We Need Science

How awesome is this!?

This technology is now barely surfacing. We can create better technology; faster computers! Since we've created the spear, man kind has constantly advanced their technology to take that next step forward, and has made new discoveries in the world around them to better society (usually). But you're never going to get that faster processor to play badass video games without people getting the funding to make these discoveries. And it's not like we knew what the hell we were going to use electricity for when Ben Franklin (dumbass) was electrocuting himself.

Here, I'll let "The West Wing" Explain:

SAM SEABORNE (Rob Lowe. Hot SOB. Deputy Communications Director.)
Look, Congress isn’t gonna fund your damn Superconductor, all right?

MILLGATE (Sam's old physics professor from Princeton who wants to do something meaningful before he dies shortly)
Supercollider. Superconducting Supercollider. This is exactly what I’m talking about. A 54-mile tunnel, 150 feet below ground in which protons and antiprotons would be flung …
It’s a machine that reveals the origin of matter.

By smashing protons together at very high speeds and at very high temperatures, we can recreate the Big Bang in a laboratory setting, creating the kinds of particles that only existed in the first trillionth of a second after the universe was created.

SAM
Okay, terrific. I understand that. What kind of practical applications does it have?

MILLGATE
None at all.

SAM
You’re not in any way a helpful person.

MILLGATE
There are no practical applications, Sam. Anybody who says different is lying.

SAM
I need to be able to show him I can paint him against something. Children, baseball, campaign finance. What does it mean to be against the Supercollider?

MILLGATE
I really don’t know where to start.

SENATOR ENLOW (Asshole who wants to spend a bunch of money in an upcoming appropriations on a highway named after him rather than on something important and awesome. bitch.)
I’m a Democrat, Sam. How’s a 20 billion dollar astronomy lecture gonna help the President get elected?

If only we could only say what benefit this thing has, but no one’s been able to do that.

MILLGATE
That’s because great achievement has no road map. The X-ray’s pretty good. So is penicillin. Neither were discovered with a practical objective in mind. I mean, when the electron was discovered in 1897, it was useless. And now, we have an entire world run by electronics. Haydn and Mozart never studied the classics. They couldn’t. They invented them.

Politics has become too much about the vote and not as much about doing the right thing; about bettering our society and pushing forward. How did we put men one the moon in 10 years and then decide science had no bearing on normal people? As our world has advanced our government (at least over the past 8 years) has thrown progress to the side. I really hope Obama does raise science to it's proper place, as he promised in his inaugural speech. At least after he gets the country out of this shit-hole of a mess we made for ourselves. But let's not be a country full of Prof. Unbridges'. Progress for progress's sake must, by all means, be encouraged. The status quo has never really remained the same. You've gotta make new time. You've gotta make the world better.

I couldn't find a video clip of this, but this chick on youtube has a bijillion clips up of random awesome things from the show. You should watch it. All of you.