McCain Seeing Stars

I don't know how many of you may have watched the final debate last night, but when McCain was trying to claim that Obama is earmark friendly, he brought up the clain that Obama wastes so much $ he's marked "3 million dollar overhead projector". He did the same thing in the second debate and I'd just like to clarify this as complete and utter nonsense. Think about it "Who honestly spends 3$ million dollars for an overhead projector?" It makes it seem as if Obama is dropping a metric ton of $ on something that every classroom in America has for less than 100$. Course you can argue that hey "NASA spent 1 million inventing a pen that writes upside down, when the Russins used a pencil", and therefore government just throws money away.

But, my friends, this is not the case. It's 3$ million for a replacement Zeiss Mark VI star projector for the Alder Planetarium, you're not going to do geometry straight on the glass with this guy. In addition to a highly specialized piece of scientific equipment, the piece of hardware they have now is over 40 years old, so this isn't just some new toy. I know this is just a small detail in the midst of the debate, but I think it's good to clarify some of these outrageous claims.

More info:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/16/repost-mccains-planetariophobia/
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/pressroom/pr/2008_10_08_AdlerStatement_aboutdebate.pdf