nathanborror/gist:285616

## gistfile1.txt
The Department of Mad Scientists (Michael Belfiore)
- Highlight Loc. 184-92 | Added on Friday, January 01, 2010, 05:28 PM

The United States spent $651 billion on defense-related activities in 2009. That’s more than half of the U.S. discretionary budget, and more than the military budgets of China, Russia, and Europe combined. No less a figure than President Eisenhower—the same president who launched NASA and DARPA—warned of the direct cost to the nation’s citizens of extreme military spending. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in a speech that was broadcast over television and radio in April 1953. “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
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The Department of Mad Scientists (Michael Belfiore)
- Highlight Loc. 207-10 | Added on Friday, January 01, 2010, 05:30 PM

DARPA has fostered and brought into existence some of the most useful technologies of the last fifty years. At the same time, operating on an annual budget only a tiny fraction of the overall defense budget-about the price of one and a half B-2 bombers, or only about one-sixth NASA’s annual budget—DARPA today proves that the U.S. military can maintain its edge without breaking the back of the economy that tries to support it.
	The Department of Mad Scientists (Michael Belfiore)
	- Highlight Loc. 184-92 \| Added on Friday, January 01, 2010, 05:28 PM

	The United States spent $651 billion on defense-related activities in 2009. That’s more than half of the U.S. discretionary budget, and more than the military budgets of China, Russia, and Europe combined. No less a figure than President Eisenhower—the same president who launched NASA and DARPA—warned of the direct cost to the nation’s citizens of extreme military spending. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in a speech that was broadcast over television and radio in April 1953. “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
	==========
	The Department of Mad Scientists (Michael Belfiore)
	- Highlight Loc. 207-10 \| Added on Friday, January 01, 2010, 05:30 PM

	DARPA has fostered and brought into existence some of the most useful technologies of the last fifty years. At the same time, operating on an annual budget only a tiny fraction of the overall defense budget-about the price of one and a half B-2 bombers, or only about one-sixth NASA’s annual budget—DARPA today proves that the U.S. military can maintain its edge without breaking the back of the economy that tries to support it.