Brevity and clarity go hand in hand

 Hello,

We all have been taught that using more words, being verbose, doesn't necessarily help you express your views clearly.

I am seeing more and more comments that take 10 minutes to read and more importantly understand .

Please be brief for the sake of clarity. Verbosity seems to go against clarity.

I don't want to impose actual size limit and instead count on your cooperation to be brief. Brevity = clarity.

Thank you.

Superconductivity breakthrough?

 

This is interesting, it's a claim of a room temperature superconductor:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037

One might imagine, if this is true, it could be technologically useful in some ways, both beneficial or through accelerating mankind's technological progress, also creating various problems.

Certainly such a claim, requires better data to confirm, I would think, but if so this could be a Nobel prize. Otherwise, to explain the data they do have (unless the data is fake) could also require some interesting physics, and it still might have some ultimate applications.

Can a DOE Contractor Weaponize an Employees DOE Q-Clearance as a Tool of Retaliation without Risk?

Can a DOE/NNSA contractor leverage known Security Q-Clearance criteria as a pretext to firing an employee? The short answer is likely yes.

As explained in the July 6, 2023 DOE OHA Administrative Judge decision in the link below, a QNSP acknowledgment (or obviously much worse, failure to acknowledge) of any “received a written warning, been officially reprimanded, suspended, or disciplined for misconduct in the workplace” can trigger a DOE evaluation of one’s Security Clearance eligibility above and beyond the normal periodic review.

In this case, the employee in question referred to as “the Individual”, under QNSP/“Employment Activities”, “affirmatively answered” “he had received a written warning, been officially reprimanded, suspended, or disciplined for misconduct in the workplace”. “The Individuals” honesty and confirmed rehabilitation efforts, likely led to his access authorization being granted or maintained.

Had “the Individual” lost his clearance he could have been dismissed based on his position requirements and DOE/Lab policy.

In this case, the concern in question was alcohol consumption and reasonable, but that is a QNSP sub-question. ANY written warning, official reprimand, suspension, or discipline for misconduct, can trigger such a clearance eligibility review.

The validity of the written warning, official reprimand, suspension, or discipline for misconduct, is not a factor for this extra DOE security clearance scrutiny, and as far as I can tell, the contractor will face no DOE blowback for merit-less or pre-textual efforts to fire “the Individual”. If the contractor’s targeted employee maintains his security clearance, afterward, the contractor can default to a “we were going to fire him anyway” position.

Therefore, if the contractor is not liable to DOE for employee false or misleading accusations or other disciplinary actions, an employee’s clearance can indeed be weaponized by the contractor against employees without consequence. Another risk free tool in the DOE contractor retaliation tool box.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/PSH-23-0014.pdf

American Physical Society's response

 American Physical Society Statement

So Bill Priedhorsky a retied scientists from LANL is giving a LANL talk on the APS American Physical Society statement on missile defense systems. Bill was on that board that gave the report in early 2022. I find it a tad odd he is going to be giving a talk on this since there is considerable controversy on this and in fact the original report got pulled form the APS site due to errors.

https://www.aps.org/policy/analysis/missile-respons.cfm

In February 2022, POPA published a report detailing the technical challenges of defending the United States against intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from North Korea. The report was reviewed by nine independent experts and approved for publication by the APS Council.

"Subsequent to publication, technical errors were identified in one section of the report, on the topic of boost-phase intercept systems. After confirming that there were two errors, APS promptly removed the report from its website and notified key Congressional and Executive Branch staff of the errors. The study committee is currently revising the report. APS has secured an additional expert reviewer who will assess the accuracy of the revised report before it is republished, subject to approval of the Council.

is that guy on this? Fetter a sociologist or something, some union of concerned science types, who one the face of it I do not trust. I do not see how any of these people are "experts" in missile defense.

I simply find it hard to take this panel seriously, and it looks like it has a clear political agenda. By the way I am not the only person who though that the panel was strange. Several high energy theory people faculty I know though it was very odd that James Wells was the co-chair as his expertise seems utterly outside of this field. Bill P sorta makes more sense than some of the others but again this seems pretty outside of what he does. I think APS should stay out of politics and stick with just stick with science.

Bomb discussion

https://losalamosreporter.com/2023/07/19/the-real-purpose-in-making-the-bomb-was-to-subdue-the-soviets-now-its-happening-again-on-a-vast-scale-scale-why-july-22-at-fuller-lodge/

The Real Purpose In Making The Bomb Was To Subdue The Soviets.’ Now It’s Happening Again, On A Vast Scale. Scale. Why? – July 22 At Fuller Lodge

California Dreamin

California Dreamin

https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/07/17/john-sarrao-named-director-slac-national-accelerator-laboratory/

Following a broad, international search, John Sarrao, deputy director for science, technology & engineering at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), has been named SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s sixth director, Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced today.

At first this does not seem all that significant but John Sarrao has been rumored for many years to be a future LANL director most assumed after Mason that it would be John. I think he even had offers to head up some other DOE labs but turned them down to stay at LANL. Of course there are a number of rumors for why he is leaving (1) Sarrao sees that LANL will be a pit facility and he does not really want to manage that kind of operation, and he would rather be in charge of science organization. (2) He was told that future lab directors are going to be industry types that can manage a large manufacturing plants not science based people so he has no chance

(3) Maybe he sees the writing on the wall and the pit mission could fail and he would not want to be the director if that happens. SLAC is fairly safe job in terms of measuring success since there are always some kind of breakthroughs or good science that gets done in these kinds of facilities. LANL on the other hand has a lot of risk in that things can go wrong in terms of safety, security or failing to get stuff done. It also possible that this issimply a job he wanted and the opportunity came up. SLAC has about 1600 people and LANL will soon have about 16000 people so a LANL directorship is likely a higher paying and more powerful position. My guess is that the LANL mission is going more toward manufacturing and that future lab directors are going be people with these kinds of backgrounds but who knows.

Class war in America

 This is quite interesting, it goes into how scientific and technical expertise and judgement have been devalued in the United States, and it is an ongoing trend of course:

https://theintercept.com/2023/07/16/class-warfare-1-percent-technocrat/