I'm kind of amazed that at no point is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Mouse House mentioned anywhere in the article. ORNL has been in the mouse genetics business for decades with a large number of genetic variants available on site.
I'm running Win2000 on a Pentium 166MHz with 96Mb memory and it is perfectly servicable for word processing, hacking code, data analysis and preparing presentations when I'm on the road. It can bog down on giving presentations that are graphics heavy. Still, for what I need it for, it works and can use the office applications that I use on my Win XP desktops.
Why would I get a new computer? At times the speed would be nice. I've been tempted but there are better things to spend the money on while this old beast still does what I need it to do.
I admit that I don't ever connect it to the net. The CPU couldn't handle it if I had to run virus protection and a firewall while I was trying to get things done. USB flash drives work just fine for any data transfer that I need to do.
$3B worth of research could potentially go a long way toward solutions to the pressing problems. Yes, some of them are human problems, but its very clear that people are unlikely to change their behavior any time soon.
The technological spin-offs you list are nothing more than the same kind of crap that gets shoveled to fund anything. The problems is, as a physicist, I don't see how yet another uber-collider is going to lead to the technologies you list. There are many smaller research projects that are directly investigating those kinds of things. Why not spread $3B around to efforts that are directly focusing on such technologies instead of being indirect about it? Even better, why not try addressing some of the human problems and try to save us from our own stupidity?
While the fundamental questions you list are very important in the grand scheme of things, I think one can look to the Human Genome Project to see that answering such fundamental questions doesn't necessarily live up to the hype. Sure the genome has been sequenced, but where are all of the wonderful things that they promised us while they were asking for more and more funding? Simply knowing the sequence, which was pitched as being the be-all-end-all, didn't give us a fraction of what the scientists promised.
I'm not saying these massive projects in fundamental physics don't have a place, but we should really give serious consideration to funding such massive projects that directly benefit such a relatively small number of people when there are other ways to spend the money that will benefit us all.
Well, yeah, going to the moon was highly political. It was great for everyone, but the US really earned some serious international bragging rights for doing it, particularly in a US vs. Soviet Union context. That dynamic dominated that period of time.
The only reason that anyone in the US has perked up about the moon and Mars at all is because other nations have announced intentions to go. I don't get the impression that the majority of people see it as important.
Your comment about being selfish is partly true, but I don't know that it is that simple. Right now, the main thing on everyone's mind is terrorism, so it gets the attention and money. We were attacked and went to war, so more money goes into defense. Health care and social security are also a mess. The perception among our leaders and a large portion of the population is that these problems need to be addressed. The current budgetary allocations are "the squeaky wheel getting the grease."
If you feel strongly about space travel get organized, or join an existing effort, and squeak like you mean it.
Well, if you did a little probing, you might see that it is still under construction. They won't be making neutrons until approximately mid-2006. They are essentially on schedule, much to their credit.
I work at the HFIR at ORNL, so I hear about this all the time. Mostly in the context of the HFIR upgrades being so friggin' far behind schedule that nobody can even joke about it anymore.
Showering together is getting you bent out of shape? This used to be a fact of life in gym class and the military. The health club I worked out at in Houston during grad school has showers in the men's locker room that are totally open (i.e. wall with faucets). Everyone else is hung differntly, and if that's how you're comparing yourself to everyone else, you've already lost, even if horses are impressed with your manhood.
What's the big deal about dick jokes? Who the hell hasn't told one at some point in their life?
You were convicted of a crime (my guess is weed possession by your whining). Thus, you were stripped of some of your freedom according to the laws of the land. Don't like it? Get the fuck out and find somewhere that suits you. Nobody will stop you. Showering in private is clearly one of those freedoms the prison system chose not to provide you with, probably due to expedience of getting a healthy shine on everyone's butt in the least amount of time with the least guard resources.
A prison guard is neither the most educated nor highly-paid person. They spend all day with people who at the least resent them, or at worst are actively plotting to do them in. I sure as hell wouldn't hold back from giving somebody shit, whether they felt they deserved it or not, because you never know who is going to try and stick a shank in you.
Sure, prison rape is wrong and dehumanizing, but convicts aren't worth the resources to prevent it from ever happening. All you do is cost society money, and if you wind up taking it in the ass because you couldn't control yourself in the outside world, that is unfortunate. It is not worth the funds to make sure it never happens again.
In biology, host defense systems against virii bacteria, fungi and parasites in higher life forms have evolved into incredibly complex systems that range from simple things like antimicrobial peptides, to white cells and the like. An incredible amount of time, effort and resources goes to fighting off all of this crap.
Is anyone actually dense enough to think that it would be any different for operating systems, word processors, or other large software systems? Think about all of the time and effort that goes into fighting frigging computer viruses and worms.
Cut the damn virus writer's fingers off and take a blowtorch to their genitals so they can't breed! I'm sick of having to fight off this garbage. It is a waste of my time, money and patience.
A game is only replayable if it is enjoyable to the user (or fills dead time at work like a bitch goddess, i.e. Solitaire). One of my biggest dissapointments in installing Win2K was that my Need for Speed games broke.
Why simple games? I like the idea of not getting caught up in something I can't stop on a dime. I played the hell out of Hot Pursuit and then some by fishing around for new cars and tracks. I do the same with quake3 and UT2k3. Two laps in some Need for Speed tracks can be done in 2 minutes, and I love the visual sensation that the gave gives me. Win-win if you ask me. There is no way that you can do that with a complex game.
Who the hell has time for Masters of Orion 3? There's too much beer, sex and money to be had away from my computer to throw my life at something like that. Whoops. I almost forgot that this is Slashdot.
Re:Its more difficult than one thinks...
on
Mutating Animations
·
· Score: 1
Your comment about the bit representation in a GA being a little too simplistic is true. I used a GA for a scientific non-linear minimization problem, and I found that 1's and 0's were pretty useless for the problem. I found it easier to go back from the "Watson and Crick" level of detail to the "Mendel" level of detail. It was more logical to do "mate/mutate" processes on that kind of information. It all depends on the problem.
You're also correct about problems with the solution space. I tend to think of GAs being good for problems where I can say "The answer lies in this box." The box is an N-dimensional object whose sides are very reasonable limits on the set of parameters defining the solution space. In situations like that, the GA is a nice mix between a Monte-Carlo search and a fully directed minimization.
Re:People work harder in the U.S.?
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
Somebody who works over 40 hours a week because they are unproductive or are jacking the system for more money certainly fits the classical definition of "slacker."
As for your second question, with the laws that currently exist in the US, if the market determines that extra work for no pay is acceptable through the willingness of a significant number of workers to do just that, then that will become the expected norm without it ever having to be formalized. This is more or less what has happened. These people receive some kind of benefit that is not immediately financial, which is usually glory and better promotion chances. In effect, a group of work-a-holics (not necessarily large) have peed in the wheaties of us all.
The notion of working overtime isn't as simple as it is being made out to be here. You can be working overtime to get a project done on schedule for reasons beyond your control. A new project can also pop up that demands immediate attention. Many people who are salaried, as opposed to hourly wage earners, find themselves sitting at their desks on Saturday for these kinds of reasons. The wage earner will get compensated, possibly at 1.5-2 times hourly rate, but the normal salaried employee will not get paid for overtime.
Another possible source of needing to work overtime is goofing off, plain and simple. If you have things to do but you are off bullshitting by the water cooler, you're going to have to get your work done sometime, like Saturday. Note that this can lead to the perception that you are a go-getter (see above), which leads to the perception at that place of employment that everyone should come in on Saturday because of one goof-off. The difference between the wage earner and the salaried guy is that the wage earner knows he won't get paid for it if he hasn't been asked to come in, so he isn't as likely to work that extra day to make up for his goofing off. The employer in this case runs the risk of having a complaint filed with the labor department if he decided not to pay the wage earner for the work. The salaried guy knows that his raises and future employment path depend on him getting things done and will drag is hung over butt in to the office.
The third kind of overtime is that mandated by somebody with the authority to do so and the power to make good on threats for not showing up. The salaried employee is usually the victim in this case as the wage earner has a real expectation of getting compensated for his work. The salaried guy will be in deep shit if he doesn't show up, so he does. This kind of overtime is the kind that everyone SHOULD be compensated for, but the salaried guy NEVER is.
>In the clips of the Incredible Hulk, does it look >wrong? Yes? Good! The Incredible Hulk is not >human. He bounces better, moves differently, is >just plain built differently.
You could say the same thing about some strippers I've known...
In any event, there comes a point where CGI detracts from things. For instance, in some of the clips I've seen for "Too Fast, Too Furious" the cars seem too fake and movement too artificial. This detracts from look of the movie to me, and I've considered not seeing the film for this reason. It is probably a fun romp, but there's no good reason why some of the scenes needed to be CGI. I can comfortably blow it off for something like the matrix which is cleary depicting truly impossible things, but not for a car movie with chase scenes.
I understand where you're coming from when you say you lost faith. Been there, done that. I still loved research, so I finished my Ph.D. in Physics in 1999 and set out on the yellow brick postdoc road. There were a hell of a lot of days when I had trouble convincing myself to get out of bed in the morning, but I'm glad that I stuck with it.
Your examples of people who didn't make it to the faculty promised land after they gave their hearts and souls for science didn't bring a lump to my throat, though. I'll ignore the tale about the dude with the video tapes, that involved a special kind of stupid. Your other stories show that tenure isn't automatic, which is a good thing.
A department in a university is a ferocious pressure cooker, as I'm sure you understand. I've heard tales of the faculty meetings at the place I got my Ph.D., which will remain nameless for good reasons. They were nothing short of vicious, with tenured and untenured faculty members engaged in shouting matches. Politics plays a HUGE role in any department and things can get really ugly. It isn't that much different than working for a company where you compete for resources and glory.
There were obviously good reasons the people your examples didn't get tenure, probably including a decision by the department as a whole to move in another research direction. Remember, departments are forced to compete for resources doled out by the administration. If your research topic or departmental focus drops too far out of vogue while you're bucking for tenure, it is unlikely that the department will recommend you for a position that could be filled by somebody working in a much hotter field that will bring in more money for a longer period of time.
As for your example of somebody not being a team player, nobody wants to work with a jackass. If somebody just doesn't get along with established department members, then they aren't likely to get tenure, either. Sounds reasonable to me. Like I said, there is plenty of tension in a department. Anything that can be done to lessen it, like not giving tenure to a coworker who is unbearable, will be done. His classroom students would undoubtedly suffer, too. Universities are at least giving lip service to things like this, even if grant money is still the prime mover.
Your loss of faith because of the bleak job outlook is one thing and I completely understand it. I don't get why these other things would get to you, though. I get the impression that your expectations were a little unrealistic.
I'm amazed that nobody has make a Jurrassic Park snide remark regarding the researchers making the bacteria unable to produce the amino acid leucine.
The work talked about is an accomplishment, but I think that one very important point has been neglected. Yes, DNA codes for 20 amino acids, but post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, increases that number by a bit (sorry, don't know the exact number), so there are more than 20 functional chemical groups found on proteins in nature. Another thing to keep in mind is that there are a couple less common residues beyond the normal 20. The fungus trichoderma viride produces a peptide called alamethicin which is filthy with (alpha)-aminoisobutyric acid (probably misspelled, but abbreviated Aib). The peptide gramicidin is loaded with amino acids that have the opposite structural handedness of normal amino acids.
What killed me about the "MegaSquid," or whatever the big devil was called at the furthest point in the future, was the fact that it didn't have a skeleton. The whole idea of tightly bundled muscles being able to support 16 TONS of critter struck me as being a great steaming pile of bull stuff. The thing's skin would have to be incredibly thick to keep the legs from exploding from the pressure.
Where did this come from? Mini-nukes? Mini-nukes don't seem to be the issue. My impression attitude of the lab to the bunker-buster program was that it was quite positive because it was such a large project that fits into the mission of the lab. The lab wanted the project.
The article in the NY Times indicates that it was the response of the laboratory leadership to the investigations into the problems with the property, credit card and purchase order accounting that caused Brown and the deputy director to resign. The article read in such a way as to indicate that there was a pretty feeble attempt at a coverup, which was exposed.
There are significant problems with property accounting at Los Alamos. During my time at Los Alamos as a postdoctoral research associate, we had 1 person responsible for accounting for the property in our division. He couldn't keep up with everything going on and there was a lot of hostility to him doing his job. I suspect other divisions were similar.
The credit card system gets so much abuse because it is used so damn much. You can't get anything in a reasonable amount of time by going through the official channels of purchase orders through the appropriate group. If you need something in a timely manner, you find a secretary with a credit card. I suspect that a lot of the problems stem from the fact that they are buying so much stuff that they lose track of what's going on. Slipping in a bogus purchase gets easy when there's so much activity. If you can get away with it once, go back for seconds.
Don't even get me started on the theft of equipment. Our group lost tools by the ton as well as larger ticket items, like air compressors. The air compressor was even chained down. This kind of theft goes on so often it is sickening.
It is unlikely that the resignations are going to alter things significantly, but the odds of improving the situation are better than if things had been left as they were. Personally, I'm hopeful that the lab can straighten some of this out.
Your comment seems to imply that you've submitted bullshit to a refereed journal. Bad Scientist! BAD!
Yes, there are journals that are considered better than others. This is not necessarily a good thing, as people can adopt a cliquish attitude. Personally, I'm not familiar with JAP, being a biophysicist who publishes in Biophys. J. and Biochemistry almost exclusively. In my field, we tend to look at a journal like Biopolymers in the same way you regard JAP. Each article needs to be judged on its own merit, though.
JAP is published by the American Institue of Physics, which counts in its favor. It isn't one of the umpteen piss-poor journals started by for-profit companies like Elsevier. This is not a dig against all Elsevier journals, just some of them.
Look, I lived there until a couple of months ago and I would NEVER say something like this. I was working as a postdoc at the lab. The entire town site is probably contaminated, not just the lab areas. They monitor anything that is directly related to the lab. The dump accepts some material from the lab, so they monitor it, too. I don't think that the rest of the town is monitored.
Do you remember the Acid Canyon cleanup? They found PLUTONIUM there in measurable quantities. They may or may not be totally done with the cleanup, but it took quite a bit of time. Acid canyon is in the middle of the town site, being just north of Canyon Road. It was a nice place to hike that was pretty convenient if you lived in the Los Cerros apartments. Anywhoo, I was out hiking not long after I moved to town in 1999 when I noticed these funny little flags spaced every couple yards along the canyon bottom, where what little rain water that falls there would flow. Below each flag was a series of notches taken out of the earth at different heights above the lowest point. It didn't take a Ph.D. to figure out that those were systematic soil samples looking for runoff contamination of some kind or another. The only way for stuff to get into the soil in that part of the canyon is for it to wash down from the surrounding neighborhoods.
Don't kid yourself about Los Alamos.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm kind of amazed that at no point is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Mouse House mentioned anywhere in the article. ORNL has been in the mouse genetics business for decades with a large number of genetic variants available on site.
Not long ago, they relocated to a new facility.
http://bio.lsd.ornl.gov/mgd/news/MH/Sept2003.html
I'm running Win2000 on a Pentium 166MHz with 96Mb memory and it is perfectly servicable for word processing, hacking code, data analysis and preparing presentations when I'm on the road. It can bog down on giving presentations that are graphics heavy. Still, for what I need it for, it works and can use the office applications that I use on my Win XP desktops.
Why would I get a new computer? At times the speed would be nice. I've been tempted but there are better things to spend the money on while this old beast still does what I need it to do.
I admit that I don't ever connect it to the net. The CPU couldn't handle it if I had to run virus protection and a firewall while I was trying to get things done. USB flash drives work just fine for any data transfer that I need to do.
Springs, schmings. I always preferred to study oscillations at the local topless bar.
$3B worth of research could potentially go a long way toward solutions to the pressing problems. Yes, some of them are human problems, but its very clear that people are unlikely to change their behavior any time soon.
The technological spin-offs you list are nothing more than the same kind of crap that gets shoveled to fund anything. The problems is, as a physicist, I don't see how yet another uber-collider is going to lead to the technologies you list. There are many smaller research projects that are directly investigating those kinds of things. Why not spread $3B around to efforts that are directly focusing on such technologies instead of being indirect about it? Even better, why not try addressing some of the human problems and try to save us from our own stupidity?
While the fundamental questions you list are very important in the grand scheme of things, I think one can look to the Human Genome Project to see that answering such fundamental questions doesn't necessarily live up to the hype. Sure the genome has been sequenced, but where are all of the wonderful things that they promised us while they were asking for more and more funding? Simply knowing the sequence, which was pitched as being the be-all-end-all, didn't give us a fraction of what the scientists promised.
I'm not saying these massive projects in fundamental physics don't have a place, but we should really give serious consideration to funding such massive projects that directly benefit such a relatively small number of people when there are other ways to spend the money that will benefit us all.
Well, yeah, going to the moon was highly political. It was great for everyone, but the US really earned some serious international bragging rights for doing it, particularly in a US vs. Soviet Union context. That dynamic dominated that period of time.
The only reason that anyone in the US has perked up about the moon and Mars at all is because other nations have announced intentions to go. I don't get the impression that the majority of people see it as important.
Your comment about being selfish is partly true, but I don't know that it is that simple. Right now, the main thing on everyone's mind is terrorism, so it gets the attention and money. We were attacked and went to war, so more money goes into defense. Health care and social security are also a mess. The perception among our leaders and a large portion of the population is that these problems need to be addressed. The current budgetary allocations are "the squeaky wheel getting the grease."
If you feel strongly about space travel get organized, or join an existing effort, and squeak like you mean it.
Well, if you did a little probing, you might see that it is still under construction. They won't be making neutrons until approximately mid-2006. They are essentially on schedule, much to their credit.
I work at the HFIR at ORNL, so I hear about this all the time. Mostly in the context of the HFIR upgrades being so friggin' far behind schedule that nobody can even joke about it anymore.
Showering together is getting you bent out of shape? This used to be a fact of life in gym class and the military. The health club I worked out at in Houston during grad school has showers in the men's locker room that are totally open (i.e. wall with faucets). Everyone else is hung differntly, and if that's how you're comparing yourself to everyone else, you've already lost, even if horses are impressed with your manhood.
What's the big deal about dick jokes? Who the hell hasn't told one at some point in their life?
You were convicted of a crime (my guess is weed possession by your whining). Thus, you were stripped of some of your freedom according to the laws of the land. Don't like it? Get the fuck out and find somewhere that suits you. Nobody will stop you. Showering in private is clearly one of those freedoms the prison system chose not to provide you with, probably due to expedience of getting a healthy shine on everyone's butt in the least amount of time with the least guard resources.
A prison guard is neither the most educated nor highly-paid person. They spend all day with people who at the least resent them, or at worst are actively plotting to do them in. I sure as hell wouldn't hold back from giving somebody shit, whether they felt they deserved it or not, because you never know who is going to try and stick a shank in you.
Sure, prison rape is wrong and dehumanizing, but convicts aren't worth the resources to prevent it from ever happening. All you do is cost society money, and if you wind up taking it in the ass because you couldn't control yourself in the outside world, that is unfortunate. It is not worth the funds to make sure it never happens again.
In biology, host defense systems against virii bacteria, fungi and parasites in higher life forms have evolved into incredibly complex systems that range from simple things like antimicrobial peptides, to white cells and the like. An incredible amount of time, effort and resources goes to fighting off all of this crap.
Is anyone actually dense enough to think that it would be any different for operating systems, word processors, or other large software systems? Think about all of the time and effort that goes into fighting frigging computer viruses and worms.
Cut the damn virus writer's fingers off and take a blowtorch to their genitals so they can't breed! I'm sick of having to fight off this garbage. It is a waste of my time, money and patience.
A game is only replayable if it is enjoyable to the user (or fills dead time at work like a bitch goddess, i.e. Solitaire). One of my biggest dissapointments in installing Win2K was that my Need for Speed games broke.
Why simple games? I like the idea of not getting caught up in something I can't stop on a dime. I played the hell out of Hot Pursuit and then some by fishing around for new cars and tracks. I do the same with quake3 and UT2k3. Two laps in some Need for Speed tracks can be done in 2 minutes, and I love the visual sensation that the gave gives me. Win-win if you ask me. There is no way that you can do that with a complex game.
Who the hell has time for Masters of Orion 3? There's too much beer, sex and money to be had away from my computer to throw my life at something like that. Whoops. I almost forgot that this is Slashdot.
Your comment about the bit representation in a GA being a little too simplistic is true. I used a GA for a scientific non-linear minimization problem, and I found that 1's and 0's were pretty useless for the problem. I found it easier to go back from the "Watson and Crick" level of detail to the "Mendel" level of detail. It was more logical to do "mate/mutate" processes on that kind of information. It all depends on the problem.
You're also correct about problems with the solution space. I tend to think of GAs being good for problems where I can say "The answer lies in this box." The box is an N-dimensional object whose sides are very reasonable limits on the set of parameters defining the solution space. In situations like that, the GA is a nice mix between a Monte-Carlo search and a fully directed minimization.
Somebody who works over 40 hours a week because they are unproductive or are jacking the system for more money certainly fits the classical definition of "slacker."
As for your second question, with the laws that currently exist in the US, if the market determines that extra work for no pay is acceptable through the willingness of a significant number of workers to do just that, then that will become the expected norm without it ever having to be formalized. This is more or less what has happened. These people receive some kind of benefit that is not immediately financial, which is usually glory and better promotion chances. In effect, a group of work-a-holics (not necessarily large) have peed in the wheaties of us all.
The notion of working overtime isn't as simple as it is being made out to be here. You can be working overtime to get a project done on schedule for reasons beyond your control. A new project can also pop up that demands immediate attention. Many people who are salaried, as opposed to hourly wage earners, find themselves sitting at their desks on Saturday for these kinds of reasons. The wage earner will get compensated, possibly at 1.5-2 times hourly rate, but the normal salaried employee will not get paid for overtime.
Another possible source of needing to work overtime is goofing off, plain and simple. If you have things to do but you are off bullshitting by the water cooler, you're going to have to get your work done sometime, like Saturday. Note that this can lead to the perception that you are a go-getter (see above), which leads to the perception at that place of employment that everyone should come in on Saturday because of one goof-off. The difference between the wage earner and the salaried guy is that the wage earner knows he won't get paid for it if he hasn't been asked to come in, so he isn't as likely to work that extra day to make up for his goofing off. The employer in this case runs the risk of having a complaint filed with the labor department if he decided not to pay the wage earner for the work. The salaried guy knows that his raises and future employment path depend on him getting things done and will drag is hung over butt in to the office.
The third kind of overtime is that mandated by somebody with the authority to do so and the power to make good on threats for not showing up. The salaried employee is usually the victim in this case as the wage earner has a real expectation of getting compensated for his work. The salaried guy will be in deep shit if he doesn't show up, so he does. This kind of overtime is the kind that everyone SHOULD be compensated for, but the salaried guy NEVER is.
>In the clips of the Incredible Hulk, does it look
>wrong? Yes? Good! The Incredible Hulk is not
>human. He bounces better, moves differently, is
>just plain built differently.
You could say the same thing about some strippers I've known...
In any event, there comes a point where CGI detracts from things. For instance, in some of the clips I've seen for "Too Fast, Too Furious" the cars seem too fake and movement too artificial. This detracts from look of the movie to me, and I've considered not seeing the film for this reason. It is probably a fun romp, but there's no good reason why some of the scenes needed to be CGI. I can comfortably blow it off for something like the matrix which is cleary depicting truly impossible things, but not for a car movie with chase scenes.
I understand where you're coming from when you say you lost faith. Been there, done that. I still loved research, so I finished my Ph.D. in Physics in 1999 and set out on the yellow brick postdoc road. There were a hell of a lot of days when I had trouble convincing myself to get out of bed in the morning, but I'm glad that I stuck with it.
Your examples of people who didn't make it to the faculty promised land after they gave their hearts and souls for science didn't bring a lump to my throat, though. I'll ignore the tale about the dude with the video tapes, that involved a special kind of stupid. Your other stories show that tenure isn't automatic, which is a good thing.
A department in a university is a ferocious pressure cooker, as I'm sure you understand. I've heard tales of the faculty meetings at the place I got my Ph.D., which will remain nameless for good reasons. They were nothing short of vicious, with tenured and untenured faculty members engaged in shouting matches. Politics plays a HUGE role in any department and things can get really ugly. It isn't that much different than working for a company where you compete for resources and glory.
There were obviously good reasons the people your examples didn't get tenure, probably including a decision by the department as a whole to move in another research direction. Remember, departments are forced to compete for resources doled out by the administration. If your research topic or departmental focus drops too far out of vogue while you're bucking for tenure, it is unlikely that the department will recommend you for a position that could be filled by somebody working in a much hotter field that will bring in more money for a longer period of time.
As for your example of somebody not being a team player, nobody wants to work with a jackass. If somebody just doesn't get along with established department members, then they aren't likely to get tenure, either. Sounds reasonable to me. Like I said, there is plenty of tension in a department. Anything that can be done to lessen it, like not giving tenure to a coworker who is unbearable, will be done. His classroom students would undoubtedly suffer, too. Universities are at least giving lip service to things like this, even if grant money is still the prime mover.
Your loss of faith because of the bleak job outlook is one thing and I completely understand it. I don't get why these other things would get to you, though. I get the impression that your expectations were a little unrealistic.
I'm amazed that nobody has make a Jurrassic Park snide remark regarding the researchers making the bacteria unable to produce the amino acid leucine.
The work talked about is an accomplishment, but I think that one very important point has been neglected. Yes, DNA codes for 20 amino acids, but post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, increases that number by a bit (sorry, don't know the exact number), so there are more than 20 functional chemical groups found on proteins in nature. Another thing to keep in mind is that there are a couple less common residues beyond the normal 20. The fungus trichoderma viride produces a peptide called alamethicin which is filthy with (alpha)-aminoisobutyric acid (probably misspelled, but abbreviated Aib). The peptide gramicidin is loaded with amino acids that have the opposite structural handedness of normal amino acids.
What killed me about the "MegaSquid," or whatever the big devil was called at the furthest point in the future, was the fact that it didn't have a skeleton. The whole idea of tightly bundled muscles being able to support 16 TONS of critter struck me as being a great steaming pile of bull stuff. The thing's skin would have to be incredibly thick to keep the legs from exploding from the pressure.
Where did this come from? Mini-nukes? Mini-nukes don't seem to be the issue. My impression attitude of the lab to the bunker-buster program was that it was quite positive because it was such a large project that fits into the mission of the lab. The lab wanted the project.
The article in the NY Times indicates that it was the response of the laboratory leadership to the investigations into the problems with the property, credit card and purchase order accounting that caused Brown and the deputy director to resign. The article read in such a way as to indicate that there was a pretty feeble attempt at a coverup, which was exposed.
There are significant problems with property accounting at Los Alamos. During my time at Los Alamos as a postdoctoral research associate, we had 1 person responsible for accounting for the property in our division. He couldn't keep up with everything going on and there was a lot of hostility to him doing his job. I suspect other divisions were similar.
The credit card system gets so much abuse because it is used so damn much. You can't get anything in a reasonable amount of time by going through the official channels of purchase orders through the appropriate group. If you need something in a timely manner, you find a secretary with a credit card. I suspect that a lot of the problems stem from the fact that they are buying so much stuff that they lose track of what's going on. Slipping in a bogus purchase gets easy when there's so much activity. If you can get away with it once, go back for seconds.
Don't even get me started on the theft of equipment. Our group lost tools by the ton as well as larger ticket items, like air compressors. The air compressor was even chained down. This kind of theft goes on so often it is sickening.
It is unlikely that the resignations are going to alter things significantly, but the odds of improving the situation are better than if things had been left as they were. Personally, I'm hopeful that the lab can straighten some of this out.
Your comment seems to imply that you've submitted bullshit to a refereed journal. Bad Scientist! BAD!
Yes, there are journals that are considered better than others. This is not necessarily a good thing, as people can adopt a cliquish attitude. Personally, I'm not familiar with JAP, being a biophysicist who publishes in Biophys. J. and Biochemistry almost exclusively. In my field, we tend to look at a journal like Biopolymers in the same way you regard JAP. Each article needs to be judged on its own merit, though.
JAP is published by the American Institue of Physics, which counts in its favor. It isn't one of the umpteen piss-poor journals started by for-profit companies like Elsevier. This is not a dig against all Elsevier journals, just some of them.
Look, I lived there until a couple of months ago and I would NEVER say something like this. I was working as a postdoc at the lab. The entire town site is probably contaminated, not just the lab areas. They monitor anything that is directly related to the lab. The dump accepts some material from the lab, so they monitor it, too. I don't think that the rest of the town is monitored. Do you remember the Acid Canyon cleanup? They found PLUTONIUM there in measurable quantities. They may or may not be totally done with the cleanup, but it took quite a bit of time. Acid canyon is in the middle of the town site, being just north of Canyon Road. It was a nice place to hike that was pretty convenient if you lived in the Los Cerros apartments. Anywhoo, I was out hiking not long after I moved to town in 1999 when I noticed these funny little flags spaced every couple yards along the canyon bottom, where what little rain water that falls there would flow. Below each flag was a series of notches taken out of the earth at different heights above the lowest point. It didn't take a Ph.D. to figure out that those were systematic soil samples looking for runoff contamination of some kind or another. The only way for stuff to get into the soil in that part of the canyon is for it to wash down from the surrounding neighborhoods. Don't kid yourself about Los Alamos.