"By Declaring Things Stupid, They Become Stupid! Automatically!"

It's the Day's Day of Days!  Because balloon.

This sort of reminds me about the endless offense over studies about cow flatulence.  Which sound ridiculous until you realize how damn many of the things there actually are, and how they release enough gas to play a part in global climate change, and how, oh, yes, it's our decisions to raise them that causes all this.  And suddenly those 'silly' studies don't seem silly, but... well, kind of important.

This is a classic play by the self-proclaimed champions of small government--because science rather frequently involves doing things that sound silly if you describe them without any context, it's easy to use a few of the odder studies and experiments to make it sound as if tons of money are being blown on frivolous things.  That these studies are typically a rather small amount of the budget--a much smaller amount than the military spending many seem strangely fond of--is immaterial.  It sounds good to them, and so it must be true.