I made a chart! This is the kind of thing you do when you return from a long trip and are jet-lagged.
These are the 2008 research budgets for physical sciences, in billions of dollars, for the main funding agencies in the U.S.: the Department of Energy, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. For helpful comparison purposes, I’ve also plotted the $14.9 billion that has been misplaced over the course of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Not the cost of the war itself, which has been over $500 billion so far and will be well over a trillion when all is said and done. Just the funds that were … lost. Embezzled, whatever. Labels are so confining.
Readers with interests outside science funding are welcome to suggest their own comparisons.
Content suppressed by ://URLFAN, for full article visit source
CharmingFrom: cosmicvariance.com
Post Date: 2008-05-30 09:19:10
Via Swans on Tea, a great article about Richard Feynman’s days in the 1980’s working for Thinking Machines on their groundbreaking massively-parallel computers. (Reprinted from Physics Today.)
Richard did a remarkable job of focusing on his “assignment,” stopping only occasionally to help wire the computer room, set up the machine shop, shake hands with the investors, install the telephones, and cheerfully remind us of how crazy we all were. When we finally picke...
more The Purpose of Harvard is Not to Educate PeopleFrom: cosmicvariance.com
Post Date: 2008-05-29 11:12:07
Harvard University’s endowment is $35 billion, and some people aren’t happy about it. Massachusetts legislators see money that could be theirs, and are contemplating new taxes. Social activists see money that could be going to charity, and want to divert it. Distinguished alumni who have landed at public universities wonder why, with all that cash, Harvard graduates such a tiny number of students.
These are all legitimate concerns, and I won’t be suggesting the ideal policy...
more Downsizing the downsizing at FermilabFrom: cosmicvariance.com
Post Date: 2008-05-27 16:41:19
After Congress slashed the budget for high energy physics just before Christmas last year, well into the 2008 fiscal year, Fermilab had to scramble to figure out how to cope with a huge shortfall in its budget.
The response was twofold. Firstly, all employees would be subject to “furloughs” in which all salaried employees would take one week off without pay in every two-month period. This has made it hard to get, say, five Fermilab people in a meeting together the past few months...
more 
Websites mentioned in article
Buzz Words mentioned in article:
How popular is cosmicvariance.com?
