Good News: U.S. Taxpayers Shell Out $581K to Find Out If Online Dating Site Users Are Racist…
What the?
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released a new oversight report, “The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope” that raises serious questions regarding the agency’s management and priorities. The report identifies more than $1.2 billion the National Science Foundation (NSF) has lost due to waste, fraud, duplication and mismanagement and an additional $1.7 billion in unspent funds.
Examples of the more than $3 billion in waste and duplication outlined in the report include:
• $80,000 study on why the same teams always dominate March Madness;
• $315,000 study suggesting playing FarmVille on Facebook helps adults develop and maintain relationships;
• $1 million for an analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names;
• $50,000 to produce and publicize amateur songs about science, including a rap called “Money 4 Drugz,” and a misleading song titled “Biogas is a Gas, Gas, Gas”;
• $2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends; and
• $581,000 on whether online dating site users are racist.
Posted by ZIP on Friday, May 27, 2011, at 9:49 am | 
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How about a study on why the us taxpayer shouldpay for such useless studies? (sarc)
I have an on going study about why certain people are Idiots.
Do you think I can get paid for these observations?
How about no taxpayer funded studies, ever.
Jell-O wrestling in Antarctica is a very effective moral booster for those scientists
Republicans are just no fun/sarc..
My whole family minus me of course cause I thought it was stupid and Those of your here that play Farmville don’t hold it against me but my family does spend more time helping each other on the fake farms then they have ever done in life.
and two family members live right next door to my windowed mother and can’t get their lazy asses out to help her ..
so what I’m saying is Those research grants are really retarded. and How do we get money for some and then use it to get obama out of office?
I would like $315,000 for how others could duplicate my simple farm in real life and not have to worry about relationships as a real family farm requires all to work together to be successful-so relationships flourish. Oops my bad, why would we study something real, when all that is happening is laundering of money?
The gobermint knows best…
Agree with Liz..no govt studies EVER.
Y’know, I sit here and I look at my hard-earned paycheck, and I see how much is taken from me in taxes (28%) and I read something like this and I SEETHE with rage. Government is and has been out of control and out of touch for a very long time now. I am FURIOUS, and of course I am left with no outlet or relief for my rage… both parties will continue to squander our money, nothing will ever change. Very depressing.
So what if the people on dating sites are racist? Yes racsim is ugly, but if you can’t get a date, you can’t get a date, that’s why the site exists. How is that the govt’s problem?
I think that this is the most racially obsessed admin of all time.
Of course the Dems immediately began howling and ridiculing Dr. Coburn for suggesting improvements to stop waste of taxpayers money.
The Dems don’t want anything done unless they initiate it, and they do nothing, then when Republicans initiate they howl and scream and ridicule and demand bi-partisan cooperation is the only answer.
We gotta get rid of these leeches.
Let me see if I get this right, if I go to a online dating site and say I want this or that in a potential suitor but are adamant that I don’t want to date a black, latino, asian, arab, homosexual, transgender or lesbian, who is an unemployed, uneducated, poor man or woman, I am a racist?
What happened to the free world?
and not a single one of them can figure out the national debt??? this is pathetic.
For those who were too disgusted to finish reading the original article:
Additionally, the report details examples of mismanagement including:
• Hundreds of millions of dollars lost to ineffective contracting;
• $1.7 billion in unspent funds sitting in expired, undisbursed grant accounts;
• At least $3 million in excessive travel funds
• A lack of accountability or program metrics to evaluate expenditures.
• Inappropriate staff behavior including porn surfing and Jello wrestling and skinny-dipping at NSF-operated facilities in Antarctica.
A talk show host on morning radio was talking about the $$ spent to record the speed of walking between sick shrimp and healthy shrimp. Guess what? Healthy shrimp won. And it only cost us a few hundred thousand to find that one out. Consider it a cost savings.
Two things –
I can’t help but wonder how much THIS study costs.
Will anything be done about it? I’d guess NO!
Dating sites ARE racist, at least from a ‘progressive’ mindset. They’re also sexist, ageist, and they cause people to blatantly discriminate against each other with regard to mental and physical disabilities, religious preferences, financial and employment status, educational achievements, even political preferences among many other ‘isms’.
In the perfect ‘progressive’ world, the government would, for those insistent on the ‘outdated’ principle of marriage (as opposed to animalistic sexual gratification), simply hold a lottery. Whoever’s number came up would be your ‘partner’.
Wouldn’t matter if it was a man, woman, any race, age, religious or sexual preference, anyone in the lottery could be your future spouse, and if you refused to accept the results, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act will make sure you’re behind bars until you’re too old to care about dating.
I just wanna know how I get funded for one of these…How about a study of how happy consumer can be sitting on their butt while living off free money from the NSF? Or why two people who go to the park both have kids? Hmmm…the possibilities.
“How about no taxpayer funded studies, ever.”
Yeah, definitely. How dare that communist government take $0.00000001 from me to study racism in the US? And all those other stupid NSF projects like the development of the internet. Who needs the internet?!
In fact, why have science at all? We have the Bible, and that’s enough for me.
Let’s cut science research, education, and planned parenthood so we can spend $700 Billion on defense! Let’s cut the EPA and FDA so we can give tax cuts to millionaires! Let’s cut renewable energy research and instead ramp up offshore drilling–maybe we can coat the entire ocean in oil!
“We gotta get rid of these leeches.”
In all seriousness, I would be an idiot to say that the Dems have all the answers. But similarly, there’s no way in hell Republicans have all the answers. It’s time for people to think before they just spew out nonsense.
Government can be good.
Rich people should pay higher taxes because they couldn’t be rich without the work of poorer people. Additionally, they paid higher taxes in the 90s when our economy was booming and jobs were abundant. It was not until the tax cuts that job growth slowed down.
Science and the pursuit of knowledge is something that should be encouraged–maybe the immediate benefit of those studies isn’t apparent, but who knows what other knowledge they could lead to.
Start thinking.
How about a study on the effectiveness of cyanide on the individual components of the collective mind-hive?
How about a study on the gravitational pull of Michael Moore? To be conducted on the surface of Mars sans space suit.
How about a study on the miraculous animation of the corpse known as Nancy Pelosi.