Blog purpose
Blog rules
- Stay on topic.
- No profanity, threatening language, pornography.
- NO NAME CALLING.
- No political debate.
- Posts and comments are posted several times a day.
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
27 comments:
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"How does a large scale computer model of an ice sheet build a pit?"
It does not and perhaps should be moved to another DOE lab.
Back the vaccines mandates. I presume LANL implanted the vaccine mandate due to health reasons and not political reasons. If it is health reasons then the lab should also a booster mandate for people that meet the CDC suggested booster list. We shave have homelike like by Nov 20 if you are on the list of people that the CDC has suggested for boosters and you do have it by then you should be fired. This is for any lab employees over 65, have underlying health conditions, or anyone who took the Johnson-Johnson. If LANL is as serious as they say than they should also implement this same mandate for the boosters. - 10/27/2021 3:05 PM
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Well I have heard that LLNL and Sandia will have a vax mandate but the deadline is a latter day. Again in begs the question why was LANL the first? - 10/27/2021 3:11 PM
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No major religion has expressed a religious objection to the Covid vaccines. These "religious objectors" are making up their own religion.
- 10/27/2021 5:15 PM
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The OP lives in an alternate universe. While it is true that TRIAD MIGHT make a FEW pits, that will only serve to gold plate TA-55 fences and office space. The rest of the mission remains unchanged except for the conspicuous fact that it will be run by corporate cast offs and staffed by entitled millennials from 2nd and 3rd tier universities.
- 10/27/2021 5:43 PM
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10/27/2021 5:43 PM
You have a harsh way with words. The Mason talk was pretty much PITs are us, thousands and thousands more to be hired for pit work, billions more money and so. I think you still right that TRIAD might make only a few pits. - 10/27/2021 7:55 PM
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No major religion has expressed a religious objection to the Covid vaccines. These "religious objectors" are making up their own religion.
10/27/2021 5:15 PM
Is there a list of religions that are actually against vaccines. I suppose Raelians or something. Does anyone know about some of the other fringe ones like, Christian Science, Children of God, Scientologists, or Unitarians? - 10/27/2021 8:02 PM
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With Carlyon Zerkle in place in ALDPI the pit mission will fail for sure. How is she so Teflon coated? Clueless.
- 10/28/2021 5:16 PM
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Anyone who claims those should be required to present evidence of affiliation.
- 10/28/2021 5:44 PM
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With Carlyon Zerkle in place in ALDPI the pit mission will fail for sure. How is she so Teflon coated? Clueless.
10/28/2021 5:16 PM
Yep, that is a point. - 10/28/2021 8:15 PM
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I'm perfectly happy to grant a religious exemption to anyone ... as long as God drops by the office to fill out their paperwork.
- 10/31/2021 11:28 AM
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"I'm perfectly happy to grant a religious exemption to anyone ... as long as God drops by the office to fill out their paperwork."
You must be a manager who is weary of the stupidity, but knows enough to successfully invoke the compliance argument. Good luck getting to sweet retirement, and don't forget to lay some "thanks for all the fish" bombs on your way out. - 10/31/2021 8:21 PM
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If Zerkle fails in her new role she'll be given a recognition and moved to another position with higher pay. That's how things work at LANL, things are forgotten over time and nothing happened here.
- 11/01/2021 9:10 AM
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Most religious exemption applications seem to be based on the use of aborted fetal stem cells or tissue in development and testing of the vaccines. Some companies are asking questions about the many, many other health and pharmaceutical products that were also developed using aborted fetal stem cells that people will happily admit to using until they find out the truth. If you claim a religious exemption, you better be applying that belief everywhere in your life.
- 11/01/2021 5:28 PM
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WRT Zerkle, be honest. How many female upper managers have you seen with boot prints on their behind? She’ll continue to accomplish nothing, collect a fat salary, and abuse any underling associated with her. The “Zerkle circle” is alive and well, that I can assure you.
- 11/02/2021 3:27 PM
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How many upper managers have the "anti-Midas touch" and are yet securely embedded in the org chart? They have a gecko-like ability to stick to the chart forever, even during changes from one failed contractor to another. How do they do this?
- 11/04/2021 7:46 AM
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11/04/2021 7:46 AM
By demonstrated competence and value to the organization? That's how I did it UC > LANS. Then I couldn't stand LANS and retired. - 11/04/2021 5:39 PM
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Anonymous said...
How many upper managers have the "anti-Midas touch" and are yet securely embedded in the org chart? They have a gecko-like ability to stick to the chart forever, even during changes from one failed contractor to another. How do they do this?
11/04/2021 7:46 AM
Its easy once you figure out the Prime contractor has not really changed. Its still UC folks. They are still the majority partner. Always have been. - 11/04/2021 11:55 PM
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5:39 you left at the right time, then. LANS was an unmitigated disaster and TRIAD is hardly an improvement.
- 11/05/2021 4:45 AM
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"How many upper managers have the "anti-Midas touch" and are yet securely embedded in the org chart? They have a gecko-like ability to stick to the chart forever, even during changes from one failed contractor to another. How do they do this?
11/04/2021 7:46 AM"
I think it is simpler than that. Over the last 20 years the better people have left LANL, this includes managers. The quality of managers has also decreased and good people who would consider gong into management simply do not want to be around them. In the end when a positions opens up there are simply no real candidates so you just end up with same old same old. In the current high tech world there are many high paying jobs, in good locations doing cutting edge science and tech. LANL no longer can offer any of this, it no longer pays that well compared to what you can get, the town is pretty dismal at this point, and there is simply no real cutting edge stuff. You are simply not going to get top or good people going to LANL to manage or even work. By the way good luck with the pit production, I simply do not see LANL being able to pull that off.
- 11/05/2021 12:06 PM
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"I simply do not see LANL being able to pull that off."
Unfortunately, you are likely correct and Putin and Xi Jinping know it. LANL served its purpose. Those days are fading fast. A new approach is needed. - 11/05/2021 10:22 PM
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"Unfortunately, you are likely correct and Putin and Xi Jinping know it. "
I do not think they know this but they may assume that LANL today is like LANL in 1990 and it is a far cry from that. Also they may not know what New Mexico is like.
My big fear is that ramping up pits production at LANL will lead to a serious of high profile accidents. The stuff has risk, the question is how will LANL react when this happens will they have a lab wide standown for months on end, shut down pit production, create crazy rules. Who knows.
One thing that could help is to split up LANL in to the LANL science and LANL pit production, I have never seen a good argument as to why these should be run as one entity. Could someone give me an argument.
As for why I doubt LANL could do it, it is not that they could not do it, but they are not really serious about it. The first thing one would do is actually make a separate entity for the pits. The second is you need to get workers from outside of the state, the third is you need to pay those people lots of money to get them to go to LANL. So far I have not seen any of this, it is just hire locally and hire anyone, keep the lab intact and hire whoever happens to be standing around at the time. It is about money not about the pits.
Mason also said some pretty odd stuff, like people thought that the number of plane crashes would scale with increasing number of plane fights, but that did not happen so the number of accidents will not grow with the number of pits made! The problem is that is not exactly how things went with planes had like 30 years of risky flight before they where ever safe enough for mass production and passengers. So we will have 30 years of PIT accidents and than it will all work out. The other point is planes where made in California or out east, I think we would have very different results if plans where made in New Mexico. NM is now ranked 50 in terms of education, things just are not going well and seem to be getting worse.
I expected something this dumb to come from McMillan not Mason, but maybe he is just trying to be optimistic.
- 11/06/2021 12:53 PM
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11/06/2021 12:53 PM
Your equation of 30 years of flight vs 30 years of pit production is ludicrous. Ever hear of Rocky Flats? - 11/06/2021 4:59 PM
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Your equation of 30 years of flight vs 30 years of pit production is ludicrous. Ever hear of Rocky Flats?
11/06/2021 4:59 PM
Yes I agree, my point was that Mason did not understand that flight had a lot of unsafe years before they really could get a record good enough for mass commercial use. You are also right that the odds LANL will ever get there are really low as another Rocky Flats like events will shut the place down. Mason seems to think that that if planes where safer because we built are of them, however that is not how the history worked they built some more planes, some crashed, they modified them, few less crashed, they modified again and again and after a while you had planes that where safe enough that you could than have commercial viability and than you could make more. The idea that if the Wright bothers made a thousand planes rather than the one than that would made them safer is just bizarre. If we had 10 Rockey Flats we would had 10 incidents.
In any case Los Alamos will get to run that experiment. - 11/06/2021 10:32 PM
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So true. Mason and in his entire “leadership” team are the most incompetent I’ve ever seen. ALDBUS is a comedy from top to bottom not to mention clueless CZ and the circle. Huge accident waiting to happen.
- 11/07/2021 3:16 PM
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Mason and in his entire “leadership” team are the most incompetent I’ve ever seen.
11/07/2021 3:16 PM
Hey - slow down dude, two new parking structures with vacant space advertising, three new cell towers, and a million potholes repaired. That's more real progress in the past two years than in the preceding two decades! - 11/10/2021 1:23 PM
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Hey - slow down dude, two new parking structures with vacant space advertising, three new cell towers, and a million potholes repaired. That's more real progress in the past two years than in the preceding two decades!
11/10/2021 1:23 PM
You do have a point. It does seem like things get built faster now. - 11/10/2021 5:10 PM
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Haha. Don’t forget a TA46 Warehouse metal building in record time of 3 years.
- 11/11/2021 7:43 AM
Posts you viewed tbe most last 30 days
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LGBT intolerance problem at Sandia? I was just checking glassdoor.com and noticed several comments suggesting intolerance to LGBT at Sandia...
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So did you SSVSP and why? Give details.
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“Raise a concern, get blackballed then lose your job and benefits…” “…instead of raising your concerns just leverage on your skills and go t...
https://www.kob.com/new-mexico-news/more-lanl-workers-sue-over-vaccine-mandate/6281587/?fbclid=IwAR2cHxgLashznpmJNMNUkBV0VtO3S-PfayF6FFRz2MGUXh0mJkWn34S_bgM#.YXi15OzO-z1.facebook
"In other words, Los Alamos National Labs has recognized that they have sincerely held religious beliefs that prevent them from taking the vaccine or getting the vaccine, has offered a one size fits all option, use up all your vacation time, if you have it, and then you go on leave without pay," Artuso said.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, accuses LANL of religious discrimination and violating employees' rights to equal protection under the law, among other things.
Why is LAN so special , I have not heard about any mandate in LLNL, Sandia, ORNL, BNL, ANL or any University. It just appears to be LANL?
Look I get it, if we lose 10, 20, 30, 50, or even 70% of the LANL work force it would not be noticed by anyone or make any difference. This is a fact that everyone who is honest about LANL can agree on, but what makes LANL so special in terms of the Covid vaccine mandate? I have not heard about anything like this from any of my University or DOE lab colleagues. Perhaps I should just take my Bitcoin and go Galt on this whole mess.
Masons last all hands meeting made it clear that LANL is going to focus solely on pits. Fine enough but let us be honest if that is the plan then just call it out so we can be done with 1/2 of the current lab as it is and get a new workforce for the new mission. Just make it clear, and move the non-pit stuff to LLNL, SNL, and elsewhere, or let large portions of the current workforce move to private industry or acdemics . If the lab is going to be just a pit facility one way or another a good chunk of the old lab is going to have to be disposed of one way or another.
If we need a new Rocky Flats Los Alamos could be a good place. By they why on earth would UC or Texas AM want to manage a purely pit facility? My guess UC is going pull out of the contract sooner rather than later. In the old days you had lots of UC grads going to LANL, now we have very few. With LANL as a pit facility I simply do not see any incentive for any university to interested in management.
I know some people are saying we are going to have science and a Pit Facility, but can anyone who actually saw Masons speech say this with a straight face? His speech was clear, LANL is going to make pits the central and only focus.
Some predictions, the Lujan center is already gone, my guess is the NHMFL is next to get the axe, the high explosive and shock stuff is going to go, the high performance computing will be moved. LANL also has work on biophysics, epidemics, quantum computing, astrophysics, superconductivity, climate models, alternative energy, grid science, and novel computing. That stuff will also be leaving the facility, how on earth can you justify epidemic models at a pit facility? How does any of this stuff support LANL facility mission? How does a large scale computer model of an ice sheet build a pit?