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!
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PC is the future the fact that your even questioning is problematic. Perhaps we should start monitoring the internet to find out exactly who is making comments against political correctness.
A couple of points. Mason did not bring up the PC talk, he was responding to some questions. I think he gave the best answer which was that diversity is good when it increases the talent pool but diversity just for the sake of diversity is not the point. On this I think you have it wrong with Mason. Personally I thought he was much more impressive than Charlie McMillan in terms of speaking and substance but that is just my view.
To be honest he did not say too much but if you listened carefully he said a few things I have not heard any Director much less any manager say in the last 15 years at LANL. (1) He used the word excellence, correct me if I am wrong but have you ever heard someone say this at LANL in recent times? (2) He actually defined what culture means, specially it refers to operations, previously culture was a word used to get everyone off the hook since it implied "scientists". All one had to do was blame arrogant scientists as the sole problem of the lab and everyone else is blameless. I know some people who happen to sit next to a Bechtel bigwig on a flight. The Bechtel person was nice enough but was not a LANL person, when asked about Bechtel and LANL the guy said the contract was lost because of the scientists. Hopefully from what Mason said he this whole blame the scientist nonsense will stop.
Mason also has something that all the Directors since Agnew lacked which is an outside reputation and presence. In other words he does not need to take crap from NNSA and and tell them where to stick since he can always get a job as good or even better than that what he has at LANL. McMIllian, Anistasio, ect only exist within the NNSA, no other DOE lab would ever take them in, no large company would get near them and certainly no university would touch them. Mason on the other hand can have any of these and in fact already has had all three such positions. Heck even being director of ORNL may actually be more prestiges than a LANL director when you consider that ORNL now out publishes LANL by a fair margin. Before LANS LANL was the most scientifically distinguished lab in the DOE system as measured standard scientific metrics, now LBL, ORNL, ANL have have all passed LANL by.
You mean diverting billions in overhead with the support of Battelle senior leadership to support a grossly underestimated capital project like the SNS?
Sounds like a great fit for LANL and CMRR et al...
November 12, 2018 at 5:13 PM"
Is this going to be based on salaries, number of managers in different groups etc?
"You mean diverting billions in overhead with the support of Battelle senior leadership to support a grossly underestimated capital project like the SNS?"
Well yes actually since SNS is considered a great success. I am not sure what your deal is but
there is a reason ORNL is now the top DOE lab in the system and why the SNS is considered a great success and DOE and the scientific community is very happy with results.