The federal government’s National Science Foundation (NSF) has become the bureaucratic version of Animal House. Last week I blogged on a NSF inspector general discovery that agency employees were viewing pornography, engaging in sexual online chats, and using taxpayer-funded trips to pursue women. Now comes word from a New Zealand newspaper that NSF employees in Antarctica have been jello-wresting and skinny-dipping in frigid waters.

The quotes from defiant NSF employees are priceless, and demonstrate how little regard they have for the taxpayers paying their salaries:

“I will just say that I was terminated for having harmless jello wrestling…”

“Every trip, there are more and more rules, restrictions and guidelines that seem designed to take all the life out of the place and make it more like a unionised auto factory.”

“Yes, I know it is a workplace, but they are sucking all the fun out of the place.”

As I noted last week, “The House version of the ‘stimulus’ plan being developed in Congress would give the government’s National Science Foundation (NSF) an extra $3 billion, in part, to ‘put scientists to work looking for the next great discovery.’ Three billion dollars is a considerable chunk of change given that the NSF spent more than $6 billion in fiscal year 2008.”

I shudder to think what this gang is going to discover with the additional money.