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...
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More money should be given to this. Instead money is used for people to play sandbox who need to steal
tax to build the slush fund for LRDR (the PHD tax) is burdened. Capital expenditures. So in reality, it is paying for your research into things not specifically funded by and for the customer. STOP THE MADNESS.
If LDRD funds were to be eliminated there is no guarantee that any of that money would go to a program that YOU feel is worthy of better funding. Social Security funds were redirected to the general fund leaving that program at risk, California for many years diverted gasoline tax money from road repair.
There is an important factor the LDRD can bring - science. Many scientist left Los Alamos at the end of the Manhattan project so they could go back to doing science. If you want to retain people on the cutting edge, you have to give them projects that are science for science's sake.
STOP THE MADNESS. Scientists!!!!! the bain of my life and the labs. Cowboys, arrogant, live of others. How is it that that so many can get fired at the labs yet these...."THESE things CALLLEDS SCIENTITS" remain. What value do they have have, I throw a sandbox at them. PLEZZ STOP THE MADNESS.
8/17/2020 4:09 PM
The "customer" (DOE/NNSA) specifically calls out and encourages funding for LDRD in the prime contract. You see, even they recognize the value of basic science.
Like the entrepreneurs say, "Fail fast" You can shut this rant down early.
8/18/2020 5:06 PM
Why would any "customer" want science done? What does the customer get out of this. When I go buy a hamburger I do not want to pay extra so the place can do "science". This is like blackmail, the "scientists" claim they need to do science or they will not do the paid programatic work. DOE/NNSS probably do not want any of this, why should they? Customers do not want science, they want a product and they want to do what they want and as cheap as possible. When I go to Jiffy lube I want service for my car, as cheap as possible, I do not want to pay do extra money because the mechanic likes to play in a sandbox. In terms of a business model and customer model it makes no sense. We could learn a lot about how to treat customers from WallMart, Cocacola, and Kellog. If you are going to use terms like customer, profit, and deliverables you need to use them as they are used in business, which means that stuff like science not directly related to the what the costumer wants needs to be cut. DOE also needs to start acting like real costumers.
Like the entrepreneurs say, "Fail fast" You can shut this rant down early.
8/19/2020 3:26 PM
The problem is that you say this about every single thread. Do you have some kind of agenda against the blog in general. The anti science guy seems a bit over the top but in my experience there is a large number of LLNL/LANL people who essentially agree with this point of view, maybe not in such colorful wording but the general gist. 10:13 did a nice job at providing a reply to this. I have often heard people including managers say that DOE does not want LDRD or even WHO. When I reply with argument like the one given by 10:13 that DOE does in fact want LDRD I am simply told that I am not on the inside and have no idea what I am talking about. I also have had some arguments about using terms like costumer since it simply makes no sense in terms of what the NNSA lab does. It seems like some high level managers read some business books and said hey lets try that at LLNL.
Your "business" shtick is really getting old. Try a new idea. The labs are government facilities and always will be.
8/21/2020 5:01 PM
A counter argument to this would go along the lines.
Why should I leave the place that I and my ancestors built. The wealth of the nation was created by people the underclass, enslaved and marginalized not by you. I think we are owed for what we created and will not leave but demand justice and equality. We do not wish the to lave this totalitarian regime but to dismantle it.
Or something like that. By the way where would these people go if they left the US? There are not plenty of places that will simply take you. You cannot just move to some country and get free money, they want you to work, or prove yourself or pay huge sums of money. You cannot simply go to New Zealand and say make me a citizen they are very picky on who they let in. Norway does not just let anyone move in. Heck you even have to jump through hoops to become Canadian or Mexican. Also it is very hard to to nearly impossible to move Russia or China and become citizens. I am not sure about Cuba but I take a wild guess that not a lot of people are planning on moving there.
"--The DOE secretary is going to be cancelled.
Is that a threat to the person holding that office or is the office itself going to be eliminated?"
The popular term is called "cancelled" in which a group of people and celebrities get on twitter or some other social media and demand that a person be fired. This has happened to many people in Hollywood, business and academics. The DOE is probably safe since in most cases the firings are due to threats to the profit margins of the business, so these kinds of pressures do not really exist. But hey one could start a twitter thread called "hashtag STOP DOE". They did this in June for "# stop STEM" in which everybody in STEM was suppose to not work one day and contemplate how to improve STEM for minorities. I am not sure how effective it was, but I am sure few people said cool, but on that day I think a few beers and netflix could also enhance my contemplation.
If some kind of "hashtag STOP DOE" was done it would something like. Do not let your students work in a DOE lab, do to collaborate with people at DOE, reject grants and papers from people at the DOE, unfriend DOE people on facebook, spread the word that DOE is bad on so on.
You ask why should I leave the place that I and my ancestors built. Well, how do you think the melting pot of America came into being. Folks from all over the world left their ancestral homes to come to a land where if you bust your butt, you are rewarded for it. The left it because they saw an opportunity.
I would think that your capitalism = totalitarian view would be warmly accepted in Russian, China or Cuba and they would welcome you with open arms. But I fear your hashtag revolt type of actions might not be warmly accepted in their world.
But back to the original topic. If DOE and the EPA were really as despotic as you infer (they are products of a capitalist system) whey wouldn't they simply insist people man those wells, Covid be damned. It is for the greater good, comrade.