I keep telling people that what I see is a re-militarization of the sciences. The Democrat-led Congress severely cut civilian science funding last December. (Actually, against Bush’s recommendation. Who knew we’d agree on something?) The end product of this is major fall out — big experiments are ending early, graduate students are scrambling to find summer funding, and the number of jobs in academia will take a big hit.

What is the end product? As civilian funding goes down and military funding sky rockets, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where all of the scientists are going to get jobs. Another way we have seen this happen is major cuts in the NSF Astronomy budget and a buffering in NASA’s budget. NSF funding tends to be for research the scientists choose, whereas NASA gets to tell its scientists what to do. So, we’re seeing a funding environment where everyone is essentially being pushed into working for the defense department and related organizations, whether they want to or not.

classic paul, i knew it was you who quit before i even saw the pic to the article. proud of you man .
b. gillian