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| SPACE.com: This artist's concept shows an unmanned NASA spacecraft approaching a near-Earth asteroid for capture and transport to a location near the moon. |
House lawmakers debated NASA's 2014 budget today (July 18) during a meeting that saw stark partisan divisions over proposed funding cuts for the agency's science and space exploration programs.
A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014 — $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill — which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding — would roll back NASA’s funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget.
Democratic members of the committee spoke strongly against the proposed cuts, which Republicans say are necessary under the federal sequestration cuts prompted by the Budget Control Act of 2011.
Note: it is my usual habit to italicize articles, with obvious attribution of their origins at the link after its text. However, in the two quotes following, the authors are recognizable and famous enough I think to depart from that format. Their poignant prose (sadly) relates.
*****
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grand children's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark"
ANTONIO
Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice," Scene III
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Clara Moskowitz, Assistant Managing Editor
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