NOAA Busts on NOAA, 200th Anniv. Lame

DISCLAIMER: Opinions in this article are personal observations only and do not represent the opinions of AccuWeather, Inc.

I'm in a particularly sarcastic mood this morning so I thought I'd point out something in the news: The new director of the National Hurricane Center, part of NOAA, is busting on NOAA's budget, saying that they're wasting $4 million of your taxpayer money on their 200th Anniversary Celebration while cutting $700,000 from hurricane research.*

They also admit on their 200th Anniversary Website that it's really only their 37th anniversary. NOAA was formed in 1970, though precursors to the organization, such as the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, date back to 1870.

Some of that $4 million was spent making a Macromedia Flash 8,000 tile mosaic of photos from the good times, and commissioning a comic strip that wasn't funny. Bugs: Some of the tiles on the mosaic appear to have been repeated (see below), and you can't click on the pictures to get more information, cause that would make too much sense! They also "honor and celebrate" World War II and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in a Top 10 section.

REALITY CHECK: Of course, here I am talking about wasting money and doing lame stuff, and I just did a lame, wasteful preview of a lame, wasteful J-SHOW for tonight. Talk about a kettle and a pot! We'll, at least I'm not spending your tax money.

*Seriously though, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that they could probably fix those buoys that are out of service... during Subtropical Storm Andrea, it seemed like quite a few were out of service, as happened while trying to quantify Tropical Storm Beryl off the coast of Nantucket last year.