Note to McCain: Overhead projector is not a planetarium projector

pduggie

I wonder if the dumbell projector is actually what was requested.

The Franklin institute Fels planetarium USED to have a dumbell like that, but theyve been replaced by what seem to basicly be non-exotic big screen TV projectors on the edges of the dome.

If planetariums are using ordinary projectors now (since they can DO MORE, like project movies, not just points o light) then boingboing might need to be fact-checked here.

Chrispy

Because we, the people, acting through the agency of our elected representatives, say it is.
They’re the government, so they can do whatever they want?! Really? That’s your argument?

buddy66

@#12 DBARAK,

LOL with the b-b’s!

I wasn’t captured, but I would have told those motherfuckers anything to save my ass from being tortured beyond an unknown but certainly certain point.

Menlo Bob

Someone explain, why is it the responsibility of the the federal government to provide projectors of any description to a local planetarium?

Haakon IV

Hayden Planetarium in NYC spent $3.5 million on a new projector as part of a $210 million renovation in the 1990s:

http://tinyurl.com/49243f

I don’t know whether federal funds were involved.

hcovitz

AAHHHHHGGGG! McCain did it again last night!!
What’s his problem?!

arrghiamapirate

So it doesn’t project overhead? C’mon morons, does he have to present a 4 hour description of what it is to avoid smarmy remarks like this? Technically he is more correct. His ‘overhead projector’ does project overhead but a standard overhead projector projects forward.

hcovitz

@PDUGGIE,
The photo is just of a typical Zeiss, for the actual one the Adler currently has (you see, the funding never went through, so they have the old one from the ’60′s) you can view the WSJ article linked to in post #3.

Now, about the new kind of projectors, I could be out of date on this, but back when I was at the Adler, the problem with those was they didn’t afford the kind of resolution you get with the optical lenses of a Zeiss “barbell” type. Plus, based only on what someone posted above, I think the Adler probably has one of the “new kind” as well, but use it for different kinds of presentations. I’m not sure if the new kind can be used on a dome, which is the central architectural feature of the Adler (and of historic value, since it was the very first Planetarium building in the United States…note I said BUILDING for those who want to quibble).

Falcon_Seven

@5 That, my friends, is a Carl Zeiss Mark 6A planetarium projector. This is their newest model, the ‘Universarium’. They also produce full-dome video projection systems, like the ‘Spacegate’. Those in the Los Angeles area should take a trip to the landmark Griffith Observatory and checkout their recently renovated Samuel Oschin Planetarium. I used to work a few years back; most fun I ever had, ever.

hohum

@69 Menlo Bob, Maybe it isn’t their responsibility, but I am all for them funding something which will allow children to see the night sky and inspire their education… Instill in them a love, or at least a respect for science.

hcovitz

If you think McCain made a “mistake” and wasn’t deliberately trying to mislead, as some are trying to rationalize to belittle this, you are either as disingenuous as McCain is, didn’t actually watch the debate, or naive.

Also, the Adler serves 3 states children, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. So it is probably unique compared to many other Planetariums in deserving federal funding.

I know there’s a lot of Libertarian idealogues out there asking why the Adler cannot raise admission prices to pay for this itself. That’s an argument outside of the domain of BoingBoing, I think, so feel free to join in the discussion on AngryBear or EconDem.

MrSquirrel

So it doesn’t project overhead? C’mon morons, does he have to present a 4 hour description of what it is to avoid smarmy remarks like this? Technically he is more correct. His ‘overhead projector’ does project overhead but a standard overhead projector projects forward.

Congratulations on the most twisted logic of the day. He said it to make it sound like one of those things everyone knows as an “overhead projector”. So that it would sound ridiculous.

No listener is going to hear that, and think: “Ah, but overhead projectors project forward! What kind of projector is he talking about? Maybe a planetarium projector, which actually DOES project overhead!”

It was said specifically to be deceptive. By expending three more syllables, he could have called it what it actually is. No “4 hour description” necessary, not even close.

Being “technically correct” is often the hallmark of great deception. It is all a matter of wording. The issue here, is why be deceptive about it by trying to make it sound like something else? And why would you defend it with such a convoluted excuse for his subtle, intentional deception?

ScottTFrazer

Chicagoist has more:

http://chicagoist.com/2008/10/08/mccain_and_the_adler_planetarium.php

christalm

I wanted Obama to state how many jobs this projector had created. Creating jobs was part of the arguement, too. Not to mention the educational aspect.

Stefan Jones

Governor Palin requested one of those for the Anchorage planetarium, but the maker refused to put in a block that would prevent it from projecting ephemera before 4004 B.C.

charlesstieg

lk cmng t bng bng fr th gdgt nws nd qrky rtcls, bt ht t whn sts lk ths strt ncrprtng pltcs nt thm. Nt tht vn rmtly lk McCn, bt t’s jst nnyng. cm hr t scp frm th stpd md hmdrm nd pltcs. Pls stp dng ths pltcl bts. Ths shld b Drctry f wndrfl thngs, nt dtc pltcl drvl. k!

Antinous

charlesstieg,

Is your computer under warranty? You should have them fix your scroll bar.

Xopher

No, they’re the government, so they have to do whatever WE want.

Your interpretation is pretty damn stupid. The government does what the people want, or it’s corrupt.

mujadaddy

“That One” lol.

hcovitz

Ugh, and McCain’s continuing with it today at stumps:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/08/planetarium-project-pork-or-imperative/

(last paragraphs)

wrathofthekitty

#13 et al DBARAK

so just b/c mccain was a POW in Vietnam he has integrity? have you ever been in a war zone? have you ever met him personally? this is what i hate about the whole mccain persona…everyone is so impressed b/c he was a POW and many people think that that somehow makes him qualified to be the president. i just don’t get it…and here is why:

1) many people in combat zones lack any sort of integrity, probably b/c they are fighting for their very lives (which is totally understandable–you would be surprised to discover what people will do to save their own hide). maybe he was one of the few soldiers with some integrity while he was a captive, but he would definitely be in the minority and we also don’t have any witnesses handy.

2) i think that integrity is how a person acts and also how a person treats his/her inferiors when he/she thinks they are alone and not being observed. for that reason alone, it is hard to ever tell if anyone has any real integrity unless you know them personally. if, however, that person acts like a total rampaging jackass on the senate floor and wherever else he pleases OR says shitty/misleading/false things about other people in public, i would have to say that he leaves little to the imagination about his “integrity.”

another digression from a digression: people get mad/scared when they feel like they have no control over the situation they are in…and mccain has his fair share of public explosions, which is no secret to anyone. do we really want someone to be our commander in chief if he can’t even manage congressional on-goings, let alone his behavior?

it is not my intent to denigrate mr. mccain’s service to the US, but i have no proof of his integrity while a soldier, but i have tons of proof (mostly from his own mouth) that he in fact LACKS integrity, as do most politicians. he obviously has tried to mislead the american public with this “projector” comment, and i commend mr. obama for NOT defending such a ridiculous accusation, because in doing so he refused to play the political game.

thievedrelic

mccain just happens to be old enough to not know what a plane-arium is. he’s not my friend, buddy.

meadhbh

mmm… is that a GOTO S-Something or other I see?

personally…i love the spitz a3p like we had in ft. worth for friggin-evar. (meadhbh used to be a planetarium operator at the old Nobel Planetarium)

Takuan

Dear Charles Steig:

I empathize, but fighting evil is also wonderful – and necessary. Perhaps you should focus on the politically neutral items and let the bristly stuff slide. But not too much, you are at stake too.

dbarak

#39 posted by buddy66

When I went through SERE, if you weren’t captured you had to turn yourself in (but I believe they gave you a sandwich if you made it that far). In my case, I was captured, and finally gave them my Social Security number after about five minutes of intermittent waterboarding. Ahh, good times.

And thanks for the “LOL!”

TEKNA2007

#27 posted by Xopher , October 8, 2008 4:43 PM

>>> I will say this though: breaking under torture is not shameful. Virtually anyone would.

Agree agree agree. We’re prisoners of our bodies.

I pretty much think criticism of McCain’s behavior as a POW should be limited to coming from those who’ve been POWs. You just don’t know what it’s like living for years under the control of people who could off you any time they decided to. “But but … why me?” “I just felt like shooting someone today, and you’re the first person I saw.” BAM!

jookyg

the phrase “my friends” got me soooo drunk during the debate last night.

chrisraw

Guys and Girls of the USA please on behalf of the rest of the world vote Obama and save us another world war :)

dbarak

#44 posted by wrathofthekitty

No, being a POW doesn’t give someone integrity. Based on what I’d heard about McCain, I thought he acted honorably during his captivity. However, in an earlier comment here, I was referred to a Rolling Stone article about the myth of McCain’s aura. I’m only about halfway through, but based on what I’ve read so far, I’m confident that I’ll find McCain’s behavior during his captivity to be less than honorable.

POWs can have integrity, but being a POW doesn’t automatically bestow that trait.

jjasper

Planetariums contradict the 6,000 year old universe that Palin believes in.

Eric Knisley

>>
Governor Palin requested one of those for the Anchorage planetarium, but the maker refused to put in a block that would prevent it from projecting ephemera before 4004 B.C.
<<

Oh ha ha ha! Good one.

Well, OK, so Those In Charge aren’t so nice to the black people, the gay people, the immigrant people, the poor people, well, what can you expect, really? But by God, now they’ve made their last big mistake–they went and messed with THE DOME PEOPLE.

dbarak

Obama to McCain after the debate:

“Overhead projector? What planetarium are YOU from?”

Xopher

And if pushed to the wall (not that there’s a single journalist with the guts to do so) he’ll claim that it’s technically true, because it’s a projector, and it projects overhead, so it’s an overhead projector, see?

Lying son of a bitch. Lying husband of a lying wife. Lying principal of a lying second.

This man has no integrity whatsoever. He will say anything, do anything, to get votes, even though he must know by now that he’s already lost the election. To sell your integrity for riches is bad enough; to sell it for NOTHING proves you never had any in the first place.

Marshall

This was the “McCain’s either a liar or an imbecile” part of the debate for me. Anyone who’s ever been to a planetarium knows that they’re made possible by hugely complex systems.

I took McCain’s statement regarding the projector as an attack on education, and a statement that he’s unwilling to invest in it. How many urban kids probably got their first (and maybe only) view of the night sky at a planetarium? It’s one of those kids who’s going to get interested in science and change the world.

dbarak

Just read this excerpt from the article, describing the “overhead projector…”

“…the instrumentâ€”which consists of two large blue balls…”

Sounds like my instrument.

dbarak

#11 posted by Xopher

“To sell your integrity for riches is bad enough; to sell it for NOTHING proves you never had any in the first place.”

I’m no McCain fan, but his experiences and action while a prisoner in North Vietnam do prove that at one time he did have integrity.

starcadia

LOL @ JOOKYG, #7. Wish I could’ve been there instead of just not tuning in. Same shit, different debate.

Also, I’m really surprised how much more sensible the discussion has been here as opposed to the one over at Universe Today, which is supposed to be aimed at people interested in the latest astronomical news. There was so much dumbassery going on over there that it wrecked my faith in humans again for a day. (Now fully restored to 10%.)

Doran

I’m thinking the photo is of Adler’s Zeiss Planetarium projector in the Sky Theater, and the “overhead projector” the Wrinkly White Haired Guy was referring to is the planetarium’s all digital Definiti Space Theater. By the way, the Adler is the oldest existing planetarium. I hope someone asks the old guy why he hates science so much.

fnc

He can’t even use the emails, what did we expect?

gobo

#13, divulging military information while a POW shows no integrity whatsoever.

Being the subject of lengthy torture is pitiable, yes. It doesn’t give him automatic integrity.

Tensegrity

Bah, these pork barrel overhead projectors are just used to promote that pesky “science” stuff that the libruls are all gah gah about.

They start with the Sun being the “center of the solar system” and the next thing you know they’re claiming we are descended from chimps.

ill lich

It’s clear that some Republican “strategist” came up with that one, just like several of the other non-truths McCain has become fond of, like Obama requiring kindergartners to be taught sex ed., or Sarah Palin selling the jet on ebay, neither of which are exactly true, but can be parsed in a way to make them semi-true (i.e. “Sarah Palin put the jet on ebay” is true, of course it didn’t sell but that is the implication). I can see McCain saying “well. . . it sure looks like an overhead projector to ME you whippersnapper! What the hell do I know about computers anyway!?”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have Republican or Democratic “strategists”? If candidates simply said “this is what I believe, and this is what I plan to do if elected, vote for me if you agree” and didn’t spend time trying to appeal to everyone whilst offending no one?

chicagojohn

tribune is reporting that the Adler never received the funds:

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10/obama-adler-on-defense-after-mccain-criticism.html

“Ironically, the $3 million request was eventually rejected and the planetarium never received the funds, Knappenberger said. ”

dbarak

#16 posted by gobo

It depends on the situation. Divulging military information with NO resistance shows a lack of integrity, but it IS permissible and certainly understandable once you’ve reached a breaking point. And I know of what I speak.

I was a student in the Navy’s SERE School in Warner Springs, California, in January of 1984. We didn’t go through nearly what the POWs did, and what we did experience was only for about 24 hours in total. We were told to resist for as long as we were capable, and then to give out the minimum that would result in an easing of the interrogation. And we were specifically told that it was inadvisable to give out false information, as that would be too easy for the interrogators to debunk.

Again, I’m no McCain-the-politician fan by any stretch, but I do respect his behavior in North Vietnam (unless someone can provide verifiable information to the contrary).

monopole

Given that one of my ancestors provided the first projector to the Adler This draws my particular ire. As a regular visitor, the Adler is a wondrous place and a temple to science. I’ve seen sky shows there since grade school, which drove my desire to become an optical scientist and an amateur astronomer. Given this country’s need for better science education this is a particularly stupid move.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-Oscar Wilde

LeavingHalfway

unfortunately, “my friends” only gets you one square in McCain Bingo.

artbot

#16 – Abso-frickin-lutely right. Even bloggers are afraid to say anything like this, much less the MSM. From the accounts I’ve read (and they may be of questionable veracity), McCain was just as much of an a-hole when he came out of Vietnam as when he went in.

There’s a weird belief that surviving torture somehow makes a person more virtuous. I’d bet that while it may be true for a few, others may just become more broken, disillusioned and angry. Actually, that seems the more likely response.

hcovitz

@Doran, I thought at first it was for the new type of laser planetarium projector, too, but it does appear it was to replace the Zeiss, making McCain’s remark all the more out of line.

dbarak

#21 posted by artbot

“…McCain was just as much of an a-hole when he came out of Vietnam as when he went in.”

That I can believe. ;)

justONEguy

McCain mentioned this item twice -TWICE!- in the debate and each time it fell flat.

Sorry, but providing a million dollar learning tool to hundreds of Chicago area schoolchildren is not scandalous (certainly not, say, in a Keating 5 way). Its actually a pretty good use of money.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

BINGO!

#74 posted by arrghiamapirate, October 9, 2008 12:24 PM
So it doesn’t project overhead? C’mon morons, does he have to present a 4 hour description of what it is to avoid smarmy remarks like this? Technically he is more correct. His ‘overhead projector’ does project overhead but a standard overhead projector projects forward.

Arrghiamapirate, did you by any choice notice comment #10?

#10 posted by Xopher, October 8, 2008 4:05 PM
And if pushed to the wall … he’ll claim that it’s technically true, because it’s a projector, and it projects overhead, so it’s an overhead projector, see?

You are so utterly and completely pwned that Xopher can set up the pwnage in advance and you’ll still walk straight into it! Congratulations! Here’s your booby prize, and please come back to play again.

Wingo

@19 dbarak:

From Rolling Stone:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print

Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic â€” “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” â€” has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs â€” or he’d be dead.”

I am not in the military, but it sounds like in the eyes of a fellow officer, his behavior was semi-excusable, at best. Not necessarily ‘honorable’ in any way.

Takuan

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_flub_My_fellow_prisoners_1008.html

maturin

ok….not an overhead projector…..but still a lot of money so that they can put on LASERFLOYD shows at midnight on Fridays. :-)

hcovitz

McCain’s insult to science education to pander to the rightwing “gubmint” sucks crowd ranked right up there with his “I didn’t hear That One say how much the fine would be, did you?” re-smark, considering that THERE IS NO FINE…(in regards to Health Insurance for Small Businesses….see FactCheck.org).

I could not have had the fortitude that Obama had in refusing to even respond to that slime from McCain. While to me it is frustrating Obama didn’t respond, I think he sees a higher goal (Bill Clinton used to be like that while President…and it taught me a lot about maturity).

Xopher

Well, OK: to sell it for nothing means there was nothing to sell. As to whether he had integrity long ago, I take no position (though crashing plane after plane, taking nepotistic shelter, dumping his first wife because she was crippled, cheating on both wives &c. ad nauseam does make it seem unlikely). But it was long gone by the time he sold it in this election.

I will say this though: breaking under torture is not shameful. Virtually anyone would. Using family connections to get better treatment than other prisoners would have gotten IS shameful.

hcovitz

@MATURIN,
The point to keep in mind here is that kids cannot see the stars in Chicago because of light pollution. That was the original reason for the Adler when it was established in the ’30′s.

TK

Magritte moment of the day.

powerpants

i may be a mccain supporter (well, more like a obama disliker), but……..I facepalm’d pretty hard.

Anonymous

That is a ‘funny’ stretch of the truth. And people watching on TV might believe him because many of us remember the story of the infamous govt toilet seats costing 400.00 a pop. We’re lucky he said planetarium to give us a lead on factchecking.

Didn’t he say 3 million for that? Geez your standard modern movie theaters projectors cost upwards of a quarter million, maybe more, just look at the engineering. You know how much a panovision movie camera is? No one knows because you can’t even buy them. You have to rent them.

And how many plantariums are there in the US, couple hundred? Sounds like 3 million is a damn good price they negotiated for for months. I’m not saying that a plantarium projector is the Lunar LEM, but it’s not something a company is gonna mass produce, so you pay for the work involved. Look at that thing. If you told me that thing was part of that Haldron Collider or whatever it’s called, I’d believe it.

Overhead projector… what a butthead.

maturin

@HCOVITZ
Note smiley face!!

dbarak

#24 posted by Wingo

I got halfway through the article and emailed the rest to myself at home. I haven’t reached the POW part yet. But it sounds like I might have been wrong about him.

AirPillo

ok….not an overhead projector…..but still a lot of money so that they can put on LASERFLOYD shows at midnight on Fridays. :-)

Naww, those can’t perform laser shows. That’s a job for laserium, not a planetarium! (though Griffith Park Observatory did formerly host the laserium and, indeed, laser Floyd shows. I hear they’re moving it to the dome in Long Beach that used to host the Spruce Goose)

VVelox

@#28 posted by hcovitz

Yup. Dark is something that does not exist here in Chicago. There is not a single place here any place that I’ve been since living here that one can’t see easily from the bright mercury vapor glow in the sky.

It is sad in some ways, but at the same time the kid in me that loved cyberpunk as a kid really gets off on it. =^.^=

lampshade

he kills me sometimes…

Antinous

lampshade,

Your blog link goes on your profile page. Thanks.

AK Patriot

My friends, my friends, McSame used this about 50 times during the town hall.
A friend to all is a friend to none.
Aristotle

gmunden1

I am still laughing hysterically. Geez…Just when I think McCain can’t surprise me anymore with his ‘Maverick’ out-of-touch ways, he does it again!
I’m getting an image in my head of those old fashioned projectors from TV from the 60′s and 70′s.
The poor guy has no clue what type of high-tech equipment is used in museums or anywhere else. Oh dear….It’s so sad but oh so funny!
Is he going to get upset when NASA has to replace tiles on the Space Shuttle any other space craft?
“Tiles? You can get tiles at the Home Depot for $1.89 per square ft.”
He’ll wander around Home Depot or Lowes on his wheelchair ‘Scooter’ with a crumpled up piece of paper looking for assitance.

Tee-hee!

Bergeboy

Energy.

q42

Are there any details on the particular projector and the spending budget for it, where the funds came from ect?

Jack

@#19 POSTED BY DBARAK:
I appreciate your view. Also, another point was brought up to me comparing John Kerry to John McCain. Kerry saw ground combat and saw the results of air strikes on the civilians and the country. John McCain mainly flew a plane and dropped bombs and never saw the damage up close.

I respect McCain as someone with a differing opinion, but the “overhead projector” comment was ridiculous. It simply plays right into anti-evolution loons who see ANY science as a waste. Heck, look at Hubble. Why maintain it when it’s only proving that the world wasn’t created 5,000 years ago.

zandar

@#20, wonderful quote, thank you so much for that.

Phikus

Q42@35: Read the article linked@18 for those details, and it was never actually funded.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

DBarak @12 & onward: the first time I read Gobo’s comment, I automatically made a note to tell him that everybody breaks under torture. I was taught that rule of thumb in discussions on my own weblog by a couple of commenters who also went to SERE school.

SO, one of the things that startled me about that Rolling Stone article was the information that Lt. Col. Dramesi didn’t break. When I was reading the comments on the article, I ran into one by a guy, apparently in the military, who said (approximately) “If Lt. Col. Dramesi disapproves of McCain, that’s all there is to it.” I’m going to have to read up on that guy.

I owe thanks to anyone who serves my country. I do my best to value McCain’s service at its true worth.

Gobo @15, read the article in Rolling Stone. It’s very informative.

Mrs. Squirrel @36, I fear we’re stuck with “pork barrel” until someone popularizes a better term.

Decrying pork-barrel projects has been one of McCain’s performance pieces for years. He didn’t invent the riff; Senator William Proxmire used to hand out the “Golden Fleece Awards” every year, and got lots of publicity for doing it.

I know people who work in sciences and aerospace who still grit their teeth when they talk about Proxmire’s GFAs. The trick is that it’s easy to make some expenditure sound unreasonable. For instance, one year Proxmire gave a GFA to a study of why children fall off tricycles. What Proxmire didn’t mention is that tricycle accidents were a major cause of injury to toddlers. The study identified the problem — the standard tricycle‘s center of gravity was too high — and recommended the low-slung tricycle kids use today. Result: far fewer injuries. But Proxmire still derided it, and still got his publicity for that year’s Golden Fleece Awards.

McCain picked up Proxmire’s “annual denunciation of stupid gov’t spending” riff, though he just calls his “pork lists”. However, I strongly suspect his staffers are the ones who actually put those lists together, because several of them denounced earmarks requested for the town of Wasilla, AK by its mayor, Sarah Palin.

Wrathofthekitty @43, you need to read the thread more carefully. DBarak has been more than reasonable. Also, you have to figure that anyone who’s been to SERE school has put some hard thinking time into the question of what does and doesn’t constitute appropriate integrity while a POW.

Ill Lich @50, I don’t mind politicians and campaigns having strategists onboard. The question is whether they’re acting as copyeditors or uncredited ghostwriters.

Menlo Bob @68:

Someone explain, why is it the responsibility of the the federal government to provide projectors of any description to a local planetarium?

Because we, the people, acting through the agency of our elected representatives, say it is.

theWalrus

A guy in the Flickr thread gets upset that Obama approved $3 million for a planetarium projector, instead of pouring it into schools, and calls hcovitz “smug” for the picture. But, if you look at his Flickr page, you’ll see the first image is someone at an aquarium. Then there’s a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a zoo. You draw your own conclusions.

IvyMike

You mean McCain wasn’t riffing on the Onion article?

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/41879

“Barack Obama tried to teach your children science!”

iamcantaloupe

I’m glad someone pointed this out – I was definitely confused why the cost of an overhead projector was something which truly warranted discussion in a presidential debate.

Maybe we need to bring McCain to a plane*arium. Then he will love the plane*arium. To be without the plane*arium will cause him great pain. And after that we can make his head explode with swirling laser feet.

drew3ooo

Well, we have to remember, he comes from a political party that is edging closerto making it a platform that the world is only 6,000 years old, Dinosaurs and humans lived together and a 900 year old man gathered two of every single animal on the planet and put them on a boat.

MrSquirrel

Anybody else getting sick of the term “pork-barrel”? What’s the vintage on a term like that, Civil War Era or something?

I guess a $3 million upgrade to Adler Planetarium’s 40-year old projection system is pork-barrel, but a $400 million dollar bridge to an island with 50 inhabitants already reachable by a 10 minute ferry ride, is what? An “earmark”?

From Mr. Obama’s website, on the page where he discloses all his funding requests, in the interest of transparency:

Adler Planetarium, to support replacement of its projector and related equipment, $3,000,000

One of its most popular attractions and teaching tools at the Adler Planetarium is the Sky Theater. The projection equipment in this theater is 40 years old, and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience.