Given my job, I care about science. The Bush record on science is abysmal. The George W. Bush administration:

a. Revoked lowering the limit on arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb, using the arguments that 1) it is too costly and 2) our standards already exceed those of western Europe. (The second is a lie – Western European countries limit arsenic to 10 ppb . . as was suggest by our own National Science Foundation.)
b. Removed the US from participation in the Kyoto agreement limiting carbon dioxide emissions, claiming he has seen no solid scientific evidence that global warming is real. The past two years have seen many cities reporting the highest average temperatures in recorded history. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are currently higher than they have been since the extinction of the dinosaurs. And the geologic record shows that periods of high atmospheric carbon dioxide always correlate to periods of high global temperatures.
c. Stopped all research on renewable energy resources in favor of fuel cell research. Fuel cells, while attractive energy storage devices, are not energy production solutions. The idea of producing energy by burning hydrogen to form water (the original source of the hydrogen) violates the second law of thermodynamics. This administration has asked the American public to believe that it is possible to create the chemical equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
d. Effectively stopped all publicly funded research on stem cell research, because it may produce costly medical treatments. JC Watts, two weeks before the president announced his policy, touted the administration’s difficulty with stem cell research by saying on NBC’s Meet the Press, “We shouldn’t be doing this research because we don’t know what the results will be.”
e. Thwarted all scientific and economic research on the elimination of mercury emissions from coal burning power plants. The bush plan is to allow coal burning power plants to pollute the area in which they emit if they can buy credits from a plant that is not polluting in a completely different area.

Bush has been a disaster for science and innovation to an extent so great that 40+ Nobel Laureates will soon produce an open letter indicating the disaster that has befallen science in the US due to the policies of the Bush administration.

This is the last I'll post on this, as even I would like to get back to discussing chips. At least that is soemthing we can agree is fun to talk about!