Yesterday, Red State reported on Summertime Blues, a report issued by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ), on how your stimulus money is being spent. $114,541 of your tax dollars are being spent to study the effects of how “monkeys react under the influence of cocaine.” The Coburn-McCain report indicates the President Obama is also using $1.9 million of your tax dollars to listen to foreign Ants.
6. Ants Talk. Taxpayers Listen (San Francisco, CA) – $1.9 million
The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $2 million to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and east Africa, to capture, photograph, and analyze thousands of exotic ants. The photographs of the ants – over 3,000 species’ worth, according to the grant proposal – will be posted on AntWeb, a website devoted to organizing and displaying pictures and information on the world’s thousands of ant species.
The project’s goals are, to the lay person, both laudable and arcane: In addition to “foster[ing]…a large pool of ant taxonomists,” it also strives to document “the vast majority of ant species known from [Africa].” “[Ants] give us back the most data on the environment than any other group. Their life cycle is shorter, they change very quickly,” says the project’s Principal Investigator in a promotional article on the Academy’s website. “Everyone has run into ants . . . now we need to listen to them.”
Monkey and Ant stimulus – nice. How many Monkey and Ant jobs were saved or created by the Obama Stimulus plan? This would be funny but for the fact that this nation is carrying a national debt of $13.3 trillion and sporting an unemployment rate of 9.6%.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
Ugh.
rws197 (Diary) Wednesday, August 4th at 10:50AM EST (link)$1.9 million to send a few P.I.’s and their graduate students on vacation, well spent. Maybe these ants can clarify this global warming, cooling, climate change thingy for us, and all the regulations we need to fix it.
-III
Ant taxidermists? Aren't they kind of small?
nessa (Diary) Wednesday, August 4th at 11:14AM EST (link)It couldn’t possibly cost $2 million to stuff even 3000 ants, what are they stuffing them with? Taxpayer dollars?
Oh! Taxonomists… Never mind.
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
Contributor to Unified Patriots
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Go South Young Lady: More Paid Vacation for students
GregInFla (Diary) Wednesday, August 4th at 1:15PM EST (link)Research into crabs disguises climate change research, from The Florida Today:
I guess the shovels are ready in Antarctica.
– A true evolutionist would let endangered species die off. Think about it.
– The sign outside the courthouse said no signs allowed. So I took it down.
– Atlas Shrugged is now on the non-fiction aisle at Amazon.
I'd Like To Object To This But
franls Wednesday, August 4th at 3:13PM EST (link)since these are foreign ants I’m afraid of the left inventing another reason to call me racist. Also, putting a monkey on the back of a monkey to see how it reacts seems kind of silly. I wonder if PETA will respond.
This makes me feel rather good.
stephaniet Wednesday, August 4th at 4:23PM EST (link)And what is the reason behind such an unusual comment title? Simply this: all this madness proves that I am indeed sane, contrary to what I’ve thought ever since… oh, November 2008 or so. If everyone else is insane, then I *must* be sane! Thank God!
“*They* say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I *prefer* the weapon you only have to fire *once*. That’s how Dad did it; that’s how America does it… and it’s worked out pretty well so far.”