CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@SamanthaJaneSmith I recently wrote an article for my blog that happened to focus on NASA in 1989 when agency officials talked about establishing a permanent moon base no later than 2020 and putting humans on Mars by 2030. Even then, it was clear this was based on unrealistic expectations of long-term government funding. And that was with a White House and Congress not openly hostile to science.

One day I'll do a podcast dedicated to 1980s software that included unnecessary exclamation points in their names!

@jalefkowit Early in my career I worked for a fairly out-there libertarian outfit drafting amicus briefs. There was this one case where they needed a constitutional justification for their position. I literally made one up out of whole cloth. They loved it and it went in the brief.

These folks really do believe they can "debate" their way into any position regardless of actual facts, law, or logic.

@mwl The funding will continue until morale improves.

@nixCraft One of my first freelance jobs in the early 2000s was writing articles for a series of (physical) encyclopedias on U.S. history. I've always been meaning to see if any copies still exist in some public school library somewhere.