Get out of the house this Saturday for UllrFest 09 up on Pajarito Mountain. There will be beer, mountain biking, and music. My friends the Hop Hedz will be playing -- they have a great sound. I may even sit in with them for a set.
--Doug
Click to enlarge
38 comments:
Ummmmm, Ummmmm, beer!!! Lots and lots of micro-brewed beer!
Wait, there's a LANS Fall Festival and I wasn't invited?!
Let's see... Urlfest '09 up at the Skill Hill with lots of cold beer and happy people... or LANS Fun Fest over at Overlook Park with Mikey and cold, half-sized hot dogs.
Both occur on Saturday the 26th (great planning, LANS!)
Which will it be? It's so difficult to make a wise choice. Help me out here, folks.
There will be plenty of "Norse Mojo" at the Urrlfest. Not so much at the LANS Festival. Does that help?
What will LANS be doing with all those stale left-overs? Perhaps Mikey can hand them out to staff at his next employee awards meeting.
All I can say regarding Mountain Biking, Beer, and Music: I plan to do a bit of all three on Saturday, in roughly that order. The weather looks like it will be shaping up -- see you there.
This blog, I thought, might contain comments on the Lab's Science and Technology, not a stream of ad hominem comments and complaining about benefits. Outside of the lab, scientists consider it a place of expensive and failed beam/laser/pulse technology. Has anything changed? The years of secrecy abuse and un-reviewed work should end pretty soon and many of us wonder if the place can change.
6:00 pm: "The fact that LANS scheduled their picnic on the same day as a very popular annual local event just shows that they don't give a rats ass..."
Nonsense. It just shows they are clueles about anything except their own little sandbox. What's new?
"Outside of the lab, scientists consider it a place of expensive and failed beam/laser/pulse technology. "
No they do not.
Yes, they do! or No, they don't!
Does anyone know of a successful program? By what criterion?
It is an interesting question. I am hard pressed to think of a successful program at LANL these days. Some of the lack of success can be attributed to the fact that most of the programs are R&D. Still, doing anything resembling honest work at LANL is well nigh impossible under LANS/DOE. Having said that, I can think of a few successful projects that are below the radar and have no interactions with the FOD, LAO, upper management, DOE headquarters etc. In short, they succeed despite, not because of, those bureaucrats. I can also think of a few programs where LANL has sent a ton of money outside the lab that have been successful. Roadrunner seems to be in that category. Even construction projects are only running about 50-50. In the real world they have more than a 99% success rate. I'm sure Mike A. has a different view.
Looks like Kevin Roark won't be able to attend Saturdays' LANS Fun Fest. He's got important work to do writing defensive PR pieces about this little bit of breaking news...
Los Alamos Monitor, Sep 25, '09
........................
BREAKING NEWS: New contaminant spotted in the regional aquifer
- Lab officials think it is an artifact of drilling a monitoring well
By ROGER SNODGRASS, Monitor Editor
Tucked inside a routine monthly report is the first public disclosure of a potentially troubling new area of contamination in the regional aquifer below Los Alamos National Laboratory
A cover letter from Los Alamos National Laboratory to the New Mexico Environment Department was dated Aug. 29, 2009 and was published by link on a laboratory Web site last week. It calls attention to two elevated readings for the chemical bis(2-ethylhyexyl)phthalate. The samples were found in the water table, some 1300 feet below the surface, in one of the lab’s new regional monitoring wells R-46.
Read the story in Sunday's Monitor
..........................
How did the Saturday LANS corporate fun festival go? Anyone attend it?
Don't know about the LANS thing, but UllrFest was a blast. I'll have pictures up tomorrow.
To 6:52 PM, nah, had to clean out the toilets today. No time to smooze with higher ups and see how they pretend to care about anything but their bonuses.
This just in from NNSA's Twitter site (via Kevin Roark)....
"Today, NNSA proudly announced that LANL has been successful at mining bis(2-ethylhyexyl) phthalate using advanced technology developed at the lab. The exotic substance was extracted at a depth of only 1300 feet, a new world record!
Dr. Chu said that the long fear world wide depletion of bis(2-ethylhyexyl) phthalate is no longer of great concern. Claims of the "Peak bis(2-ethylhyexyl) phthalate" alarmists have been proven wrong.
There will be plenty of bis(2-ethylhyexyl) phthalate available in the future, thanks to the innovative extraction techniques developed under the guidance of LANS' bold leadership at this lab."
(Kevin Roark, LANS PR Office)
"To 6:52 PM, nah, had to clean out the toilets today. No time to smooze with higher ups" (7:29 pm)
You got to clean out the toilets?
Lucky guy! I had to spend the day draining the anal glands of all the drug sniffing dogs at LANL and washing out a months supply of dirty piss testing cups.
Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, commonly abbreviated DEHP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bis%282-ethylhexyl%29_phthalate
Smaller penis size and other feminizing links
DEHP metabolites measured from the blood of pregnant women have been significantly associated with the decreased penis width, shorter anogenital distance, and the incomplete descent of testes of their newborn sons, replicating effects identified in animals.[1] Approximately 25% of US women have phthalate levels similar to those in the study.[1]
Pelley, Janet (November 2008). "Plasticizer may make boys less masculine". Environ Sci Technol. http://pubs.acs.org/action/showStoryContent?doi=10.1021%2Fon.2008.11.12.154968.
"DEHP metabolites measured from the blood of pregnant women have been significantly associated with the decreased penis width.." (Wiki)
So that's the reason why it's been getting smaller and smaller each year I've been living here. Thanks for that important info, 7:05 AM!
My neighbor in Santa Fe is a retired LANL scientists who had won awards during his career. He has said, more than once, that all the big programs, particular the development part of the R&D were close to worthless. He has referred me to this blog because he felt that it exactly made his point.
As a retired academic, I find it hard to believe that fractions of a billion dollars can be spent without intelligent oversight. Will someone please help me?
9/27/09 11:43 AM, aka 9/25/09 2:33 PM
Troll alert.
"9/27/09 11:43 AM"
You have posted this before go back and read the answers. Your neighbor is a bitter nutcase, judge for yourself.
To translate the situation to academics, consider a department that has an endowment and for which the curator of the endowment gets paid for disbursing the endowment each year but cannot get a raise for disbursing the endowment well nor get fired for disbursing it badly. The person gets a raise for disbursing all of it and for filling out the right forms.
Then consider the expected behavior of the people who receive the fixed yearly endowment and who have been receiving it for years.
If you have a good work ethic and good computer skills and want a job outside of LANL (possibly by telecommuting), contact me before Friday.
I have a headhunter who is looking for talent.
11:43 am: "As a retired academic, I find it hard to believe that fractions of a billion dollars can be spent without intelligent oversight."
You have got to be kidding. 99% of the money congress allocates never receives any "intelligent oversight." Surely you know this. Perhaps the academic life is a little light on some important lessons.
"As a retired academic, I find it hard to believe that fractions of a billion dollars can be spent without intelligent oversight. Will someone please help me?"
Intellegent oversight? NNSA? This one isn't rocket science.
"As a retired academic, I find it hard to believe that fractions of a billion dollars can be spent without intelligent oversight. Will someone please help me?"
You should know, in academia it happens to larger degree. How about all the "stimulus" money just being tossed at academic institutions? Please get off your high and mighty pedestal.
"9/27/09 11:43 AM, aka 9/25/09 2:33 PM
Troll alert.
9/27/09 1:16 PM"
Yep, it is Mr Ass Troll, he said the exact same thing a year ago.
Any reports back from the LANS festival? How did Mikey's little party go?
Can someone please out oneself and report back about the great success of the LANS Fall party? - Thank you.
None of us that read and post to the blog went. Surprised you did not figure that one ot.
"Can someone please out oneself and report back about the great success of the LANS Fall party? - Thank you."
Why do you care? Obviously you did not go. Why would you want to know how it went? If you were that curious, why did you not simply attend and see for yourself?
Looks like this discussion is over. But I wanted to hear about a LANL R&D program that could claim success. One other question-why does everyone get upset and start cursing at a "troll"? What harm can he/she do?
Here is one that was successful - The Human Genome Project.
Here is another -
Prediction of the spread of wildfires
Here is another -
A library of mutations in HIV
Here is another -
Extensions of operating systems in supercomputers
Here is another -
Superconductivity in transition metal compounds
There are more.
But I wanted to hear about a LANL R&D program that could claim success.
Define "success"
.) publication of a paper,
.) winning an R&D 10 award,
.) filing of three patents,
.) beating the LDRD queen in WFO funds,
.) finding Osama,
.) becoming richer than Riley Bechtel,
.) cure cancer,
.) world peace, and ...
I'll define "success" for you and you'll like it. "Success" is the arrival of my annual bonus and the boot licking at the LANS party given to me by my wonderful, loyal, and highly compensated AD subordinates. This year I got both! Success is mine! Next year I want a private booth at the Bohemian club too!
-MIKEY
Define "success"
Success is when C students win and A students fail.
10:31 PM: "Success is when C students win and A students fail."
By this definition, LANS is clearly being very successful!
"Success" will be pushed even further along by LANS once the D students are allowed to take over from the C students.
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