I Feel a Rant coming on

Right.

I have had enough of people who think that any sort of scientific research is pointless if it has no direct and instantaneous application to their world.

Example 1: The Pioneer anomaly or Pioneer effect refers to the observed deviation from expectations of the trajectories of various unmanned spacecraft visiting the outer Solar system, notably Pioneer 10 and 11. As of 2004, there is no universally accepted explanation for this phenomenon.

What does this mean? it means that spacecraft are drifting off course for no known reason. it’s a small amount, but for the pioneer spacecraft that ‘small’ amount is now 400,000 miles! But we don’t know why, In the mean time Voyager 1 and 2 are headed out into space, but the tracking mission has been discontinued because it cost 4 million dollars a year to operate. Which, incidently would be more than covered if the US left Iraq 33 minutes early.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly

Then, if that wasn’t enough, you have the fear of offending the followers of the Literal Christian Beliefs, So IMAX has decided

not to show movies that have any mention of Evolution.

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/03/21/0229234.shtml?tid=153&tid=14

And we wonder why the US is lagging in science and mathematics? Come on people, we can do better than that. (and I have to leave work so I can’t finish the rant today, but I will tomorrrow or soon 🙂 I promise