{"id":2240,"date":"2009-02-27T16:26:57","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T22:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2009\/02\/27\/apparently-astronomy-is-un-american\/"},"modified":"2009-02-27T16:26:57","modified_gmt":"2009-02-27T22:26:57","slug":"apparently-astronomy-is-un-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/27\/apparently-astronomy-is-un-american\/","title":{"rendered":"Apparently Astronomy is Un-American"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/senjohnmccain\">John McCain has a twitter account<\/a>.  Yes, that&#8217;s horrifying enough, but then there&#8217;s the actual content of what he writes.  At least he is using in creative and productive ways!  No, he isn&#8217;t.  Yesterday he announced:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tmr I am gonna tweet the TOP TEN PORKIEST PROJECTS in theOmnibus Spending bill the Congress is about to pass<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Love it when Senators play cool.  Love it.  So today is the big list, and guess what comes in at number two?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>#2. $2 million \u201cfor the promotion of astronomy\u201d in Hawaii &#8211; because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sure, earmarks are dumb, and it would be nice to have a rational way to decide how best to prioritize federal spending.  But don&#8217;t deny the obvious:  when Republicans hear &#8220;science,&#8221; they think &#8220;something to be mocked in the service of burnishing our just-folks credentials.&#8221;  Ask <a href=\"http:\/\/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/what-should-government-do-a-jindal-meditation\/\">Bobby Jindal<\/a>.  Or, for that matter, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/10\/08\/that-darn-overhead-projector\/\">John McCain<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John McCain has a twitter account. Yes, that&#8217;s horrifying enough, but then there&#8217;s the actual content of what he writes. At least he is using in creative and productive ways! No, he isn&#8217;t. Yesterday he announced: Tmr I am gonna tweet the TOP TEN PORKIEST PROJECTS in theOmnibus Spending bill the Congress is about to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-science-and-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}