Science funding is important, people

Scientific research is important. Scientific research takes money. A lot of that money comes from the government (unless we can come up with more creative ways of funding it, see my link here.)

This deserves much more time and attention than I can spare at the moment (writing a dissertation will do that to you), so I'm going to let Carl Zimmer do the talking for now and add my two cents later: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/25/ducks-meet-the-culture-wars/