Save Arecibo!
Today is Tuesday, 20 November 2007.
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”.
I’m ready to go all postal Lou Dobbs.
Pity the fools (now I’m going Mr. T) at the National Science Foundation, who have gutted the budget for the Arecibo radio telescope, the finest scientific instrument of its kind ever created, by cutting the budget by 25%, from a backbreaking [irony included] $10.5 million to $8 million. And maybe shut it down entirely.
Any fool out there who thinks the USA Department of War doesn’t spend far more than $10.5 million a year on toilet paper?
What next? Rid ourselves of all the optical microscopes, because they’re so 1650?
Here's the Arecibo homepage, so you can have some info to judge its value for itself:
http://www.naic.edu/
And here's The New York Times article this morning that lit my fuse:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/science/space/20scop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The following is from a space probe, not Arecibo, but it's fascinating and beautiful, and information far more wondrous and valuable will be lost if Arecibo is crippled or closed:
Don't touch that dial: HH is looking into the various campaigns to save Arecibo, and will be getting back to you, same time, same station!
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”.
I’m ready to go all postal Lou Dobbs.
Pity the fools (now I’m going Mr. T) at the National Science Foundation, who have gutted the budget for the Arecibo radio telescope, the finest scientific instrument of its kind ever created, by cutting the budget by 25%, from a backbreaking [irony included] $10.5 million to $8 million. And maybe shut it down entirely.
Any fool out there who thinks the USA Department of War doesn’t spend far more than $10.5 million a year on toilet paper?
What next? Rid ourselves of all the optical microscopes, because they’re so 1650?
Here's the Arecibo homepage, so you can have some info to judge its value for itself:
http://www.naic.edu/
And here's The New York Times article this morning that lit my fuse:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/science/space/20scop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The following is from a space probe, not Arecibo, but it's fascinating and beautiful, and information far more wondrous and valuable will be lost if Arecibo is crippled or closed:
Don't touch that dial: HH is looking into the various campaigns to save Arecibo, and will be getting back to you, same time, same station!
posted by HH at 2:01 PM
2 Comments:
Gotta whole heartedly agree on the save Arecibo sentiment. Besides being one of the all-time best backdrops for a Bond finale and a beautiful example of space age engineering at its pinnacle while space was arguably in the infancy of its weaponization, how else are we going to listen to hear ET giving us a call?
I agree, too. Hey, if the aliens we could detect with the Arecibo want to get a few volunteers to go with them, count me in.
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