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Absurd Waste of Taxpayer Dollars

Mike

Well-known member
(CBS 13) DAVIS, Calif. Maybe it was at church or an all-night dance party or maybe it was an orchestra performing Beethoven's ninth, but chances are, music has moved you. A UC Davis professor is being paid to find out why.

Music has the power to energize. “Mostly the rhythm, that's usually how I pick it," said Ashley, a student.

It has the power to calm. "It helps me relax when I'm stressed out,” said Ashley.

It has the power to annoy and to inspire. Why is that?

UC Davis neuropsychology professor Petr Janata just received a $1 million dollar grant to study how people experience emotions and have spiritual experiences when they're engaged with music.

Ever have a song trigger a memory? A breakup? Your childhood? Your wedding day? Previous studies have suggested that how we hear music and how we remember emotions involve the same frontal area of the brain. Janata suspects spirituality does too.

"Where is spirituality in the brain? Is it one little spot right there, or some sort of distinct network? We don't know yet," said Janata.

Over the next three years he'll study several religious groups and compare them to hard-core rock music fans. Believe it or not, there are similarities.

“It all combines to produce these transcendent or deeply emotional or what those people would characterize as spiritual experiences," said Janata.

Using electrodes, motion detectors -- even MRI imagery, he'll measure how music stimulates brain and muscle activity for a glimpse at what may be the origins of two of the things that make us uniquely human: religion and music.

Rock on.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
It can get worse. The Federal Liberals up here give thousands of dollars to students for art. The best example I can give is one student pi$$ed in a bottle and got paid I forget how much for it.
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
And then we have the "bridge to nowhere" paid for by American taxpayers, pure pork. Excerpts; link below; my emphasis.


"Alaska's Gravina Island (population less than 50) will soon be connected to the megalopolis of Ketchikan (pop. 8,000) by a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge. Alaska residents can thank Rep. Don Young, who just brought home $941 million worth of bacon."

"Yet due to funds in a new transportation bill, which President Bush is scheduled to sign Wednesday, Sallee and his neighbors may soon receive a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and 80 feet taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. With a $223 million check from the federal government, the bridge will connect Gravina to the bustling Alaskan metropolis of Ketchikan, pop. 8,000."

"The Gravina Bridge is one of a record 6,371 special projects, or "earmarks," in the Transportation Equity Act, a six-year $286 billion bill that rivals the recent energy bill in its homage to the pork barrel. No politician better flaunts an ability to bring home the bacon than Alaska's Don Young. As chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Alaska's lone congressional representative for 32 years, the elder statesman wrangled $941 million for Alaska in the bill, making Alaska, the nation's third least populated state, the fourth-biggest recipient of transportation funds. The money for the bill is fed by a gas tax at the pump, but this slush fund isn't redistributed to all Americans equally: The bill spends $86 per person on a national average; it spends an estimated $1,500 on every Alaskan."

'Indeed. Included in the bill's special Alaska projects is $231 million for a bridge that will connect Anchorage to Port MacKenzie, a rural area that has exactly one resident, north of the town of Knik, pop. 22. The land is a network of swamps between a few hummocks of dry ground. Although it may or may not set the stage for future development, the bridge, to be named "Don Young's Way," will not save commuters into Anchorage any time, says Walt Parker, a former Alaska commissioner of highways."


Let's not forget which political party is totally in charge of our government - the Republican Party.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/08/09/bridges/index.html
 

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