WASHINGTON — They called it the Red Balloon Challenge. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, responsible for investing in next-generation technologies, recently paid researchers at MIT $40,000 to coordinate a social-media treasure hunt for 10 red balloons placed at various locations across the country. They succeeded, in eight hours, 52 minutes, and 41 seconds.
At Brown University, researchers received nearly $300,000 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to determine the color of the wings of the Archaeopteryx, a bird that lived 150 million years ago. They concluded “black, with 95 percent probability.”
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It's easy to see the defense implications of the red baloon experiment-- crowdsourcing the finding of IEDs would be my guess-- and of the jerky--MREs are important (as Napoleon said, an army travels on its stomach). I'm not sure about the others, but I expect there are many that on the surface seem silly but really do have serious purpose. I am concerned it might be a bit like Sarah Palin's fruit fly remark--she didn't understand that research into fruit flies was either for genetic research or for protection of food crops. I wonder how much of this really is waste (probably some) and how much is just misunderstood or twisted to sound ridiculous.
Then find out and report back.
Then find out and report back.
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Meanwhile, check my previous remarks today on the hunger crisis in America and whether our tax-funded national treasure is not grossly misdirected. This report certainly proves my point.
Meanwhile, check my previous remarks today on the hunger crisis in America and whether our tax-funded national treasure is not grossly misdirected. This report certainly proves my point.