- House Nixes More Research Spending in COMPETES Bill | Science News
Republicans blocked the passage of a 5-year authorization bill that would have provided substantial increases in the research and education budgets of the NSF and research programs at the DOE and the Department of Commerce. One reason for the defeat was the deficit, but apparently the NSF porn scandal also played a role. - Accomazzi, A.: Towards a Resource-Centric Data Network for Astronomy | astro-ph
This paper describes a proposal that the NASA Astrophysics Data System project has put forth in order to improve its role as one of the primary discovery portals for astronomers, focusing on the the effort to expose astronomy resources as linked data, and the harvesting of observational metadata. - Productive Airplane Rides | Productivity501
"One hour of work on an airplane is equal to three hours of work in the office." I have found this to be true non-post-observing, >3 hour long flights AND during ground delays. However, I'm not psyched about recreating that "trapped and lonely" feeling in my office.
Re link #1: This makes me pretty damned angry. It looks like only a few NSF officials were involved. But it makes the NSF look terrible, and undermines efforts to increase NSF funding to a competitive level.
Followup: The COMPETES act passed the house on Friday, May 28. To quote Kelle: The Dems used a clever procedural tactic, splitting the bill so that representatives could go on the record as anti-porn-at-work, pro-military, AND pro-science.