Skip to main content

Doug Roberts

RIP Doug Roberts LANL computer scientist, musician, bird lover, biker and loving husband - a kind, loving, wise friend whose search for truth on his blog had a constructive impact on LANL's history. You are valued and missed. https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/116179730/doug-roberts

Comments

Anonymous said…


So long Doug, loved his blog, also liked the bird pics he would put up, mostly parrots but he had a few others kinds as well.
Anonymous said…
RIP Doug. You were a true, American patriot.
Anonymous said…
Doug kept it real on his blog. He cared, and it showed. No inane censorship, just a knowledgeable presence to keep things relatively normal.
Anonymous said…
January 21, 2019 at 5:56 PM

Doug did do some moderation of the blog to filter out the wacky get rich quick schemes, religion and crazy stuff like that, but he generally let everything else go even the personal insults. Of course he would counter the personal insults with some rather clever comments which had a tendency to make the those posters think twice. I think at the hight of his blog he had a very large audience of people from DOE, LANL, LLNL, Sandia and even the wider science community. His blog was even mentioned in the NYT. His blog was example of how the internet really expanded the ability of information transfer. I like to think that Doug was ahead of his time in terms of the new information age and the impact one person can have when they allow for the free flow of ideas. A testament to this is that even now we have the LLNL blog.

It is ironic that in recent times there are many forces which are now trying to limit the flow of information on the internet. One should not have the right to listen to right wing blogs, left wing blogs, political blogs and so on. Information is something that should only be for those who are worthy. In 2006 that was Nanos and higher ups. In any case has there ever been an example where censorship and suppression of ideas was a good thing? Why is it now that the self-rightest think it is good ideal. You hear stuff like Trump should be kicked off Twitter, Alex Jones should be banned from the internet, Ben Shapiro should not be allowed to speak on campus, Tucker Carlson should be kicked of TV, you should punch Nazies or anyone who I label as a Nazi. You should not be allowed to dislike certain movies or music because to do so would mean you have some hidden agenda of hate. Hate speech is not free speech and hate speech is whatever hurts my feelings. I am no conservative but I hate any kind of authoritarian trend that decides it knows best what I and others should be able to read, listen to, think about, discuss, and debate on .

Doug allowed anti Nanos people to post along with pro Nanos people to post and the audience and public could read it make up their own minds. I am sure it made lots of people very upset that such discussion and debate even be allowed but one has to ask why would they not want to have these discussions out in the open in the first place?


Anonymous said…
January 21, 2019 at 7:44 PM

Well said throughout, and bravo.

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...

Trump is to gut the labs.

The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will  have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like  a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.

LLNL un-diversity

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!