretically be jailed or banned. And most important, there should be a record, it should all be out in the open. Obviously, that's a lofty goal that is ignored when it shouldn't be.
At the very least, realize that money has always ALWAYS found influence in government, in every government, in every system tried. You can't stop it with a simple law like "no lobbyists." You can only make sure its out in the open and potentially corruption can be identified and rooted out with the ballot box or impeachment.
Yes, though I do have to say, if that argument gains traction, law enforcement will take a page from the net neutrality fight or citizens united and try to spin the argument. Specifically, they'll start arguing they need the "freedom" to investigate potential criminals without a warrant. And at that point they'll win because anyone with a brain will have it explode.
If that's true, that could be better than what we have now: the NSA DOESN'T get a warrant and just asks for my data, and AT&T or whoever says "SURE!!! That'll be two dollars please."
Just so we're clear, you're not suggesting that google spying on you when you use their products is as bad as the NSA or chinese censorship, are you? You ARE making a joke, correct?
and if Democrats would embrace that Amendment they'd gain massively in the polls.
The NRA, being the most effecitve lobby in the US, DOES actually push a good number of democrats to be pro second amendment. Doesn't help their national image.
I think there are still real conservatives out there, they're just massively out-spent by the unholy alliance you mentioned, the Norquist tea party group. Small government conservatism isn't extinct. Deport the tea party and jail the lobbyists pushing to cut taxes to the breaking point (without cutting spending), and republican can become a party that makes positive changes once again very rapidly.
It's such a hands-off approach that the state gives up millions in federal highway maintenance money due to allowing passengers to drink from an open container in a moving vehicle.
Wait, when was this? I went to college in Missouri. This was definitely not true at taht point.
Minors are allowed to consume alcohol here, just as long as they're not "in possession", so when the cops show up, they just put the cup down before the cops can bust them.
Uh... how exactly is that legal then? Sounds sort of like saying "Murder is legal so long as you do not get arrested for it."
if you were too stupid to figure out where the nearest county line was so you could buy booze, then I have zero sympathy for your rant.
I didn't live there and this was before the era of smartphones. It was new years, and my relatives there don't drink much. Anyway, "There are ways around it" make a bad law become not bad.
Lets not engage in false equivalency just to avoid pissing anyone off. There are real differences between red states and blue states in terms of personal freedoms. Liquor laws for example are a hallmark of those fucking bible-thumpers. That has affected me a lot more than restrictions on buying an electric car. Perhaps you're talking specifically about owning a gun? I dunno, seems like you can buy a gun in any blue state, but there are fucking dry counties in Texas where you cannot buy alchohol at all.
You can't even say red states allow more flexibility for companies and "economic freedom." (Points to current article.)
If you're uncomfortable with how close that sounds to (gasp) taking a political position, you can give yourself the following out: it's not political or ideological differences so much as it is culture. This isn't a conservative/liberal difference. This is morons allowing their government to be run by the highest bidder, and maybe a little bit of misplaced hate at environmentalism (electric cars and all). Conservatives should be angry at government meddling here, it's clearly the exact opposite of free market economics. Texas here isn't being conservative, Texas is being dumb, ignorant, and lazy.
Anyway, the point isn't to say "Ha ha, blue states are better than red." Or shouldn't be. The point should be to highlight stupidity in government no matter where it happens. And I'd argue that there's a lot more egregious stupidity in Texas than in some blue states. Perhaps I'm still just pissed off at the dry county thing where I was stuck for New Years that one time. Fuck you, Texas.
It IS funny how there are plenty of countries willing to let you evade your tax responsibilities by storing your money there, but so few seem to be willing to let you claim your right to privacy by storing your data there. Both could be equally profitable.
Should Groklaw be put in a separate category? I thought it shut down mainly as a protest of the NSA (and also because groklaw's original goal of exposing SCO was finished.) Not because they had to shut down to protect anyone.
I'm not sure what your point is. I'm saying congress is still more reliable than kickstarter, and since congress hands the specific decisions about which projects to fund off to real scientists, the evaluation process is done by people more familiar with the research than you'd get from an average person. Free market is not something you want funding all research that the government currently funds.
"Making fun of" or "giving them such good ideas that they have to literally bury the source"? From the summary, it sounds like these are suggestions that someone who thought "Hey, spying on EVERYONE ALL THE TIME isn't technically unconstitutional" might think are good suggestions. And the NSA's public image is pretty much as low as it can go without someone taking out a superbowl ad proving the NSA rapes dogs. They may as well try unconventional methods to improve their image: there's nowhere to go but up. And they're not really risking anything anyway. We all know what they did, but what can we do about it?
One could get the sense that you consider the Government-Science complex more important than anything else the government does.
Hey man, "news for nerds"!
I think your comment is more +11 dreamy, not +5 "insightful".
It was a suggestion, not a prediction. I realize that leaving congress completely unprotected if they fail to do their job, and keeping science going when politics have failed at a basic level is unrealistic. But I'd rather err on that side than err on the side of congress gets to do whatever the hell they want without consequence (thanks gerrymandering and voter ADD) and scientific research gets impeded because of that. Or anyone else for that matter, but the article is specifically about science.
I appreciate the honest answer. I can respect your point of view and can see why you would take exception to my "short answer". That part was at least contrary to my point (and was overly dismissive anyway) and I should have left it out. I'm sorry for that. I respect genuine small-government conservatism, it's some aspects of the tea party and the republicans who only want tax cuts that I can't stand. A lot of my fellow idiot liberals likewise have no real love for huge intrusive governments. The patriot act was offensive to plenty of us ACLU type liberals. Perhaps not resorting to calling us names would be more productive for you in the future. How about we agree to disagree on Obamacare and agree that the looming police state is an issue both parties have failed to act on, and if possible we need to demand improvement (AKA not shitting on the fucking constitution) from all sides of the political spectrum.
Good question. Yes, the government does assert control over what is funded, and yes, it is a problem. Fortunately, their meddling doesn't usually run that deep, and usually reflects public thinking. For instance, federal funding for embryonic stem cells was limited, but it wasn't like a president opposed specific labs or favored specific hypotheses about which transcription factors are important for pluripotency. There's more funding for applied weapons research than I think a lot of scientists would like, and less funding for, say, astrophysics than they would like, but that in most cases comes from society. And that's important, becuase it wouldn't be solved by having independent funding. Were all science funded by donation rather than taxes, I think most people would donate to weapons research and faster cell phones, and few people would donate to basic research with no immediate products being produced. Another example: the public donates far less to lung cancer research than they do for most other cancers and MUCH less than they do to breast cancer research. Because there is an attitude of "If you got lung cancer, you must have smoked and that was a decision you made." Which of course is callous and not even true, but it would be real work to convince the public otherwise. Government funding means that work doesn't need to be done.
The government tends to hand the lump sum to actual scientists to hand out as they see fit. Money is given to the national institute of health, for example, not specifically earmarked to this hypothesis or that. Government puts in influence by how much each agency is given mostly, giving more money to, say, the national institute of health and less to NASA because they don't want to look like they're stopping the cure to cancer, but don't particularly think the public cares about astrophysics. So in -general- a lot of discretion is left up to real scientists.
There are some real instances of abuse though. Coburn recently eliminated all funding for political science research. But no system is going to be perfect. And government controlling the purse strings does mean science will get funded without resorting to running commercials during sitcoms.
Pay attention to the thread: I was using that as proof that Obamacare WAS a compromise, not a bill that was rammed through without discussion like you were saying.
He "rammed it through" after it was obvious to anyone paying attention that republicans wouldn't allow healthcare reform until it was a republican president doing it.
Yes, and that might well have been the best choice, also so that the economy would have had time to recover. Obama should have done what he ran on and got elected for: rein in the NSA, restore the rule of law, and restore Constitutional protections of civil liberties.
Again, you're ignoring context. I was pointing out that there was never going to be any bipartisan support.
To say he passed it without bipartisan support is completely disingenious. It implies bipartisan support was possible. Republicans came up with Obamacare in the first place during clinton, and Romney enacted Obamacare years ago. Liberals wanted single payer. We compromised in a way that gave republicans everything they wanted, save Obama's name not being on it. Bipartisan support was never going to happen unless it was called "Republicancare" and Obama resigned as part of the deal.
He "rammed it through" after it was obvious to anyone paying attention that republicans wouldn't allow healthcare reform until it was a republican president doing it.
There are multiple conversations. You might be thinking of the small vs big government argument. However, realize that's not the conversation that actually lead to the shutdown. The GOP reps in the house aren't actual small government types. The closest thing is "starve the beast" republicans which is simply code for "Cut taxes on my benefactors and leave cutting spending to someone else."
In other words, yes, the conversation that lead to the shutdown was one sided. There could have been two sides to it, but one side got crowded out by billionaire funded insanity. Take back control of your party from the tea party. I'm a hardcore liberal, but I'd welcome a real two sided argument in Washington any day over what we have now.
There are actually some crowdfunding tools out there. One issue is that it's hard to explain highly technical experiments within the required 6 pages or so for a grant, let alone something that a crowd would be willing to read. Another issue is that a lot of basic research has no payoffs that are certain, which seems important for kickstarter. You can't exactly promise beta access to the data to an experiment which may not yield results.
Also, just putting this out there, and sorry if it ruffles any feathers, but funding from the federal government is still more reliable than crowdfunding. At the very least, if the debt catches up to us and "dries up," I'm thinking it will be more likely that I'll be trying to crowdfund my next meal than I would be trying to crowdfund a research project.
The short answer is because the demands were unreasonable, and ending health care reform to appease a small minority of the country's demands doesn't make sense. The longer answer can be found in across a thousand other websites and is completely off-topic. Try going to another website if you're interested in talking about it. I mean, there's probably a youtube video related to the politics where you can get a vigorous text war going.
To redirect back on topic: why does it seem like everything the federal government does was declared "essential" and not affected EXCEPT for science? I don't hear a lot of discussion about what rules need to be changed for the next shutdown. Here's my suggestion: in the event of a shutdown, absolutely no congressional support services will be provided. No staffers can answer the phone from their congresspeople. No electricity in the capitol. No fucking gym open. No paychecks including back pay for congress persons. No security guards will be protecting the reps. None. Congressmen can hold meetings at a starbucks or something if they feel like it. Conversely, science research will absolutely not be affected.
I'd start a petition on change.org or writing a letter to congress urging that, but I think my time might better be spent wishing on a star.
The chance of it missing is 99.998%, and not 99.99998%
The chances of it happening went up a thousandth of a percent in the half an hour since the summary was posted? If these trends continue, the asteroid will have a 157.68% chance of hitting us!
(9 years x 365 days x 24 hours x 2 half hour x 0.001 chance, if anyone's curious about what I typed into my calculator. There are bigger problems with the above statement anyway. To any cable news journalists reading, this is a joke.)
Slashdot Mirror
For anyone who is wondering what is taking so long with curing paralysis, one complication is that mouse and rat models aren't super great. Their spinal cords recover to some degree on their own. Biologists are limited to measuring increased recovery rates. Obviously, a spinal cord that is healing itself is quite different from a spinal cord which is not. Young children seem to have some capacity to regenerate neurons of the spinal cord (though my main source there is a friend who worked on spinal cord regeneration, and this was over beers.) Obviously, no one has extensively tested that. I'm guessing that kids getting out of wheelchairs will happen before adults getting out of wheelchairs.
There's also promising work in preventing a lot of damage within hours of the initial injury. If you can prevent glial scarring, it seems you'll have a much better shot of recovering. However, that again isn't useful to people who are already paralyzed.
Anyway, research is moving fast enough to be excited about, but still slower than one would prefer.
most Americans are, wholly consumed with the mind-rot like Jersey Shore or Facebook.
I have yet to see the proof that mindless entertainment has a negative effect on people using their brains. I suspect it's one of those things that simply sounds reasonable and appeals to our ego, but there's absolutely no proof of. Like sex, drugs, and violence in the media causes those things in real life.
I suspect it's actually that most Americans are consumed with trying to get by, or are too discouraged by the news to try to make a difference. Honestly, where do you start being active? CISPA II, climate change, the NSA, the patriot act, the war on drugs, budget cuts, patent reform, education reform, health care reform, scaling back TSA, scaling back the rest of the government, regulating chewing gum additives, decreasing defense spending, pro choice or pro life debate, electoral college reform, campaign finance reform, the debate of the minute about taxes, EPA standards, the carbon tax, gun control (pro or con), term limits, gerrymandering, third party politics, national ID laws, net neutrality, affirmative action, immigration, etc. No matter what your political beliefs, no matter your news source, it's tough to flip on the news and not come to the conclusion that everything is going to hell. That's kind of the goal of the news. After a while, most people get burned out if they ever cared.
I have no proof that THAT is the reason people are clueless beyond that's why I often ignore politics, but it's more plausible to me than Jersey Shore (which, by the way, ended about a year ago) or other entertainment forms you don't personally like ruining America.
Flat out prohibition rarely works. In this case, it definitely would fail. Legislators absolutely must meet and talk with people to get information. The alternative is a nightmare. Can you imagine if congress were to start legislating on the tech industry WITHOUT talking to techheads?
It's like lawyers: there are bad corrupt ones AND good ones who are necessary. The bad ones give them all a bad name, but they are critical. Not all are the high-powered meet and schmooze and blackmail and funnel bribery to corrupt politicians. With formal lobbyists it can be regulated, bad lobbyists could theoretically be jailed or banned. And most important, there should be a record, it should all be out in the open. Obviously, that's a lofty goal that is ignored when it shouldn't be.
At the very least, realize that money has always ALWAYS found influence in government, in every government, in every system tried. You can't stop it with a simple law like "no lobbyists." You can only make sure its out in the open and potentially corruption can be identified and rooted out with the ballot box or impeachment.
Yes, though I do have to say, if that argument gains traction, law enforcement will take a page from the net neutrality fight or citizens united and try to spin the argument. Specifically, they'll start arguing they need the "freedom" to investigate potential criminals without a warrant. And at that point they'll win because anyone with a brain will have it explode.
If that's true, that could be better than what we have now: the NSA DOESN'T get a warrant and just asks for my data, and AT&T or whoever says "SURE!!! That'll be two dollars please."
Just so we're clear, you're not suggesting that google spying on you when you use their products is as bad as the NSA or chinese censorship, are you? You ARE making a joke, correct?
and if Democrats would embrace that Amendment they'd gain massively in the polls.
The NRA, being the most effecitve lobby in the US, DOES actually push a good number of democrats to be pro second amendment. Doesn't help their national image.
I think there are still real conservatives out there, they're just massively out-spent by the unholy alliance you mentioned, the Norquist tea party group. Small government conservatism isn't extinct. Deport the tea party and jail the lobbyists pushing to cut taxes to the breaking point (without cutting spending), and republican can become a party that makes positive changes once again very rapidly.
It's such a hands-off approach that the state gives up millions in federal highway maintenance money due to allowing passengers to drink from an open container in a moving vehicle.
Wait, when was this? I went to college in Missouri. This was definitely not true at taht point.
Minors are allowed to consume alcohol here, just as long as they're not "in possession", so when the cops show up, they just put the cup down before the cops can bust them.
Uh... how exactly is that legal then? Sounds sort of like saying "Murder is legal so long as you do not get arrested for it."
if you were too stupid to figure out where the nearest county line was so you could buy booze, then I have zero sympathy for your rant.
I didn't live there and this was before the era of smartphones. It was new years, and my relatives there don't drink much. Anyway, "There are ways around it" make a bad law become not bad.
I'm skeptical that dry counties, where you cannot sell alchohol at all, are to increase sales of alchohol.
Lets not engage in false equivalency just to avoid pissing anyone off. There are real differences between red states and blue states in terms of personal freedoms. Liquor laws for example are a hallmark of those fucking bible-thumpers. That has affected me a lot more than restrictions on buying an electric car. Perhaps you're talking specifically about owning a gun? I dunno, seems like you can buy a gun in any blue state, but there are fucking dry counties in Texas where you cannot buy alchohol at all.
You can't even say red states allow more flexibility for companies and "economic freedom." (Points to current article.)
If you're uncomfortable with how close that sounds to (gasp) taking a political position, you can give yourself the following out: it's not political or ideological differences so much as it is culture. This isn't a conservative/liberal difference. This is morons allowing their government to be run by the highest bidder, and maybe a little bit of misplaced hate at environmentalism (electric cars and all). Conservatives should be angry at government meddling here, it's clearly the exact opposite of free market economics. Texas here isn't being conservative, Texas is being dumb, ignorant, and lazy.
Anyway, the point isn't to say "Ha ha, blue states are better than red." Or shouldn't be. The point should be to highlight stupidity in government no matter where it happens. And I'd argue that there's a lot more egregious stupidity in Texas than in some blue states. Perhaps I'm still just pissed off at the dry county thing where I was stuck for New Years that one time. Fuck you, Texas.
It IS funny how there are plenty of countries willing to let you evade your tax responsibilities by storing your money there, but so few seem to be willing to let you claim your right to privacy by storing your data there. Both could be equally profitable.
Should Groklaw be put in a separate category? I thought it shut down mainly as a protest of the NSA (and also because groklaw's original goal of exposing SCO was finished.) Not because they had to shut down to protect anyone.
I'm not sure what your point is. I'm saying congress is still more reliable than kickstarter, and since congress hands the specific decisions about which projects to fund off to real scientists, the evaluation process is done by people more familiar with the research than you'd get from an average person. Free market is not something you want funding all research that the government currently funds.
"Making fun of" or "giving them such good ideas that they have to literally bury the source"? From the summary, it sounds like these are suggestions that someone who thought "Hey, spying on EVERYONE ALL THE TIME isn't technically unconstitutional" might think are good suggestions. And the NSA's public image is pretty much as low as it can go without someone taking out a superbowl ad proving the NSA rapes dogs. They may as well try unconventional methods to improve their image: there's nowhere to go but up. And they're not really risking anything anyway. We all know what they did, but what can we do about it?
One could get the sense that you consider the Government-Science complex more important than anything else the government does.
Hey man, "news for nerds"!
I think your comment is more +11 dreamy, not +5 "insightful".
It was a suggestion, not a prediction. I realize that leaving congress completely unprotected if they fail to do their job, and keeping science going when politics have failed at a basic level is unrealistic. But I'd rather err on that side than err on the side of congress gets to do whatever the hell they want without consequence (thanks gerrymandering and voter ADD) and scientific research gets impeded because of that. Or anyone else for that matter, but the article is specifically about science.
I appreciate the honest answer. I can respect your point of view and can see why you would take exception to my "short answer". That part was at least contrary to my point (and was overly dismissive anyway) and I should have left it out. I'm sorry for that. I respect genuine small-government conservatism, it's some aspects of the tea party and the republicans who only want tax cuts that I can't stand. A lot of my fellow idiot liberals likewise have no real love for huge intrusive governments. The patriot act was offensive to plenty of us ACLU type liberals. Perhaps not resorting to calling us names would be more productive for you in the future. How about we agree to disagree on Obamacare and agree that the looming police state is an issue both parties have failed to act on, and if possible we need to demand improvement (AKA not shitting on the fucking constitution) from all sides of the political spectrum.
Good question. Yes, the government does assert control over what is funded, and yes, it is a problem. Fortunately, their meddling doesn't usually run that deep, and usually reflects public thinking. For instance, federal funding for embryonic stem cells was limited, but it wasn't like a president opposed specific labs or favored specific hypotheses about which transcription factors are important for pluripotency. There's more funding for applied weapons research than I think a lot of scientists would like, and less funding for, say, astrophysics than they would like, but that in most cases comes from society. And that's important, becuase it wouldn't be solved by having independent funding. Were all science funded by donation rather than taxes, I think most people would donate to weapons research and faster cell phones, and few people would donate to basic research with no immediate products being produced. Another example: the public donates far less to lung cancer research than they do for most other cancers and MUCH less than they do to breast cancer research. Because there is an attitude of "If you got lung cancer, you must have smoked and that was a decision you made." Which of course is callous and not even true, but it would be real work to convince the public otherwise. Government funding means that work doesn't need to be done.
The government tends to hand the lump sum to actual scientists to hand out as they see fit. Money is given to the national institute of health, for example, not specifically earmarked to this hypothesis or that. Government puts in influence by how much each agency is given mostly, giving more money to, say, the national institute of health and less to NASA because they don't want to look like they're stopping the cure to cancer, but don't particularly think the public cares about astrophysics. So in -general- a lot of discretion is left up to real scientists.
There are some real instances of abuse though. Coburn recently eliminated all funding for political science research. But no system is going to be perfect. And government controlling the purse strings does mean science will get funded without resorting to running commercials during sitcoms.
Liberals wanted single payer.
Frankly, it doesn't matter what "liberals" want
Pay attention to the thread: I was using that as proof that Obamacare WAS a compromise, not a bill that was rammed through without discussion like you were saying.
He "rammed it through" after it was obvious to anyone paying attention that republicans wouldn't allow healthcare reform until it was a republican president doing it.
Yes, and that might well have been the best choice, also so that the economy would have had time to recover. Obama should have done what he ran on and got elected for: rein in the NSA, restore the rule of law, and restore Constitutional protections of civil liberties.
Again, you're ignoring context. I was pointing out that there was never going to be any bipartisan support.
To say he passed it without bipartisan support is completely disingenious. It implies bipartisan support was possible. Republicans came up with Obamacare in the first place during clinton, and Romney enacted Obamacare years ago. Liberals wanted single payer. We compromised in a way that gave republicans everything they wanted, save Obama's name not being on it. Bipartisan support was never going to happen unless it was called "Republicancare" and Obama resigned as part of the deal.
He "rammed it through" after it was obvious to anyone paying attention that republicans wouldn't allow healthcare reform until it was a republican president doing it.
Tell me a little bit about your background if you don't mind. I'm curious as to what type of person thinks this.
There are multiple conversations. You might be thinking of the small vs big government argument. However, realize that's not the conversation that actually lead to the shutdown. The GOP reps in the house aren't actual small government types. The closest thing is "starve the beast" republicans which is simply code for "Cut taxes on my benefactors and leave cutting spending to someone else."
In other words, yes, the conversation that lead to the shutdown was one sided. There could have been two sides to it, but one side got crowded out by billionaire funded insanity. Take back control of your party from the tea party. I'm a hardcore liberal, but I'd welcome a real two sided argument in Washington any day over what we have now.
There are actually some crowdfunding tools out there. One issue is that it's hard to explain highly technical experiments within the required 6 pages or so for a grant, let alone something that a crowd would be willing to read. Another issue is that a lot of basic research has no payoffs that are certain, which seems important for kickstarter. You can't exactly promise beta access to the data to an experiment which may not yield results.
Also, just putting this out there, and sorry if it ruffles any feathers, but funding from the federal government is still more reliable than crowdfunding. At the very least, if the debt catches up to us and "dries up," I'm thinking it will be more likely that I'll be trying to crowdfund my next meal than I would be trying to crowdfund a research project.
The short answer is because the demands were unreasonable, and ending health care reform to appease a small minority of the country's demands doesn't make sense. The longer answer can be found in across a thousand other websites and is completely off-topic. Try going to another website if you're interested in talking about it. I mean, there's probably a youtube video related to the politics where you can get a vigorous text war going.
To redirect back on topic: why does it seem like everything the federal government does was declared "essential" and not affected EXCEPT for science? I don't hear a lot of discussion about what rules need to be changed for the next shutdown. Here's my suggestion: in the event of a shutdown, absolutely no congressional support services will be provided. No staffers can answer the phone from their congresspeople. No electricity in the capitol. No fucking gym open. No paychecks including back pay for congress persons. No security guards will be protecting the reps. None. Congressmen can hold meetings at a starbucks or something if they feel like it. Conversely, science research will absolutely not be affected.
I'd start a petition on change.org or writing a letter to congress urging that, but I think my time might better be spent wishing on a star.
The chance of it missing is 99.998%, and not 99.99998%
The chances of it happening went up a thousandth of a percent in the half an hour since the summary was posted? If these trends continue, the asteroid will have a 157.68% chance of hitting us!
(9 years x 365 days x 24 hours x 2 half hour x 0.001 chance, if anyone's curious about what I typed into my calculator. There are bigger problems with the above statement anyway. To any cable news journalists reading, this is a joke.)