geoswan's Journal: President Bush's support for Science?

In his State of the Union speech President Bush affirmed his support for rehabilitating America's leadership in the fields of Science and Technology. Well, that sounds good.

Except, what does it mean? Did the President announce the expenditure of new funds? After incurring massive debt in a misadvised war, is the President in a position in a position to announce new expenditures? The pundits I listen to suggest he can't credibly announce any new expenditures.

Today I read the most recent post on the bad astronomy site. His most recent post concerns attempts by a Bush appointee to censor NASA.

He directed the NASA web-masters to insert the word "theory" after every instance of the phrase "Big Bang".

Hello! Who is this Bush appointee. What is his background in Science? What was his motivation for this direction?

The Bush appointee is a 24 year old who played a role in Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. It sounds like his motivation was solely Radical Fundamentalist Christian bigotry. If President Bush can't budget any more money to rehabilitate America's leadership in Science and Technology at least he can fire and repudiate Deutsch and any other anti-Science bigots he has appointed.

I find the public acceptance of the anti-science "intelligent design" meme in the USA highly disturbing. In the two years I have been posting on Politics to slashdot I have had a lot of confused Americans denounce me as "anti-American". The USA is Canada's largest trading partner. The Canadian economy is highly dependent on the US economy. America going down the tubes would be highly disruptive to the Canadian economy.

I know not all those who are enthusiastic fans of the "intelligent design" meme are anti-Science bigots. I believe some of the fans, here on slashdot, and elsewhere are fans of Science, who have been sucked in by those who describe "intelligent design" as scientific. It isn't. Testable hypotheses can't be made based on the meme. It isn't Science. I think that teaching a religion based notion, in American Science classes will have a devastating effect on the future competitiveness of American Science.