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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:34 am Post subject: The Pig Book |
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http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2007
I'm always a little skeptical of these kinds of things. Someone combs through abstracts and decides what's a gross waste of money. (I would tend to listen to the GAO, who actually looks at the real numbers.) Now, a libertarian argument can be made that government doesn't have hair one business giving tax money to many of these things. But I always find these things to be a little anti science. For example:
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| $5,300,000 to study marine mammals, such as whales. The House added $3,500,000 for a program increase and a �marine mammal hearing and echolocation research� program. Scientific Solutions, based in Nashua, N.H., will receive $1,800,000 million to fund an �Integrated Marine Mammal Monitoring and Protection system.� The Navy claims to be the �world leader in marine mammal research, spending nearly $10 million per year on research to understand how marine mammals hear and how they are affected by sound.� |
It should be pretty obvious why the navy is interested in the whale sonar.
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| $4,200,000 for shrimp aquaculture research in Ariz., Hawaii, La., Mass., Miss., S.C., and Texas. According to USDA testimony, �The goal of this program is to develop a sustainable domestic shrimp farming industry in the United States.� The timeline for this program appears to be indefinite. Since 1985, $65.7 million has been appropriated for this research. |
Another one you might think private industry should be investing in, but then the intent isn't particularly odious. The government is trying to kick start a new industry. Government and private industry both worked on "inter nets". Guess which one we use today and which one added several hundred billion to the USA's GDP? I wonder what the pig book would have said about the internet back in the 1970s. "A bunch of egg heads are too stupid to pick up the phone to talk to each other?"
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| $500,000 for apple fire blight research in Michigan and New York. According to USDA testimony in March 2005, �The anticipated date of completion of the original objectives was 2000, however, the original objectives have not been accomplished. The principal investigators estimate that an additional five years will be needed to accomplish the original objectives. The estimated completion date is 2005.� Since 1997, $4.2 million has been appropriated for this research. This project has already taken two bites of the taxpayers� apple, and that�s more than enough. |
Apples are one of the few things Japan buys from the USA. This kind of research is bad? Granted there seems to be a cost over run.
As you can see, many of these blurbs have pithy little comments. I've always wondered if they're selected less for one group's opinion that they're a waste and more for the obvious jokes that can be made.
Last edited by mindmetoo on Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mnhnhyouh
Joined: 21 Nov 2006
Location: The Middle Kingdom
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| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:12 am Post subject: |
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If you have a problem, it is very hard to know how much time or money is needed to find a solution. By the time you know that, you know what the solution is.
Sometimes things appear easy to solve, but when all the quick fixes are tried, none work. Then it is back to the drawing board for some other solutions. Or maybe your original research shows you that you just dont understand the problem very well, so you have to go and work out what the problem really is, before you can restart finding a solution.
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