Odd how certain people & parties are against fundamental (basic) research UNLESS it's spent by the military. It's often so fundamental that any resulting applications often have just as many civilian/commercial uses such that it may not matter which gov't entity sponsors it.

Well, at least we got The Internet and integrated circuits out of such. (The military was a heavy customer of early IC, sparking faster improvement, even though they were not involved in the invention itself.)
   

but I don't have faith in Congress to fund them

Let China blow a wad of money* on it. I'd rather see our money spent on an unmanned Titan boat probe, an unmanned Europa submarine, and an extra-solar (alien) planet atmosphere spectragraph "artificial eclipsing" telescope.

Approx 10% of the cost, but 5x the science, 30% of the same Wow factor (more if plant life found), and a failure would be only 3% as embarrassing as a dead Marsnaut. A friggen bargain to both Ferengi's and Vulcans: logic and greed favor the bots.

* That they get from lopsided "trade" with us

If I see one more article about STEM and young women I am gonna scream like a little girl. Coding is a high-risk career. It may pay relatively well out of college, but beyond that it is NOT a better choice than any other career. Burnout, agism, offshoring, wrist injuries, long hours, investment bubbles, etc. etc. etc. make it a risky career choice. At its best it's a stepping stone into something better, but so are a lot of other fields.

If we snooped them, they probably snooped us. Somewhere there may be a recording of the moment the ill-fated invasion of Iraq was decided:

Dick: Now that the Taliban are gone, lets smash Saddam!

Colin: What if something goes wrong? Iraq is far more populated than Afghanistan.

W: Don't worry, Colie, we whacked the Taliban real good.

Colin: Actually, we don't know where the Taliban went. Intel didn't find enough bodies to account for most. They may be hiding in caves and hills.

Dick: You worry too much. They are gone for now; let the next prez worry about them coming back out.

Colin: I don't want to foul my legacy with a war gone wrong.

W: Don't worry, Colie, Dickie is an expert on blaming it on the Dems in the off case shit comes back later. Look, I almost choked on a pretzel the other day; life is short; go for the ball now!

Dick: Amen! My mechanical heart could clack up any day, and you eat a lot of fries yourself, Tubbie.

Colin: Alright, I did have a bad feeling about this, but maybe it's just those damned fries, eh?

Dick, W, & Colin: "Onward Christian Soldiers!..."

I've seen no evidence that anybody intentionally reused and erased the space footage. More likely somebody saw them laying around and just grabbed and reused without asking or checking -- a lazy shortcut to getting their job done.

[Sig] Recession: Your neighbor's out of a job. Depression: You're out of a job. Recovery: 0bama's out of a job.

O saved our caboose from a Hoover-like 25% unemployment rate. The extent of the financial side of the crash was similar to 1929's. The gop's alt plan was rather Hoover-like and would probably have relived history instead of learned from it if given a chance.

If I were God, I'd F with NASA and really make Pluto be a bunch of blocks. Everything they'd publish would be assumed an Onion article by the public.

Did I just watch a NASA video shot in Minecraft?

Their fakery budget has really gone downhill since the Apollo/Kubrick days

If they start to resemble PacMan, time to worry

I recognize those folder names, Damn, you raided my porn!

New slogan:

"Good hands are up your [bleep] with Allstate."

For security reasons, the org in question wants mostly internal servers. But if they ran it kind of like a vendor, it may work in that that each section has to pay for any server instance it's using, through the budgeting process. But, the org in question would probably bungle that too.

Only fields where there's lots of money and\or social status

For the short-term. I've been at the bad of tech bubbles and outsourcing, and I cannot recommend STEM above other career options because of that.

State- or county-specific law is a safer career choice than STEM in my opinion because somebody in an outsourcing sweatshop in Timbuktu is less likely to bet their education on a single US state. If it falls thru, they have no local option in Timbuktu etc. What other country is going to need a Rhode Island lawyer in Timbuktu?

Thus, promote law careers for women instead of STEM if you really care about their longer-term future.

From personal experience, the bureaucracy of our org makes it that procurement of servers is so difficult that section managers tend to horde them when they get them.

I'm hoping virtualization will improve this situation, but something tells me it will only create different problems. The bureaucratic culture usually invents new ways to foul up new tools.

"-Kardashian" just to be on the safe side.