Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
Comments
Indeed this shows why we need to close down LANL, it spreads it's culture to other institutes. Soon it will start spreading to universities and other institutes of higher learning. It could even start spreading in Europe. Mechels and Montano warned us but we did not listen now look!
March 19, 2016 at 5:55 AM
Apparently, your memory is not so good. It was the year LANS took over.
March 19, 2016 at 5:19 PM
Culture my friend, it was the culture. She picked up the culture, beware when you set foot in Los Alamos the culture will get to you very fast. You cannot really define it, see it out in the open, or even say what it is actually is, but is is there. You may sit in the Los Alamos Starbucks and you will hear the culture it could be the arrogant conversation about electrons vibrating or shaking in null zeros, some comments about Baisian analgesics, people talking smartly about about inputs into the data code upload mechanics, all said in an ugly haughty manner, after you keep hearing this crap for a few months and you too think you are special and above it all, you know people who talk about spectra of numbers on manifolds of spastic spheres so wow you are soo smart. It corrupts everything, contaminates everything, it is vile, but worst of all it is patient, you can mock it, spit on it, laugh at it, but year after year you go up and sit in the Starbucks and it is the same thing. Wen Ho Lee comes and goes, fires come and go, Nanos comes and goes, stolen Mustangs come and go, whistler blowers beat up in strip bars comes and go, Bechtel comes and goes, yet, YET the the culture remains,...yet the culture remains. It is like Colonel Walter Kurtz, "the culture"..."the culture".
Bechtel could have changed it, if they just had to will to do what needed to be done, done without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.
You are full of know-nothing, anti-science, Trumpsian fascist garbage. Just because you failed to get a decent education, and it shows, big time. You call scientific knowledge and conversation a "culture problem." Well, what is your preferred "culture"? No one knows anything about anything, but just has unfounded, unsupported, unrealistic "opinions"?? If you hate the "culture" in a scientific town like Los Alamos, how about Colorado Springs? San Diego? Stanford? Berkley? New Haven, CT?, Cambridge, MA?, or any of the major university cities in the country where coffee shop conversation exceeds your level of knowledge? Do they all have "culture problems"?? No, YOU have a problem with people who know much more than you do about almost everything. Your culture, or lack of it, is the problem. You are the unwashed, uneducated, unemployed, uncivilized, unmannered garbage of the society.
10:15 PM I agree with you but anytime someone needs to take responsibility for something that goes wrong at LANL or any other NNSA lab they always use the culture card to say it is not our fault it has to be the culture. What do they mean by culture well it is pretty clear it is the scientists and engineers, it is a cheap shot that really makes no sense on the face of up and never stands up to scrutiny. Nanos, Bodman and now Bechtel used this excuse because it is simple and kills the discussion. They themselves never had the slightest belief in this but it beat taking responsibility. You typical ex-lab scum like Mechels and ilk will use since it paints a broad brush and as you say are the unemployed garbage of society that hate science and learning in general.
I would add you can always find plenty of people who would have no problem saying, Berkley, Cambridge or San Diego are horrible places with a culture of arrogance.
No mustangs were stolen. Another stupid and completely misinformed accusation.
The woman who had classified info in her trailer was hired in an attempt to do a job more cheaply after quite a few people were laid off so that a for-profit contractor could pay more taxes and get a big fee.
I would never defend the lazy, dictatorial, and incompetent LANS management, but the overall culture at LANL is one of honesty and competence. Where it is different is where LANS has stepped in to make sure their edicts are followed at any cost regardless of the facts.
Did anyone even bother to read the article about the airmen before they started in again on culture?
March 20, 2016 at 7:51 AM
We've got our own blog. Right here, thank you. (By the way, what's in your lunchbox today?)
Then I guess I'll have to be the fly in the LANL ointment.
March 20, 2016 at 5:57 PM
Nice 50's saying. LANL doesn't have "ointments," just poison lotions.
March 20, 2016 at 8:51 PM
And don't forget that LANL also had Quintana and the classified information that she had in the drug trailer. Quintana worked for McMillan at the time and maybe the whole place would have been better off if he had been dismissed then.
March 22, 2016 at 10:53 AM
Garbage!! Quintana did not "work for" Mcmillan. She was a low-level clerk working for records management and took home some very old documents whose classification markings were ambiguous at best, based on current standards. No big red cover sheets, no massive top-and-bottom SECRET markings. 1950's stuff. She couldn't at her level have realized the intent of the blurred stamps on the documents. Mcmillan has shown himself to be a complete jerk, but he was in no way was responsible for the actions of this unfortunate, uneducated, clueless girl. Plus, Anastasio was Director.
March 22, 2016 at 7:31 PM
1. So it is OK for a "low-level clerk" to break the law?
2. So it is OK if the classified information was "very old" documents?
3. So it is OK if the documents did not have "big red cover sheets" on them?
This defense can be ripped apart, phrase by phrase; however, the fact is that she broke the law. For whatever reason, 7:31 PM does not see it that way. This is yet another example of the behavior that the rules of the land just do not apply at LANL.
March 22, 2016 at 7:31 PM
Huh? Write in English very often?