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Private Donor Saves Fermilab
sciencehabit writes "In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country's only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently."
I'm posting AC on purpose, but i'm a karma-whoring regular.
... overwhelmed and humbled by this gift. A couple people almost cried. It's ... well, it's a real morale booster and at the same time it's humbling. did i mention humbling? wow.
I work at Fermilab, and everyone i know (and that's a lot of people) is
Thanks a million (x5!) mysterious friend!
now back to the antimatter and neutrinos...
Isn't this just a reflection of the style of government in the US? There seems to be a strong emphasis on small government, and then relying on private philanthropy to keep other things running.
I agree with you, but I think the timing of the US's scientific stagnation is also uncanny. It's been several generations since the last influx of extremely bright and educated scientists (and philosophers) from conquered lands. Iraq, I have to say, hasn't netted anything of the sort (with all due respect to Iraqis).
Is there a problem with the handing on of scientific knowledge in the US? Or is this a reflection of American cultural shortcomings? It seems to me that US culture is too shallow to recognize the importance of free & fair education 'for all'. If you don't provide equal opportunity to every child to excel and prove themselves in academia, then the chances of plucking the brightest from the far reaches of the bell curve diminish.
I say this knowing full well I'm going to be modded a troll or flaimbait or something.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Democracy? Since when is America a democracy?
The problem is that America is not a democracy, and is nothing close. It is virtually guaranteed that:
So, because of this "republic" two-party system, we're screwed. We have no real voice.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
An article in an Australian newspaper pointed out that it's costing us more to build a new ticketing system for public transport in Melbourne than it cost to send the Pheonix Lander to mars.
Quite amusing, really!
What's going to happen is that there will be a severe wealth gap (gini coefficient) developing between those who do science and those who don't (aka. the shallow culture). This is already happening (as evidenced by the creative class: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html
and the geek class:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/opinion/23brooks.html
and it will just get worse. There's not really too much to fear if you have a Science degree and a bit of business sense, but if you don't, watch out.
No amount of whining on slashdot, or politician concern will change it. It's a culture that has to change.
Look at the US Congress. 60% lawyers, 20% lifetime politicians, 1% scientists and engineers.
compared to who?
I mean, I know they *complain* a lot about their pay, but here is some pay scales here in maine: http://www.teacher-world.com/teacher-salary/maine.html
not huge, but be aware of the median values in the state: http://www.state.me.us/spo/economics/economic/householdincome.htm
I'll save you the math, statewide the average income is 34.5k/year for an entire family.
So, a teacher with NO experience can walk into a teaching job and start earning almost as much as most households in maine.
and they get 3 months off a year plus vacations.
Really, my heart bleeds.
The teacher's union cares nothing for education. Standing in the way of vouchers proves it. any place in north america that has experimented with parent choice as a motivator for schools and assignment of funding has seen dramatic success, yet, the teacher's union won't hear of it. really, read up. harlem is looking to switch wholesale..
I love teachers and have several as close friends. and the union is a horrible monstrosity that shows that wild un-unionized labor is horribly exploitable, so is a system with a heavily entrenched union, just by different people.
Perhaps it's time the legislation was put in place to ensure that government actually is representative of the people. Like jury service, onyl better paid, so people actually want to do it.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
But making it free would make libertarians and wannabe economists cry out: "Socialism ! Bad ! Why should my tax money support anything, you communist swine ? Free market ! Free market ! Free market !"
It's politically better to have a wasteful payment system than to give the appearance of being anything but ultra-rightwing free market fundamentalist.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Some times mass transit systems can actually increase revenue by lowering prices. The real question is capacity, prices are used as a rationing tool, raise the price to keep people off in accord with capacity, I think mass transit systems should lower prices and try to maximize ridership.
I like to kill your couch. HE DIED HARD! MOO.
Good point. As a former scientist myself, I left the academic world for a number of reasons:
1) Being poorly paid, commensurate to the qualifications, experience, and quality/scale of work. If I did what I did for a company, I would have been a senior executive on a large bonus. As it was, we got no performance pay to increase motivation, no bonuses whatsoever, few holidays, and we were packed into a cramped office fighting over crumbling PCs). Did I mention that HR considered it a good days work to start us off on the bottom of the pay scale regardless of experience, talent or qualifications.
2) Spending half of my research time applying for grants and maybe 10-15% of what was left to complete mystifying administration work (hint: perhaps the admin staff could help us out by doing something useful rather than just giving leaflets out or showing presentations).
3) Ethics committees being too PC and panicking any time we approached the public. I had to submit a 52 page questionnaire before I could issue a paper-based survey to people even if I just asked them anonymously what their favourite colour was.
4) Low status - "rock star" professors are all well and good, but plain researchers get relegated to the bottom of the heap beneath administration in terms of resources if you can believe it. I once requisitioned a pair of headphones for an experiment. 18 months later, I had finished my thesis and still had no headphones. You guessed it - I had bought my own because it was easier).
5) Little chance of advancement regardless of talent or accomplishments.
6) Bad security - researchers live on temporary contracts and a permanent one is extremely rare. The problem is that with a family, I need a place to live etc and at least some idea that I might be able to stay in the same place for a few years rather than just 6 months.
7) Having senior staff with inferior knowledge of methods tell you to change your design to one that is compromised. Admittedly this is rare, but annoying nonetheless.
The points about lack of advancement, lack of pay, poor conditions etc, all seem to stem from management cocking it up. Because we didn't produce anything with a price tag on it, we couldn't demonstrate our worth in terms that they can understand. Instead, I left academia with my ideas and training and I am going to make them work for me. I tried the university's business start-up service, but they wanted a large percentage, control over how everything was run (if it's anything like the university then be prepared for another SCO), but they weren't interested because I was just a research fellow and therefore unimportant. Once they realised what my position was, they didn't even ask me what the idea was.
The business isn't properly started yet, but we're getting there; and it's a very big market. We're just hoping to scrape by until the product begins to get momentum.
In case you're interested, this was a UK university.
bang goes my karma... again...
Supposedly, much of Fermilab's current budget problems can be blamed on the retirement of Dennis Hastert. Haster's seniority and clout was a huge benefit for Fermilab. Apparently the timing of his retirement didn't help either, timed around the time that the budgets were being formulated and voted on. The actual budget vote that slashed Fermilab's funding didn't even get a vote from that district.
I don't know, maybe this just highlights how screwed up the congressional seniority system really is.
Well, they don't make you take a test before they put the "fundamentalist" label on you, or before you claim that label for yourself.
In fact, the way words like "fundamentalist" and "evangelical" are used as if they were synonyms, which they are not. Also, some of the ideas of Pentecostalism are associated with Fundamentalism, and indeed many individuals these days practice a mix of both, but they are really different (and somewhat antithetical) things.
Usually, when we hear "fundamentalist", it is used to refer to somebody who is a conservative, evangelical Christian who believes in Biblical literalism and practices an ecstatic form of worship in a large, media driven community.
In fact, this is something of a recent mish-mash of distinctive and sometimes opposing American religious groups. For example, up until the mid twentieth century, Christian fundamentalists were antagonistic to the kind of mystical worship practiced by Pentecostalism. That is because the Christian Fundamentalist movement is essentially pseudo-rational in nature.
"Creation Science" is quintessential Christian Fundamentalism in its historic form. Fundamentalists of this sort don't see themselves as anti-science. They see themselves as pro-science, but against an intellectually corrupt scientific establishment. It is therefore quite practical for a "fundamentalist" to pursue a scientific career, provided it is in a field that either has a well established fundamentalist counter-movement, like biology, or one in which Biblical issues don't arise very often, for example solid state physics. You won't find many "Fundamentalists" in scholarly fields like Near Eastern languages or Biblical Archeology -- not for long at any rate.
There is a lot more diversity in religious belief than our labels allow for. The right wing Christian movement has laid claim to a number of American religious traditions, sometimes conflicting traditions. They're even flirting with Catholicism, which was long seen by native Protestants of all stripes as alien and wicked. Bringing these traditions under a single terminological roof is about institutional and political power. We sometimes call that roof "Evangelicalism" and sometimes "Fundamentalism", even though these are again two different historical phenomenon. The two words serve complementary political purposes: to unite those under the roof, and to stand them against those outside.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.