We are geeks: The best scientific petitions on the White House project “We are the People”

The Obama administration does not support the explosion of the planets ( which Zelenyikot already wrote about ). Gave a day off for federal government employees on Christmas Eve. Not going to impeach President Obama or distribute defense funds in favor of NASA.
But nevertheless, the White House will share its signature recipe for homemade beer - it is not classified. And they shared it . All that needed to be done to do this was simply to ask, and 12,240 people did this by taking part in the petition program of the White House “We are the People” .

Launched in September 2011, the petitioning system allows users to create petitions about everything that comes to their mind (it is quite obvious that petitions on the site still undergo a tough moderation). Further, after receiving the initial 150 signatures, petitions are published on the site. And if, over the next 30 days, the petition scored enough signatures, the White House will officially respond to it.

But there is one problem: the petition system has become too popular. The initial limit of 5,000 signatures was too easy to type and in October 2011 it was raised five times to 25,000. But on January 15, 2013, the White House again raised the lower limit to 100,000 so that only the most popular ideas could rise in the rankings. Now there is already a petition to cancel this decision ( at the time of writing the translation there were 6,732 signatures ), someone else asked the administration to stop this whole circus with the project ( at the time of writing the translation there were 1,000 signatures ), another asks the White House to take petitions more serious ( Signatures: 37000+. To which the answer was received: We are listening to you. Seriously. ).

Since September 2011 , about 10 million signatures have been put under more than 141,000 petitions created. In the last two months of 2011, 73,000 new petitions have been created and 2.4 million people have registered in the system.
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As of January 24, more than 285 petitions are awaiting signatures. And the most popular petition today is the request for recognition of discriminatory actions by the Baptist Church of Westborough and its inclusion in the “List of Hate Groups” (signatures: 325000+). Most petitions are submitted with requests for forms of taxation, control over firearms, or even completely banning firearms, as well as pardoning prisoners. But among all this multitude of incoming petitions, there are those that are related to science and technology.

For example, a petition asking the administration to consider building the Death Star, which was subscribed to by 34,435 people and received a well-known answer - the official "No" in the Jedi spirit.

Below are the other, collected by us, petitions on topics related to science. And of course, including the recipe for homemade beer from the White House. Because there is one more thing that we love in our editorial department ( Wired Science ) as well as science - this is beer.

White House Home Brew

Ale for the chef: recipes for honey ale and honey porter. ( pdf )

White House inside: Brewing.

Show us the aliens

"Extraterrestrial Highway" 375. Nevada State.

Signatures under the petition: ~ 1860.
( Roswell Incident , Area 51 , cosmobol signals, aliens with abnormal interest in anal anatomy).
The main trend among applicants: a request for transparency of information on contacts with aliens . The petition filed on January 1 suggests that such information will announce the “Golden Age of Peace, Prosperity, Health and Abundance for all people [and not people] on Earth.”
The White House has already responded to a similar request. "The fact is that we have no reliable evidence of the presence of extraterrestrial life forms, here on Earth."
“Why all these secrets and secrets? Already 2013, we already know everything. It is time to unite. We are all one, ”- says one of the last petitions, but not a word about the information confirming this knowledge of the applicant. ( original )
Believe me, people. We are just as impatient as you, want to know - are we alone in this vast universe? But so far there is no evidence.

First generation starship

Signatures under the petition: ~ 7200.
“Few things could inspire people on Earth as a kind of Enterprise under construction in space,” we read in a petition filed on December 22 from buildtheenterprise.org . The petition also claims that at present technologies allow the construction of the first generation Enterprise-like starship to begin, and the author modestly advises the White House to delegate to NASA to conduct feasibility and project studies on this issue. Despite the fact that it will take about 20 years, the result would be amazing travels, and we hope to manage to avoid Tribbles ( asexual nude fluffies, breeding with great speed, flooded the spacecraft - comment of the translator) .

Note: The petition was withdrawn from consideration after revealing the fact of signing signatures by the required date. The screen of the petition can be viewed here .

Protect the Bigfoot!

Signatures under the petition: ~ 1100.
If the creators of this petition insist on their own, then the population of snow people will be recognized by representatives of the local fauna and will be under the protection of the law. Laws prohibit the hunting of them, the capture or slaughter of these hairy monkey-like creatures that are secretly hiding from scientists who are trying hard to verify their existence.
Except, of course, one veterinarian, a specialist in DNA research, who claims to have taken a sample and has already carried out a sasquoche DNA sequence analysis .

Publication in the public domain

Signatures under the petition: ~ 60200.
Free access to articles on research conducted on the money of taxpayers is needed, according to a petition filed in May 2012. “The requested research results for taxpayers’ money should be posted on the Internet in the form of easy to read or process, thus ensuring accessibility for patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs and other taxpayers who pay for it, ” petitions
Although this petition collected the necessary number of signatures as early as June, there was no official response from the White House.
More recently, disputes were raging between scientists and publishers about open access and reached their peak of fame with the death of Internet activist Aaron Schwartz , a fighter for open access to information. In September 2010, Schwartz used the network of the Massachusetts Polytechnic University to download and freely publish the millions of journal articles that were in paid access. After he was caught, Schwartz “got under the wheels” of the machine of investigation and threats, as many believe, the cruelty of court decisions is disproportionate to the consequences of his crime.
By the way, there is also a petition for the dismissal of district attorney Carmen Ortiz - accused of an aggressive investigation into the case of Aaron Schwartz (petition under the petition: 43000+).

Develop a thermonuclear space rocket

Signatures under the petition: ~ 2300.
In six words: Nuclear. Rocket ship. B. Other. Worlds Now.
“This is not a new technology,” said the petition filed on January 3. "Physics and technology allow this to be realized."

Remove Congressman Paul Brown from the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology

Signatures under the petition: ~ 8700.
“Everything that I was taught about evolution and embryology, the Big Bang theory, is all a lie from the depths of hell,” said Congressman Paul Brown (R-GA) in October. And he continued: “The set of scientific data that I collected as a scientist [Brown has a doctoral degree] actually shows that the Earth is really young. I do not believe that the Earth is more than 9000 years old. ” ( specially translated his speech, see above - a comment of the translator)
Filed on January 18, the petition suggests that Brown’s religious preferences influence the decisions he makes as a member of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
In fact: Brown is a member of a congressional committee that oversees civilian research at institutions such as NASA, NOAA, NSF, and the USGS. In 1958, Congress created the committee's predecessor, the House of Science and Astronautics Committee, after the Soviets launched Sputnik-1. One of the first decisions of the committee was the creation of NASA. Over the years, the scope of the areas of the committee has expanded to include ecology, alternative energy sources, meteorology and atomic research programs.

Get rid of pounds

Signatures under the petition: ~ 35400.
The British Imperial Metric System, in which everything is measured in feet, miles, pounds, gallons, etc. - too chaotic and confusing, according to a petition filed in December . “We [the United States] still persistently adhere to the use of an inaccurate Imperial System, despite the fact that any other country with which we have to interact, uses the Metric,” the petition says.
But in the Metric system, where the measurements in such units as kilogram, meter, liter, is also not without problems. And the main thing here is that the standard kilogram is not always as standard as it should be.
Or you can consider the issue of adopting the Potrzebi system or measure it in Sagans and Smoot .

Make a $ 1 Trillion Coin

Signatures under the petition: ~ 11200.
The idea of ​​minting one platinum coin of 1 trillion dollars "is not more absurd than playing Political Football , and in general the economy is threatened," the January 3 petition said.
In Wired Science, we decided to approach this proposal from an arithmetic point of view and calculated the cost of a platinum coin with the size of a silver dollar - $ 1,200 came out. And although this is not considered in the nominal value of the petition, a platinum coin of 1 trillion dollars would be much more and would not fit into the bank, and certainly in your wallet: the weight is almost 43 million pounds, about 80 feet in diameter and 6 feet in thickness.

Make a DDoS attack a legal form of protest.

Signatures under the petition: ~ 5600.
The petition sent by the hacktivist group Anonymous on January 7 asks the White House to decriminalize massive attacks on servers sending web sites to offline. DDoS attacks were conducted on a number of sites, including US and British government sites. It is explained that DDoS is not so much an attack as the Internet equivalent of protest actions (sedentary protest or seizure-Occupy). “Instead of a group of people standing outside the building and seizing the territory, they use their computers to capture a website in order to slow down (or stop) one site or another for a short time,” says the petition.

Remove daylight saving time.

Signatures under the petition: ~ 5700.
The transition to summer time, first conceived by Benjamin Franklin, still remains an “apple of discord”. “Every year, the spring hour ahead brings clear and obvious performance losses: setting hours, missing meetings, angry-tangled-tired people, stress for parents ...,” says this January 12 petition.
Guys, we do not know what you have there for strange hours, but there are also more convincing arguments "for" and "against" the transfer of arrows. Regardless of which camp you belong to, one thing is clear: this damned confusion is due to the fact that some states switch their hours to summer time, others don’t transfer, in some countries they translate, in some they don’t.
And the last translation of the arrows will not solve the problem.
So, sort it out there.