[ExI] Printing pizza and shrimp treadmills

[David Lubkin]

<http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/tom-coburn-federal-spending-wastebook-pizza-101238.html>

As with Senator Coburn's (and the press's) past mocking of the 
treadmill for shrimp, this year's $124,955 from NASA for a mechanical 
engineer to build a 3d-printer that can print a pizza is a sensible expense.

The treadmill for shrimp is a way to understand their locomotion, 
which is useful for the development of walking robots. (A very 
important area of research with benefits from home healthcare to 
improved prosthetics to battlefield to rescue operations.)

Likewise, figuring out how to use 3d printers to create tasty, 
healthy, and safe food is a sensible investment. (Useful in 
constrained physical environments, like submarines or manned space 
missions, or specialized medical situations, and a surrogate for 
other organic printing, e.g., of pharmaceuticals.)

There's plenty the government spends that's wasted, better done 
privately, or exceeds my understanding of constitutional authority, 
and I commend Senator Coburn for highlighting this annually.

But these two examples just betray the ignorance of technology and 
engineering of anyone mocking them.


-- David.