Riff 2b

This one appears to be offtopic, but I do not think that it is.

I have been trying to understand the support of abused folk for their abusers. I have especially been trying to understand how this support manifests itself at the synapse level.

I found this article on Stockholm Syndrome.

Many of the conditions that induce Stockholm Syndrome appear to be conditions that have existed in the workforce of the Lab for years.

Riff 2a

The real version of answers to Riff 2 is long. Here is a first piece. I may do this RIF one question at a time. Be patient. Please comment.

Does the U.S. need national labs of any kind somewhere in the U.S.?

Yes, there are certain tasks in research and engineering that are needed for the country, that are not covered through normal agency activities, and that are not suitable for either academia or industry.

Yes, national labs are part of the political patronage system in which each congressional and Senatorial district has to get back something specific from the Federal government.

Riff 2

There is another point of view of the story below. In this point of view, the question is 'What should be done with National Labs and why is this action in the best interest of the country?'

That point of view is for another time.

A post Christmas riff

Introverts, Extroverts, Timing, Nocosomial Infections, National Security, Survivor-China, and the Amish

Introverts are not the same as extroverts. In social situations, introverts lose energy while extroverts gain energy. So, introverts avoid many of the conventional interactions that the 80% of the country that is extroverts enjoy. Introverts appear, to extroverts, to be aloof, haughty, and arrogant. From the introverts' point of view, they are doing the same thing that extroverts are doing--avoiding situations that drain energy. Extroverts, for the most part, do not do extensive analysis of a situation--extensive analysis is too energy draining.

Politicians are extroverts. They have to be. They live in a world of social interactions and are constantly in group settings. An introvert would not remain in such a life for more than a day.

Scientists are introverts. They have to be. They live in a world of few social interactions and deep thought. The deep thought is required if the introverts are able to solve the problems that they have been assigned.

Introverts and extroverts are needed for the health and security of the US. Extroverts get out and talk to people, in the US and abroad. They find the direction that the country should go. Introverts solve the hard problems that must be solved if the country is going to go in this direction.

Introverts and extroverts like to think that the other is not needed for the safe future of the country.

One claim at the moment is that nuclear weapons should never have been invented by introverts and used against the Japanese. If they were not invented or used, two scenarios seem likely. First, the US could have lost the second world war to the Japanese in which case, similar to Koreans, former US citizens would have become slaves and would be greeting each other with "Ohio gaziamas." Second, the US could have won the war but lost an extra 5,000,000 citizens in the process. In this scenario, lasers, cell phones, molecular biology, etc. would not have been developed by introverted Americans but by others and America might not be a superpower.

So introverts and extroverts are needed for a safe future for America. A remaining question is what roles each needs to play in getting to this safe future.

Deciding these roles gets us to nocosomial infections, Survivor-China, and the Amish. Nocosomial infections are bacterial infections arising from bacterial strains, for instance drug resistance, that can survive only in hospitals and not in the wild. The use of antibiotics in hospitals has given rise to these drug resistant bacterial strains and maintains them. In the wild, these drug resistant strains rapidly are outcompeted by strains that are not drug resistant and that grow faster. In Survivor-China or any of the Survivor series, at some point in the game, the players turn on the strongest player and evict him or her from the game. This strategy only works if there is a structure outside the game that protects the players. Otherwise eviction of the strongest player would be fatal to the health of the remaining players. The Amish, in the book 'Amish Grace,' show an amazing ability to forgive other members of their community who have done terrible things. In the book, the people forgiven were the family of a murderer. As in Survivor, this ability to forgive assumes an external support structure--laws, police, and courts--that will punish the wrongdoers whom the Amish forgave. So, in each case, a particular societal structure actually relies on the rules and support of a larger societal structure.

Back to introverts and extroverts and national security. If introverts are the people who will create the objects that are needed for the U.S.'s national security and the introverts need many years of training and work in order to create these objects--hence the word 'Timing' in the title--then extroverted closing of national labs is against the self interest of the extroverts. The introverts, arrogant and aloof as they might be perceived to be, protect the extroverts against themselves and against outsiders.

Sprechen sie Deutsche? or Russian or Arabic.

Holidays

For those readers who are off to adventures and family during the next two weeks.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Photo (c) Eric Fairfield 2007

Jobs and RIFs

I am currently helping a number of people across the country find new jobs, especially in light of the RIFs at national labs.

The best way to find out whether I can help you is to contact me directly.

The second best way is to read some of the posts here, some of the comments here, and other posts and comments at ScienceAtLANL where I am putting more details.

Cheers

Curiouser and curioser

In this morning's New Mexican there is an article stating that no further job cuts will be needed at LANL and Sandia in the immediate future. Senator Domenici stated that most of the cuts asked for by the House of Representatives have been restored by means of a little horse trading, no RRW and lots of plutonium pits made. In the Christian Science Monitor, there is an article suggesting that this budget compromise is mostly smoke and mirrors since there is not the money to pay for it.

If you try to track down the details of the compromise and what the compromise might mean for the future of Los Alamos, you find a nice article on Fox News , which leads to the actual 1,400 plus page compromise bill that was passed early this morning (House Rules Committee ). You also find that Republicans claim that they have not seen the bill before and have only 24 hours to digest and comment on the 1,400 pages.

I found no mention of this bill in the Washington Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the LA Times.

You also find that a current member of the House Appropriations Committee (a difficult committee assignment to get) is Tom Udall. This is the committee that writes the checks to pay for things. Next year because he is leaving the House and running for the Senate, he will not be on this committee, and thus have no say in its spending. The loss of Udall's voice on Appropriations is unlikely to be good for New Mexico.

Can anyone make sense of all this complexity for me so that I can make a prediction for myself about what might happen to budgeting at LANL in the next few years? There are so many forces in budget bills that are beyond parochial New Mexican interests and so many deals that do not end up in newspaper articles that is difficult to predict what might happen next. Also, everything appears to happen at the last minute (60% of the House Rules committee meetings are marked Emergency). Does it really happen at the last minute in a state of panic?

Thanks in advance for any insights that someone can provide.

There are now versions of this story at CNN , NPR and the Washington Post. There is also an another article in the New Mexican suggesting that the Lab (probably both Livermore and Los Alamos) need to broaden their missions.

Here are some links to a breaking story from John Fleck about downsizing and redoing the labs, NNSA's complex transformation (you remember, the thing that they are not really doing now and are taking public input on), suggestions for changing LLNL, and suggestions for changing LANL.

Pictures

More than blogging, I have been doing science and taking pictures. Yesterday and today, there was snow and sunsets. Here are two pictures. (c) Eric Fairfield 2007

Weather report

Apparently, the situation at LANL and LLNL will be getting worse, from an employee's point of view, for at least a year.

Dang.

Job hunting skills

Over the weekend, I was asked about giving a seminar on effective job hunting, from resumes to landing the job.

If there are groups of 15 or more, I am willing to give this seminar.

I have given it before and gotten very good reviews.

Business practices by LANS

Now that the details of the RIF are becoming clear, another thing is also becoming clear.

LANS is doing the reduction in force in a much more professional and business savvy way than the blogorrhea of online comments would have us believe.

There is a sign of hope for the area. This means that, although lots of people will no longer work at the Lab, the Lab itself may survive and, possibly, prosper. It will be a very different Lab, sort of like IBM going from calculators to computers or RJReynolds going from being tobacco company to a food company.

Until recently, I thought that the whole area would collapse quickly. Maybe that will not happen.

Unintended consequences 2

Say that 750 people leave the Lab in the next month or so.

Where do these people live?
What happens to the housing market?
How many other people, deciding that they have a poor career path at LANL, leave?
Who would choose to work at LANL if they had another choice?
Why would someone, needing to spend ten years after their Ph.D. to master weapons, choose to work at LANL?
If the people laid off try hard to stay in Northern New Mexico for the rest of their lives and people outside Northern New Mexico do not want to come here to work on LANL projects, where does a viable workforce come from (foreigners would come but this raises another set of problems).

There appear to be a huge set of these unintended consequences.

The future of Los Alamos 3

Tuesday night, I listened to Director Anastasio talk about the RIF and about ongoing business at the Lab.

To me, the take home message was very clear.

LANS will balance each year's income and expenses. Given the current funding and Congress's continuing resolution, the only way to balance income and expenses for the year is to fire people. All other methods, such as laying off contractors, have already been tried and no longer offer a budget savings.

Once the budget is balanced, the budgeting is not finished. There needs to be a surplus in the budget so that unexpected expenses can be covered and so that items in dire need of repair, for instance many of the buildings, can be repaired.

All short term decisions appear to be driven by the need to balance the budget and to accomplish the mission deliverables to NNSA and other sponsors.

test chart on rifs

Here is an image of a chart from Excel. This is a test image.
It shows, second column, $19,000,000 saved on staff salaries.
It shows, columns 1 - $14,000,000, 4-$16,0000,0000, and 6 - $4,000,000, a total of $34,000,000 saved on personnel that seem to be categories of management.
It shows about $100,000, each, saved on laborers and scientific IT folks.

I do not yet know how to make the chart itself readable. Any suggestions?

To get this quality of chart, I had to export it from Excel as an MDI file, convert the MDI file to a TIFF file and then convert the TIFF file to a JPEG. I will try to get better quality. Until I do, there does not seem to be a purpose in posting pie charts.

I am willing to ship the jpeg to people who request it.

On a second chart (not shown), I found that the proposed RIFs are spread fairly evenly across employment categories (8.5% per category) except for General Administration and Laborers for whom the proposed cuts are about 14%.

There are still hundreds of millions of dollars in costs unaccounted for. So, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.