Monday, October 29, 2007

People obviously prioritize differently

The ScienceBloggers are holding their annual fund-raising for DonorsChoose, trying to help underfunded schools give their students a better education.

Like last year, people have been generous in donating money (though I'm sue DonorsChoose could get more if they opened up for international donations). It's sad that it's necessary for such fund raising, but it's good that people are willing to give money to further these students' education.

Today I came across a good article on Answers in Genesis' Creation Museum. While reading that, I was once again struck by the cost of that museum.

It was funded through private donations, and cost $27 million. That's $27 million used to combat science and sound education.

Think of what those money could have been used to, if donated to organizations like DonorsChoose.

Currently the ScienceBloggers have raised $45,168 - an impressive amount - and funded projects that impact 10,654 students. In rough numbers, that $4.5 for every student impacted. Now, it obvious that such numbers don't scale, but let's say that it take ten times as much to impact a student when looking at a greater scale, i.e. for every $45 used, a student gets a slightly better education.

Now, using those numbers, if those $27 million had been used to help kids get a better education, they would have impacted 600,000 students. Heck, if we think it would take a hundred time as much to impact a student ($450), it would still have helped 60,000 students. That's sixty thousand students!

That's pretty sickening numbers. And it gets worse. AiG claims that the museum has had 200,000 visitors. According to the article, the entrance fee is $19.95. It's doubtful that everyone have paid the full price to get in, but if just half the claimed visitors have done so, it would still mean that the museum would have gotten approximately $2 million in revenues. That money could have funded another 45,000 or 4,500 students' education.

Instead those $29 million have gone towards teaching 200,000 people lies and anti-science. Some of those people are not going to buy into them, but too large a number will.

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1 Comments:

Blogger ERV said...

Ugh.


Ugh.


Just awful.

I hate thinking about that stuff. God, how much could research labs use $27 Mil?? What could art/music departments all over the US done with $27 Mil?? Anybody? Might as well have just burned the money.

Ugh.

October 31, 2007 2:58 AM  

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