http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?_r=1

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/can-someone-point-to-the-science-4930

[strong] and [bold] have the same relationship.

@ Everyone objecting to “Canadia”
It’s a joke, for The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake! Just like Phil writing “misunderestimate” or “embiggen”. Sheesh.

Do I gotta explain everything to youse folks?

@Boris Behncke

By the way, I have a good friend who is also called Jon and he’s a volcanologist and for all the more than 20 years that we’ve been friends he’s been anything but leftist.

Anything that ever disagrees with a right-wing ideologue is part of the left-wing conspiracy. Because an ideologue of any stripe believes everybody else to be ideologues themselves. And ideologues don’t think for themselves (they let their ideology do that for them) so they just blindly support “their side” and blindly bash “the other side”.

A lot of the antipathy toward Obama is not because the haters are racist, or believe the guff about him being a “Manchurian Muslim” and a closet Communist.

He’s “from the other side”, and that’s enough reason for many to hate him, and for them to feel certain, at a molecular level, that he will destroy the country.

Don’t be a rightist, leftist, Democrat or Republican. Be a human being who thinks for himself, and who may or may not agree with some or all of the standpoints of one or other ideology, while reserving the right to change his mind should circumstances warrant it.

Be a flip-flopper, and be proud of it.

What anything I’ve written has to do with vulcanology, I have no idea.

“Our current level of volcano monitoring is sufficient and I can’t fault anyone for criticizing increased funding, especially when it’s thrown into a stimulus bill, while the country’s books are deep in the red.”

Hmm. Go visit the Alaskan Volcano Observatory, or the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, or any of the other institutions around the country which study volcanoes. If they don’t laugh at you and drum you out of town, I’ll eat my hat.

Wait a minute .. Jindal is covered in wool!? WTF?!?

Hmm… I thought the people following this guy were the sheep!

Still it might explain a bit of his “wooly” (non) thinking!

Jindal’s into the PC game ‘Doom’?! Good on ‘im! Even if we have all moved on to ‘Halo’ & better still ‘Going Postal’ ages ago!

And to Jon: “Jindal was criticizing the inclusion of additional funding for volcano monitoring in a STIMULUS BILL!!! ”

That is NOT what Jindal said. Jindal said “…for something called volcano monitoring.” The tone of voice Jindal used made it sound like he had never heard of a volcano before. He didn’t just say “volcano monitoring.” He said “SOMETHING CALLED volcano monitoring.”

You know, if Jindal had said what you claimed he said, I could almost understand his point. But, you’re making stuff up, Jon. Jindal said nothing of the sort. Jindal used a dismissive tone of voice and pretended that “volcano monitoring” is some obscure activity that has no purpose whatsoever.

Just curious, Jon, did you even hear that part of his speech? Are you oblivious to tones of voice and body language? Jindal wasn’t offering criticism of including these funds in a stimulus bill. He was outright mocking the whole idea of “something called volcano monitoring.”

Jindal only used “volcano monitoring” as a cheap set-up for a poorly written joke about the “eruption of spending in DC.” This is no different than calling a planetarium projector an “overhead projector.” To these Republicans, science is nothing more than a set-up for their poorly-written punchlines.

The sad thing is I would have agreed with Jindal on most of his other points about government spending if it wasn’t for his dismissive attitude towards science. In my opinion, “something called volcano monitoring” should have been one of the only things in that bill. I disagree with all of the bailouts and the rewarding of failure. I think investing in infrastructure will be far more valuable than propping up failed businesses. Something called volcano monitoring will be a better investment than something called “propping up US auto makers” for example.

Jindal = a member of the “Idiocracy.”

@Jack Mitcham: yep, my inbox is swamped with messages from vulcanologists now. Redoubt is an extremely isolated volcano though; Mt. Erebus in Antarctica may win the battle for title of “Middle of Nowhere” but Redoubt isn’t far behind. The volcano is far enough from, say, Anchorage that there are no immediate threats to anyone on the ground although the sand ejected can easily reach that far and the hazard to aircraft can extend over a huge area. Short story: Jindal can crow that the large(r) population centers of Alaska are in no immediate danger, so why waste money watching the volcano; he can just pretend that there is no hazard to airplanes until one crashes.