Tax defeat dooms Toledo science jewel -- This really pisses me off!

[Bozita]

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071228/OPINION03/712280386

Friday, December 28, 2007
Neal Rubin:
Tax defeat dooms Toledo science jewel

The O'Grady family finally made the trip from Marysville to the Toledo science museum Thursday -- just in time to say goodbye.

Swarms of Michiganians have passed through COSI, the Center of Science and Industry, since it opened along the Maumee River in 1997. The museum's first employee -- still on the payroll -- lives in Ann Arbor. It's been a favorite destination for field trips, close enough to Detroit to be convenient and far enough to seem exotic to a busload of 9-year-olds.

But Lucas County voters drop-kicked a modest $1.5 million levy proposal in November, and as of 5 p.m. Monday, the last of more than 3 million visitors will leave the building, frizzy-haired from the static electricity exhibit and more learned than before. A sign of the times will hang upon the door:

CLOSED.

more...

[orleans]

1. wow--let's hope some of those assholes who decided to not fund it

will regret it.

[sam sarrha]

2. the anti-science christian extremists score another victory for ignorance

[tabasco]

8. Ohio really seems to be ate up with that type.

There are actually people who voted for Jean Schmidt.

[Didereaux]

3. the more ignorance there is, the less science there will be. Look to your schools

the teachers are as ignorant of their subject matter as their education professors were. We are on the third generation of educators taught how to teach, but not the subject matter to teach. Ignorance does beget ignorance.

[tabasco]

9. That's the stupidest post I've read in awhile.

The teachers I know are dedicated, smart, and professional.

You sound like the ignorant one to me.

[Mendocino]

4. Closed for the want of a few cents a day.

I live in the Toledo area, it would have cost me less than 3 cents per day. What a shame.

[SoCalDem]

5. They don't need no steenking science.. just the bible

:sarcasm:

[TreasonousBastard]

6. I hate reading things like this, where...

one or two percent of the voters can destroy something so worthwhile over less than than a nickel a day.

Our downfall may just be that we are becoming so mean.

[Bozita]

7. Along with the collapse of the interstate freeway bridge in Minneapolis, this signifies the Bush Age

Monday will be a sad day in America.

[Lisa]

10. "first and foremost a business"

A business that doesn't have an R&D department, or strategic long-term planning division. These kinds of places pay their dividends years, even decades, down the road.

I'm with you, Bozita.

It's unfortunate that more and more educational institutions are being run that way, due to chronic (and in some cases, malicious) underfunding. I remember I was heartbroken when the outdoor education center that inspired me and many other children to consider a career in the natural sciences finally had to put a fence around the woodland and start charging admission. Ironically, one of the biggest lessons that place had taught me was that you can't put a dollar value on the environment -- and that if you try, your GNP won't be big enough to cover it.