Jobs, jobs, jobs

I have not mentioned this in a while because I am busy on other things, but I am still getting hundreds of requests a week for people with the skills of LANL or LLNL folks.

Calcified world views

I am continually amazed at the number of people who will not do what is in their own interest because doing this thing violates their own view of how the world should or does work.

It reminds me of the story of the man, with flood waters rising all around him, refused all aid until he drowned.

A more local one would be a person in a canoe moving towards a waterfall refused to use a paddle, because in his view of the world, paddles were not allowed. So, he went over the falls and died.

Cheerier notes later.

Light bulbs

How many narcissists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Just one.

The narcissist waits for the world to revolve around them.

Narcissists

There are a number of narcissists working at LANL (and other places).

I now understand them better than I did a week ago (I had a strong reason for learning more.)

One interesting part of this study is my starting to understand that narcissists can consider themselves to be honest and ethical. To themselves they are. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the narcissist's version of 'honest and ethical' is based on a set of rules that are not the rules the rest of us use.

So, dealing with narcissists is tricky, whether at LANL or elsewhere.

Ineffective politics

I just read a comment on the LLNL blog. The anonymous poster was writing a note to Congressman Tauscher. He or she told the Congressman that the Congressman was wrong in their handling of the LLNL contract and that the writer would vote for the Congressman's opponent in the next election.

Writing such a note is a good start but ineffective. If the Congressman won her seat with a 100,000 vote plurality, one vote does not make a difference. The change of thousands of votes would make a difference. So, to me, the writer would want to behave in a way that would change thousands of votes.

Unfortunately, I have not seen employess at LLNL or LANL be willing to work together for the common good or to prevent the common bad.