Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the absurdity of making minor cuts in funding to resolve larger financial issues.
Neil Degrasse Tyson uses an analogy comparing the insignificant reduction of funding for PBS to deleting small text files on a large hard drive to create space. This highlights how trivial actions may not substantially impact larger budgetary problems, suggesting that more meaningful solutions are necessary for effective financial management.
In practice
Using this quote in a debate about government spending can illustrate the inefficacy of trivial budget cuts.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
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One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
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Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting meaning. This is why we're here. To make each other feel safe.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.
Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom.
The universe is alive and conscious, and it responds to our intent when we have our intimate relationship with the universe and see it not as separate but as our extended body.
It's true that most American citizens think of themselves as living in a democratic country. But when was the last time that any Americans actually sat down and came to a collective decision? Maybe if they are ordering pizzas, but basically never.
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