Oh! Oh!!

 A series of unfortunate events

https://losalamosreporter.com/2021/09/29/doe-announces-investigation-of-series-of-events-at-lanl-plutonium-facility/

The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments’ Office of Enforcement’s has announced its decision to conduct an investigation into the facts and circumstances associated with a series of events between February and July of this year occurring in the Plutonium (PF-4) Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Impact of CA Affordable homes bill

 Will these bills signed into law by Governor Newsom force and ensure mixed income housing developments are built in job centers like Livermore and Pleasanton, with minimal pushback?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=280MuPj_8uU

Will there be a government shutdown?

 Will there be a government shutdown, is so what does it mean for the labs. Do we still get paid?

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/mike-causey-federal-report/2021/09/government-shutdown-talk-is-back-again-have-we-learned-anything-from-the-last-ones/

CRT (again?)

 https://losalamosreporter.com/2021/09/24/critical-race-theory/

Well this has created another fire storm on the Los Alamos facebook pages. It is the usual where people are saying you should teach critical race theory at LA schools with other saying they do not know what critical race theory is and using the defections of 70s for legal studies and saying it is only taught in "advanced academic settings". Some people saying it is only teaching the truth and to be against is to be racists and so on , so the conversation is pretty low level. This is at the schools but I guess it could be coming to the labs.

Just a few points on CRT, while it is true that it originated from a theory for legal system in the US, the basic concept can be and is widely applied to large sections of the social sciences, and humanities. It is the the hypothesis that literally every thing in the US has racial issues baked in them. The original idea was that the legal system has inherent or as the say "structural: racism built in the foundation. In some was this also leads to the ideal of structural racism where the even though you cannot find a law that is obviously racists the whole thing is still racist you just cannot see it and it must be reason for any type of inequality we see in society. Like all "critical theories" this same idea can then be applied to any field such art, literature, music, games, sports, roads, transpiration, food, and so on. Critical theories in general are so common in humanities/social sciences because they can be very easily applied to your particular field. Suppose you study the history of TV shows, (yes there are professors who study that), than all you have to do is is reexamine your previous work on TV shows in the context of critical race theory to show that TV shows have built in biases and racism that support one group and suppress others you than write some papers and NPR will interview for your great work where you talk about how Gilligan's Island reinforces racism we did not even know it. Heck you could even take a critical race approach to a reading off Intel chip manual. When the general public uses the term "critical race theory", what they really mean is just critical study to any field where the assumption is that race controls everything.

Of course the problem is why should you believe any of this? Even in its original form in terms of looking at law, there is simply no reason to believe that any of it is true, it is only a conjecture of "here is the way the law is" followed by a series of assertions . Sure you can cheery pick some data to make your case and ignore everything else ect. None of these critical theory approaches are actually a "theories" in any scientific sense of the word. This type of work does not follow any scientific approach such as being falsifiability, without that why should any accept what they have to say.

I agree that history as least as accurate as we can make should be talked about, such as slavery, race, right to vote, Jim crow. Along with all the efforts to correct this and the progress that can be made. Applying a critical theory approach bases race in the US is not appropriate for high schools or below because there is no reason to believe the theory itself is correct, which is that structural racism is a massive issues that underlies and explains all current issues of race today. At this point this is open to debate and real evidence with actual numbers strongly argue against CRT interpretations particularly in things like law, crime, and so on.
Math, statistics and actual analysis of data are something you will not find in CR or CRT.

If this comes back to the Sandia, LLNL or LANL it will of course suffer the same issues, namely what is the evidence that CRT is correct, and what is the evidence that it is not correct, what are the alternatives, and what do simply not know.

Mandatory vaccine

Federal contractors must ensure employees are fully vaccinated by December

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/24/federal-contractors-vaccine-514201

For entertainment purposes...

 Here is a good conspiracy theory.

The Large Hadron Collider LHC at CERN is about to start up again after another upgrade. The last startup after an upgrade was in 2016. Some claim that has been creating holes in multiverse and we keep jumping to more and more absurd worlds here Trump got elected in 2016. One can also guess how crazy it is going to get once they turn it on again at even higher energies. Another scenario is we we are in a simulation and the LHC is creating events that are destabilizing the simulation. Who knows what comes next. Of course some would counter the recent crazy stuff just in 2021 before has occurred before it turned on. But what if part of the destabilization is due tachyon production so some of the real insanity we will see in the future is now leaking into the past to our current time.

Dept. of Energy's loan program

While most people have heard of Tesla, far fewer have heard of the United States Department of Energy Loan Programs Office.... 

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/573148-dept-of-energys-loan-program-helped-tesla-now-it-needs-to-help-low

Mason said...

 Mason just sent out an email on the vaccine mandates.

He laid out the plan which includes vacations and leave until the all clear to come back,
but termination was not listed as an option. Also I am sure working from home will also be accepted in some cases. I told you no one was getting fired.

Political debate on blog

 To fair to Scooby the labs are always going to be very entangled with politics. In fact there is more talk on political blogs about the possibility of nuclear war with China, Russia, or even Iran and NK. Nuclear weapons are kind of important to the labs you know. If it is being perceived by the world that American is on the decline than having a strong and credible nuclear deterrent could make sure any potential still thinks twice about trying to make advantage of this. Like it or not that labs will be playing a role a big role in the future of the United States and world stability.

Not to mention the Covid mandates at the labs also have political aspects. It is hard to avoid politics when discussing NNSA labs.

Scooby's rule: is more like no political debate that is not related to the labs, the issue is that so many political issues can be connected to the labs. I suppose someone could talk about abortion and that would be a topic that does not belong. However if someone says Trump might have used nukes, that certainly seems like something that could belong.

FDA rejects widespread Pfizer vaccine Booster Shots

 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fda-rejects-pfizer-booster-vaccine_n_6144f00ce4b02cb84634f15a

FDA Advisory Panel Rejects Widespread Pfizer Vaccine Booster Shots
The panel did, however, endorse the extra shots for those who are 65 or older or at high risk of severe disease.

Could the labs still do a booster mandate just to be safe?

Trump stopped from using NUCs

 Trump stopped from using nuclear weapons!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9990247/Gen-Mark-Milley-secretly-dialed-Chinas-military-leader-amid-fears-Trump-start-war.html

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, took top-secret actions to prevent former President Donald Trump from using nuclear weapons, a new book claims. During her call with the general, the book details, Pelosi demanded to know what precautions Milley would take to prevent Trump from utilizing nuclear launch codes. Pelosi said, “You know [Trump’s] crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.”Milley reportedly responded, “Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-top-general-secretly-called-china-twice-trump-term-ended-report-2021-09-14/

U.S. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called General Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army on Oct. 30, 2020 - four days before the election - and again on Jan. 8, two days after Trump supporters led a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, the newspaper reported. In the calls, Milley sought to assure Li the United States was stable and not going to attack and, if there were to be an attack, he would alert his counterpart ahead of time, the report said.

Sure it could have been bad, lots of dead people and all that but at least "testing" again would have been cool.

To be honest this whole story that has a ting of BS about it. Either it is totally made up, or Milley is gong beyond embellishing a lot to make himself look good. Something about it does not add up.

Welcome Mark Anthony

 https://losalamosreporter.com/2021/09/10/mark-anthony-to-join-lanl-as-new-associate-laboratory-director-for-plutonium-infrastructure/

LANL has announced that Mark Anthony, currently a projector director of the European Spallation Source in Sweden, will lead the Lab’s Associate Directorate for Plutonium Infrastructure.

September 11th not to be repeated

 

Scooby's note:

I got this as a comment in another post. It was off the subject but reflects on the new faces of terrorism. So,  it deserves a 'blog spot".😀

It is a very somber September 11 today. 20 years ago the biggest threat to our nation came from international terror. Now we face a much greater domestic terror threat, from extremists, fake news, misinformation, racism, propaganda, denied voting rights, womens rights, and radicalized nationalism. This has cost us 650k dead, the Jan 6th insurrection, leaving 5 dead police officers, and we 80 million people who refuse to get vaccinated which could lead to several hundred thousand more dead. We have chosen the wise course to leave many of our foreign entanglements such as Afghanistan to start focusing on domestic threats. The threat is now from within and is more dangerous than anything we have faced. Just as we called the time after 9/11 the global war on terror which we won, we now must realize that we could be entering a war on domestic terror which threatens our democracy. As Bush said 20 years ago, "they attacked us for our freedom", now we have allowed or own freedom to attack us, how ironic.



No Exemptions to Vaccine Mandates

 I’m a Former Pastor, and I Don’t Believe in ‘Religious Exemptions’ to Vaccine Mandates

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/06/opinion/religious-exemptions-vaccine-mandates.html

First, there is no actual religious basis for exemptions from vaccine mandates in any established stream of Christianity. Within both Catholicism and all the major Protestant denominations, no creed or Scripture in any way prohibits Christians from getting the vaccine. Even the sect of Christian Scientists, which historically has abstained from medical treatment, has expressed openness to vaccines for the sake of the wider community. The consensus of mainstream Christian leaders — from Pope Francis to Franklin Graham — is that vaccination is consistent with biblical Christian faith.

Biblically based arguments against vaccination have been rebutted.

But even with legitimate religious claims sincerely held, the law allows companies to forgo offering exemptions if doing so places an “undue hardship” on the employer. Increasing the risk of bringing an infectious disease into the workplace certainly qualifies.

Assembly at Ashley Pond Park

 From The New Mexico Freedoms Alliance:

In response to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for all employees, hundreds of workers will be Calling Out and gathering 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7 in a Freedom Assembly at Ashley Pond Park.

https://ladailypost.com/lanl-workers-to-protest-vaccine-mandate-tuesday/

Herd Immunity

 “Herd Immunity” not achievable with the delta variant given its “reproductive number or “Re” is too high, but vaccinations can significantly lower severe illness and death.

Link 1 of 2

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc7chicago.com/amp/coronavirus-vaccine-efficacy-against-delta-variant-covid-booster-shot-is-pfizer-effective/10949401/

Link 2 of 2

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JhRb5hnTseU

Is it the end of Sandia Z program?

 Do the results from NIF mean the end to the Sandia Z program? The Sandia Z people hoped to build a new machine eventually. They face some big hurdles such as funding, problems with scaling from 26 to 60 mega amperes, and lack of robust target for achieving ignition. With NIF having basically achieved ignition, do we need to build or even maintain large pulsed power facilities. Also, I bet that Sandia corporate has more interest in other endeavors.

COVID and Flu.

 

Scooby's note: 

This post was sent in as a comment for another post but was irrelevant to the subject. However  it has an interesting subject and deserves to be a post. 

So some recent studies cam out suggesting that that up to 80% of everybody has either the vaccine or had Covid. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/health/covid-vaccines-seniors.html That is already over the states herd immunity. This was done for a study of over 1 million people. One thing this study suggested was that twice as many people had caught Covid that was reported which reduces the death rate by half, which is starting to put in more like a bad flu. You can ask why did we have so many excesses deaths than previous bad flues? One possibility is that Covid is simply way more contagious than most flues so way more people got it than the would with other flues. This sort of makes sense due to the spike protein which they said was very efficient. If this is true Covid is not that much deadlier than flues we had in the past but way more contagious.

The W. H. O looking at new COVID variant

 https://www.france24.com/en/health/20210901-new-coronavirus-variant-mu-under-close-scrutiny-by-who