Our useless governor has just killed the expansion of the Bell Museum. This kind of dimbulb thinking annoys me beyond measure: the role of our government should be to build and sustain common shared resources, yet over and over again we see an intentional deprivation of the most basic tools of a civilized society, a denial that is easily made by these jokers because the consequences of doing harm are deferred to another generation. Museums are not just superficial entertainments (although the creationists don’t get that) — they are storehouses of collected information, like a library that holds a more complex array of data than books and recordings. You don’t build them because you’ll get a benefit next week, but because it is a long-term investment in intellectual infrastructure.
(via Greg Laden, who doesn’t seem to like Governor Pawlenty much at all)