re: #116 WindUpBird

Are they? I don’t know that they are, I don’t think our country will magically wizard itself up a bunch of IQ points and education overnight, and wave its magic wand to remove the decades of bigoted groupthink that calls itself socially conservative Christianity

Nope, the toolbox is lookin’ pretty dire

That is a factor. Will probably take us getting “sputnik-ed” by China or India in some noticable technological and politically visible way to make scientific endeavor popular enough again to draw truly meaningful funding.

Aside: Was at a party over the weekend and a side discussion was a middle-aged man expounding on how the “liberals” gave up on funding space exploration in order to keep up welfare payments and support to the idle poor in order to guarantee continuing to get their vote. (I should put scare quotes on ‘idle poor’ since it was essentially being used as a dog whistle for minorities.) I resisted getting involved since I did not know the relationship between the man and my hosts - and guess he was probably a relative. Besides the fact that there was a 80+% chance that the guy would not listen too or believe facts if I offered them.