The Fascinet

fascinet @ 2008-05-15T08:58:00

2008-05-15T13:59:37Z

fascinet @ 2008-05-14T09:49:00

2008-05-14T14:49:40Z

Went on an interview on the Great Plains last week. Like I’ve said before: I’ve done the math, and that puts me between the 60th and 70th percentiles of applicants—except that at least one place I applied didn’t have 120 applicants, they had 600, so that I may rate a little higher than I thought.

Many of you haven’t been on an academic interview, and I’m not sure if it is the same from discipline to discipline. I expect it’s similar. So, I’ll talk about this interview. In some ways the previous one was better planned, and I planned to tell you about it then, but I’m so lazy that I can’t even be assed to fuck off.

This time I flew in on the morning of my interview. This meant that I had to be that guy on the airplane wearing a tie. On the way back, it was camo shorts, a funny hat and a bandolier, but since I was going to give my presentation before I got to the hotel, I had to wear my clothes all day. I didn’t get to look my best: starch or no starch, a shirt that’s been sat in for three hours looks like you pulled it out of a pile of dirty laundry. Actually it’s worse if you starch it.

I won’t talk about the pants.

After I arrived, I got to hang out with the department chair for a couple of hours. He took me on a tour of the campus and out for barbeque. I was surprised that out on the plains they had Carolina barbeque a few block from campus. The campus apparently owns an unmarked baroque building near there. It looks rife for conspiracy theories.

Then, I gave my lecture. It was surprisingly well attended for the last day of finals. All academic interviews require a research lecture, about half seem to require a teaching lecture (at the previous interview, I gave an hour long presentation on Newton’s Second, complete with a Torquemadean interrogation of three students). Instead of a straightforward “this is what I did” lecture, I gave a complicated “this is what I’m going to do, and this is why I’m the man to do it” lecture. It could have been better. I’ve never given a lecture that couldn’t have, though.

Then, I went to the hotel for an hour or so (in the middle of a rather dead part of downtown) before dinner.

The most important thing to realize is that an academic interview is all about table manners. You’ll be eating meals with people who get a vote on whether to recommend you to the dean, so chew with your mouth closed and get those elbows off the table.

The next day was the gauntlet. The academic interview includes individual and group meetings with a large chunk of the faculty (if not all of it) and the dean and the VP of research and so on. Each person wants to do something different with you. Some guys want to make jokes, some guys want to hear about (or more about) what you do, some guys want to talk to you about what they do, and some guys want to collaborate, then and there. You do this for about two thirds of your time there—usually a full day. I don’t know about you, but by about 11:30 am I never want to speak again.

Then, they set me free. I was lucky. The provost got stuck in a storm when coming back from a conference, and they said he likes to talk and talk, and when he done with that, talk some more.

I'm not getting into enough flame wars on the usenet

2008-05-12T18:45:28Z

My spelling's slipping again.

8-2

2008-05-02T14:38:20Z

Ouch.

fascinet @ 2008-04-22T09:24:00

2008-04-22T14:28:42Z

M. took me out to see former poet laureate and 2008 Pulitzer winner Robert Haas last night.

You may ask what he poetry sounds like, and it's rather easy to do so. As I told M., "It's poetry written by a hippie English professor." M. asked my why I was so mad, and I said I wasn't, I was bored. If she didn't want an honest appraisal of the poetry, then she shouldn't have asked what I thought.

Jesus Christ, he liked Bob Dylan.

His mendacious verse was bloodless. This is because poetry is an art form, and by "art form" I mean a kind of entertainment. Poetry written today, like all too much fiction written today, is a kind of entertainment produced for an vanishing audience. This isn't because the audience has abandoned the art form, it's because the art form has abandoned the audience. It's produced by English professors for English professors, and it is therefore crap.

How much can a poem say that was written by someone who went to college after high school, went to grad school after college, and taught English after grad school with no break?

Nothing at all.

He has no experience, no life, no vitality, and never did.

His poetry proved it.

The only interesting poems he read were his translations of Czesław Miłosz.

He had a life, he had character, and that he shows you why you do your best to avoid having them yourself.

fascinet @ 2008-04-18T09:35:00

2008-04-18T14:35:53Z

I was agreeing with someone recently about the problem of counting on the adversarial system to arrive at truth, probably in response to a rash of recent articles discussing how essays and argument are the sincerest form of democracy. I don’t necessarily disagree. All this goes along well with the rather crazy notion of the democratization of knowledge through triangulation of viewpoints on the interweb. I’d like to talk about this a bit below, but let’s just start with a quotation.

Here’s how Wm. C. Hannas depicts the postwar writing reform situation in Japan in Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma:

It was not until the Second World War that the Japanese once again began to take seriously the idea of reforming their writing system. The explanation usually given by the Japanese is that reform was forced on Japan by occupation authorities as part of the allied plan to democratize society. There is some truth in this, although it seems more likely that those most responsible for the writing reforms that began in 1946 were the Japanese themselves. American impact in this area, it seems, has been exaggerated by Japanese who were both for and against reform, the former as a shield for their own agenda and the later as a bogeyman to discredit reform.

The American involvement is mainly in choosing anti-Nationalists to run the education department, with a little extra backstory.

Now, Hannas is himself making an argument, taking a side, and so maybe his telling is biased toward what he wants to convince us of (that writing reform in East Asia is both desirable and inevitable). The only person I trust less than a source with a known bias is one that pretends to have none. However, this does sound a lot like how truth gets bend in politics: something that’s convenient for both sides becomes accepted, something that’s inconvenient to both sides is ignored. What’s really happening is lost to politics, to democracy.

So, we do find that argument serves democratic politics, but we also find that it perverts, distorts and obscures facts that benefit no one. This not only means that truth is not served by argumentation, the essay, and democracy, it also means that argumentation makes democracy less efficient since decisions—in the case above, writing reform—are made on the wrong basis, with flawed rationales.

And so, democracy fails us.

Again.

Multi-Epistemological Perspectives

2008-04-15T13:41:50Z

Another wonderful conference popped into my inbox this morning: Academic Globalization. We already pay kids a grand to teach a three credit hour course (less than half of what each of their students pay to sit in it), we already import vast numbers of Indians and Chinese to teach the courses.

Of course, unversities have a lot to learn from businesses. The Indians used in call centers have been coached in nice, intelligible Mid-Western accents, and they're never brought to the US and paid slightly less than a Mexican doing lawcare. University lecturers need to know even less than the product support kids, so the bright provost could even save money there.

That's the kind of university I want to run.

Big knowledge is big money.

2nd Symposium on Academic Globalization: AG 2008

Purpose

The 2nd Symposium on Academic Globalization: AG 2008, part of the Academic Globalization Project, is being organized in the context of WMSCI 2008, and its collocated conferences.

The purpose of AG 2008 is to bring together scholars, educators and practitioners with the objective of exploring, reflecting and sharing ideas with regards to the impact that the Globalization Phenomena is having or might have on universities (research, teaching and continuing education), and vice versa: the impact that academia is generating, or could generate on the phenomenon of globalization. Questions such as the following are examples of those that could be addressed at the Symposium in order to generate possible answers and/or reflections, as well as possible research:

Will Academic Globalization emerge as part of the Globalization Phenomenon?
Will Academic Globalization serve as a catalyst for General Globalization Phenomena? Will it be the inverse way? Will it be both ways catalyzing each other in a positive feedback loop?
Are Academic Internationalization and/or Transnational Education parts of the forces driving and accelerating Academic Globalization? Are they in opposite and dialectical relationships with each other?
How strongly related are Academic Globalization and the Knowledge Society?
What kind relationships exist among Academic Globalization, Information and Communications Technology and the Knowledge Economy?
How is the Globalization Phenomenon transforming academic objectives and activities?
Questions like these require multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary and multi-epistemological perspectives, so they can serve as input for integrative research, studies and approaches for a better understanding of what is or what might be the opportunities and threats/uncertainties, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of present trends in Academic Globalization and how this trend might be re-oriented for better and more desirable results.

Deadlines

Papers/Abstracts submissions and invited sessions or panels proposals: April 24th, 2008.
Acceptance notification: A maximum of 10 days after submission's date.
Camera-ready for the pre-conference proceedings: May 22nd, 2008
Camera-ready for the Post-Conference volume of the Proceedings: July 2nd.
ALL SUBMITTED ABSTRACT/PAPERS WILL BE POSTED AS RECEIVED in a web site, with limited access, without any previous reviewing or screening, so they can have a participative peer reviewing (PPR) process, from scholars sending similar papers, beside the traditional peer reviewing. PPR will be done by other contributors to the conference, and, after removing those abstracts/papers which content has nothing to do with the topics of the conference (including possible electronic vandalism that might happen with this kind of solutions); the remaining submitted papers will be considered for their presentation at the conference.

Submissions of abstracts/papers, and invited sessions or panels proposals:

Submissions of abstract/papers can be done via WMSCI 2008 web site in the area of Academic Globalization, or using the email address AG2008@sciiis.org.
Proposals of invited Sessions or panels can also be made via WMSCI 2008 web site, clicking on the menu option "Invited Sessions"
Individuals may propose themselves as panelists sending, via email (AG2008@sciiis.org), a short abstract (100 - 200 words) of their presentations and a short biography. They should be prepared to take and answer questions.
Submissions that will be accepted are among the following:
Research papers
Reflection papers
Case Studies
Position papers (especially in the case of panelists)
Action-research projects or programs
Action-reflection projects or programs
Topics

Non-exclusive topics suggested are the followings:
- Impact of the Globalization Phenomena on Higher Education.
- Impact of Higher Education on the Globalization Phenomena.
- Relationships of Academic Globalization and Internationalization of Higher Education.
- Globalization, Regionalization and Higher Education.
- Globalization and Scientific Research.
- Relationships between Academic Globalization and Knowledge Society/Economy.
- International Academic Networks and Alliances.
- Academic Cooperation.
- Academic Associations.
- Academic Consortia.
- Institutional Networks.
- Success and failure factor in Higher Education Internationalization.
- Comparative Higher Education Research
- Transnational Education.
- Quality and the Internationalization of Higher Education.
- Research and Global Networks.
- Research and Global Knowledge Infrastructures.
- Strategies and Organizational Models.
- Program and Organizing committees
WMSCI 2008's Program and organizing Committees, as well as its additional reviewers will support the organizational process of "Academic Globalization 2008".

fascinet @ 2008-04-09T08:49:00

2008-04-09T14:43:17Z

All sorts of weird immigration news.

The most importantis that the H1-b program filled up in "a day." The first week was to be treated as if it were a single day. The USCIS (whatever happened to the INS? Someone got paid a lot of money to change those initials) doesn't know how many more applications it has, but its more than the 65,000 normal H1-b applications and the 20,000 hypocritical ones for people holding advanced degrees from American universities. First the hypocritical H1-bs will be selected by lottery, then the remainder will be put in a lotter with the normal H1-bs. The advanced degrees don't usually fill up so fast, and this upset Y. very much, although they've decided to extend the OPT from the J1, giving her extra time, she probably qualifies for a "rock star VISA," and we have other options.

I was hoping that this would make things easier for me by limiting the number of kids allowed in country to become professors. But, no, they can get a J1 for five years, and after that they're all good green card candidates.

There's more, with NPR and the WSJ having stories on the other side of the immigration spectrum that don't conflict, but certainly show that reporters like to write about data with some hamhanded editorializing thrown in.

fascinet @ 2008-04-04T11:25:00

2008-04-04T16:25:41Z

I am now getting rejection letters from places I don't recall applying to.

fascinet @ 2008-03-31T14:09:00

2008-03-31T19:17:46Z

For shits and giggles: these are the chances that you'll get n interviews (exactly) or you'll get up to n offers, but get at least one, using relevant numbers for a job search in physics, assuming everyone is equal.

There's a 36% chance you'll get no interviews and a 77% chance that you'll get no offers.

You'll average 2 interviews and no offers.

fascinet @ 2008-03-31T10:58:00

2008-03-31T16:12:39Z

My plan has always been (before I started applying for tenure track positions, before I learned I'd jobless at the end of June), if I had not secured a position by the end of the workshop, I'd start looking at industry. The main reason was because of the different timeframes involved: colleges are really slow, businesses are much faster.

I'd broken the rule for a national lab job, because these things are rare and who knows what the hell their monetary situation will be like next week.

So, I started by sending out my resume to the companies I'd targeted eleven years ago when I went to grad school. I've also looked at some places in town, because I'd like to avoid moving if at all possible. That should be another advantage to industry, on top of a reasonable salary instead of a five-figure pittance.

One place I've applied talks about opportunities in its "Science and Technological Development" center. The webpage title is as interesting as it sounds: "STD Opportunities!"

With an advertisements like that, I don't see who wouldn't apply.

fascinet @ 2008-03-27T12:58:00

2008-03-27T18:40:14Z

Some things freak me out.

Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French wrote a song "I Want Barack"--and I hope he was paid for it--that just scares me. After following the link on alt.punk saying, "This may be as punk as it gets! :-)" I orginally thought it was just a banal campaign song.

I was disappointed, because this guy is a decades-long friend of the guy who's song led me to write, "['Funny Uncle Sam'] is what you're looking for in a political song. It's
clever and catchy, and the analogy is an offensive juxtaposition. Plus, it will really annoy most people who agree with its sentiments." That is, he knew how punk it could get.

Saying how great Obama is, how the Republicans just want "more of the same," or whatnot is tired. The line "We need a leader that will save our souls," is not.

The Second Coming isn't politics, it's religion.

It's religion at its scariest.

fascinet @ 2008-03-20T14:18:00

2008-03-20T19:56:09Z

It's amazing how well books from the sixties like Counter Insurgency: Theory and Practice predict things going on, today. Take this article from today's WSJ:

"Moqtada al-Sadr came very close to establishing a state within a state inside Iraq, much like Hezbollah had done in Lebanon."

"In 2005 and 2006 Sadr expanded his territorial reach, using his militia to expel Sunnis from their Baghdad neighborhoods and massively infiltrating the Iraqi police forces."

"In areas under his control, Sadr set up extrajudicial Sharia courts to administer justice against Iraqi Shiite 'heretics.'"

"The Mahdi Army militia also established its own security checkpoints in Baghdad and across the south..."

"This militia took over petrol stations, skimming funds to finance its own operations."

[Next day, observations:]

Ooops! I thought this died, not posted.

Anyway, the point here is, what did al-Sadr do wrong? (Other than, possibly, being only a figurehead; the question passes down to the real leaders if that's true.)

Firstly, he tried what the above book calls the "short-cut revolution." Ignore the party organization, ignore most of the rhetoric. Just start with terrorizing the population. Stage one, random violence. Stage two, arbitrary targeted violence, such as violence against women drivers.

Although it's faster, it's riskier.

But the breaking point was that he tried to establish a state-like entity before he had a real security apparatus. This restricts the asymmetry in an insurgency severely, requiring the insurgent to make good on his promises, and propaganda becomes ineffective.

It's also possible that his recruiting propaganda was based on American newspaper reports that said that the U.S. public wanted to withdraw from Iraq immediately. This would lead someone reasonable to assume that the U.S. wouldn't commit more forces to the country, both requiring local militias to stabilize and protect communities and protecting them from U.S. reprisal.

Then, Bush being unreasonable, more troops were sent and asked to take a more active role, undermining recruiting.

Also, if the insurgents demands were security and the counterinsurgency seems willing to give it, that will undermine the propaganda of the former. This is too specific a propaganda platform for an guerrilla.

fascinet @ 2008-03-19T14:02:00

2008-03-19T19:09:19Z

More proof that a world run by highly motivated, educated and intelligent people would be better designed, just like a college campus:

Today's workshop is in a detached lecture hall at a major research university (letting students into the main building would be unhygienic). It has two entrances, let's call them port and starboard, with aisles on either side, connecting at the bottom and the top. The seating is theater-style, with several terraces, each with a long bench and a individual seats. The aisles are therefore steps.

It has handicapped seating for two at door level (about half way up) and a handicapped bathroom.

The thing is, the handicapped seating is port-side and the handicapped bathroom is starboard side. In the cold, rain, or (here) the extreme, murderous heat. So, if you're in a wheelchair or walk with braces, you have to get up and hobble around the entire building to even enter the bathroom, as the bathrooms on the other side have a smaller than standard sized entrance.

[Edit: I just went to the bathroom and noticed that the non-handicapped accessible latrine is labeled handicapped and the handicapped one is not. And, if there's a sign that says so, it must be correct. Bureaucracy saves the day!]

A Little Depressed

2008-03-14T18:32:54Z

It's amazing. As I was walking around last night, I was in high spirits.

How could you not be when you've had the idea to write Murder as a Religious Experience* and were wandering aimlessly thinking up chapter titles like "War as Absolution: The Crusades" and "Faerie and the Warpath: Comparative Barbarisms," and other things that could get you into trouble?

Then, asleep, I had a dream that a place that interviewed me had texted me an offer. Horrible nightmare, really. But, when I got to work late at 8:15, the special e-mail box that I use only for jobs and grants said, "(1 unread)."

There might, I thought, be something to this precognition shit after all.

No such luck.

Some vacuum parts manufacturer had somehow gotten ahold of it and decided it would be great to tell me how wonderful his products were.

Then, I got straight to work at filling out these receipts for people.

* Yet another book I'll never really write, rather like Dating for Scientists and Engineers: A Modern Approach.

fascinet @ 2008-02-29T08:19:00

2008-02-29T14:21:41Z

I thought I was unwarrantedly bitter about the drawn-out, unresponsive selection process at universities.

But it seems a lot of people still have issues from high school.

Observations on Womanizing

2008-02-21T17:54:17Z

I've scribbled up a couple of pages of "A Mathematical Analysis of My Sister's Dating Philosophy," but like the last time I worked on it, the hard part isn't writing it, the hard part is typing it up.

However, there is one result that won't appear in the finished version. It's based on stories that are not related to my sister's, but rather on conversations with friends. "Why did my husband (boyfriend) sleep with her? She's nowhere near as good looking as me!" Women have a very good idea of their relative attractiveness (strangely, a much better idea of women's relative attractiveness than men have), and so the observation is usually right.

The reason isn't some other factor like differences in the women's personalities or the need of some really dirty sex (in fact, the women cheated on [being the women I know] are usually much more adventurous than their husbands or the second woman).

The reason is simply the relative worth of the second woman on the meat market is low enough that the men don't feel the need to actually keep this second woman and that the second woman doesn't feel she has better options. In fact, she'll probably persist until he agrees to sleep with them.

It's not that he likes it, it's just that it's not worth the trouble to not fuck them.

Nothing will stop your husband from fucking ugly hags.

Just accept it. It's part of life.

fascinet @ 2008-02-07T08:40:00

2008-02-07T14:40:23Z

Another cherished illusion crushed!

2008-01-24T15:03:37Z

I have always believed, since I made it up last night, that the concept of torque was first discovered by Tomás de Torquemada, and thus named after him. It turns out this is not the case, and the nomenclature is simply serendipitous. My favored account is simply ahistorical.

This means that I cannot introduce the concept in first year physics classes talking about thumbscrews.

Or does it?

I remember a clever classmate who read about Lamarckian Evolution in his high school biology textbook, where it was introduced to be refuted (it was, obviously, also my high school biology textbook). He insisted that the process of handing down acquired traits was part of evolution; that is, a giraffe who stretches his neck out on a rock so that he can reach just a little bit higher will have children whose necks are just a little bit longer than their peers, even without stretching them on rocks.

He remembered reading it in his high school biology textbook, and so it must be true. Right?

So, I could introduce torque in my physics course with a three sequence cartoon of everybody's favorite Grand Inquisitor routinely torturing someone on the rack, and as he was cranking it up, he could get the idea, complete with thought balloon and an excited expression: "Hey! Hef! Hef! r-cross-F! I can torture freshmen until Kingdom Come!" Then, even though the last panel is crossed out with a big red X, some percentage of bright people will believe that rotational dynamics is based upon the genocidal excesses of the late and post-Reconquista eras of the Iberian Peninsula.

It is also ahistorical because the Spanish Inquisition neither used thumbscrews or the rack: these tortures were considered far too progressive by the Papacy.

Hanging people upside down and flushing gallons of water up their noses had saved souls for a thousand years, and would save souls for another thousand to come.

fascinet @ 2008-01-21T21:00:00

2008-01-22T03:17:36Z

I've just been asked to organize an invited session for a weird cybernetics-related conference with heavy topics like "peer reviewing."

The whole academic world seems to be imploding.

There are huge industries in the history of the university and even book-long internal debates about the best way to educate the kids. It won't be long before people start bitching about their favored method of peer reviewing.

Welcome back to the dark ages.

Additional Topics, suggested by the members of Program Committee for KGCM 2008
Analytical Communication vs. Knowledge Communication
Environmental Knowledge
Expertise Location; Expertise Capture
Faith and Knowledge: Relationships
How AI Techniques have been used in Knowledge Management
KGCM and Terminology of Studies/Management
Knowledge and the Societal System s Memory
Knowledge Application and Knowledge Distribution
Knowledge Based Systems and their Applications
Knowledge Communication and Competitive Intelligence
Knowledge Communication and Learning from Primary School to University: Giving Students a Method they will be Able to Apply in Different Areas
Analytical Communication vs. Knowledge Generation
Knowledge Discovery with Database Management Systems
Knowledge Generation: Experimental Settings vs. Formalized Mechanisms
Knowledge Modeling
Knowledge on Industrial Systems and Plant Engineering (Models and Drawings)
Knowledge Reception, Depreciation, Evaluation and Estimation
Knowledge Representation and Evolution
Knowledge Transfer
Knowledge Verification: Formalized Methods of Verification via Communication (by Communities, etc.)
Knowledge Visualization
Knowledge, non-Knowledge and the Future of the Society
Analytical Communication vs. Knowledge Management
Knowledge-Based Control
Methods of Analytical Communication
Methods of Knowledge Generation
Methods of Knowledge Management
Mobile Knowledge Generation
Mobile Knowledge Sharing
Networking & Computing Trends in Knowlege Management Systems
New Tools for Distance Learning (Higher Efficiency for Compression of Text and Graphic Images; Distance Learning for People with Deafness; Adaptive Presentation of Compound Images (Containing Texts, Pictures, etc.))
Open Access and Open Source
Personal Knowledge Management and Knowledge Generation
Convergence of Learning and Knowledge Management, Communities and Knowledge Generation/Communications
Random vs. Symmetric Knowledge
Relationships between Knowledge Engineering and Service Engineering
Relationships between Knowledge Generation and Knowledge Representation
The Knowledge Uncertainty in Decision Process
Data Disseminations and Quality of Service, Knowedge Acquirement and Representation
Data Warehousing and Data Mining
Digital Watermarking/Information Security
e-Learning
Engineering Education

fascinet @ 2008-01-11T12:26:00

2008-01-11T18:46:06Z

Well, I've been asked to take a pay cut because my boss has less money than he thought, and neither he nor I are getting any more.

The American Physical Society is really concerned with the general funding situation, as detailed earlier, and they have a way you can help by filling in an on-line form.

I don't know how much good these things do. If I were a congressman, I'd laugh at the form letters because they're so insincere, but maybe they do something.

That isn't quite true. I was asked if I preferred to take a pay cut and work through June or keep my current salary and work until May (about seven weeks difference). We only have one grant application left that starts funding before August. In my line of work, the lab is more valuable than the vacation time (which I should go ahead and use, I have a hundred billion hours stored up), and although I have a reasonable shot at something else for the summer, I think the guarantee that I'll have on-line journal access, deposition and measurement equipment, and a parking space (that I've already paid for, and they don't refund, even if they take the pass from you) is more important.

I haven't told Y., yet. D. e-mailed me after I visited her in her lab for the last time, today. I'll be driving her around looking for apartments tomorrow, and she starts her new $90k job on Monday. I'll wait until next Friday, at least, to say anything.

I've applied to Twenty-six positions for the fall at 25 schools. If I don't start getting interviews after the workshop I'm hosting in mid-March, I'll have to start lobbying for a job in industry.

I'll give instructions on how to help me with this elsewhere. I won't say how, here, but be assured that you can!

fascinet @ 2008-01-08T18:30:00

2008-01-09T00:31:51Z

It's amazing how many candidates' statements I can neither agree nor disagree with.

fascinet @ 2008-01-04T09:24:00

2008-01-04T15:27:56Z

Dear APS Members:

Although several thousand APS members responded to the last alert on
federal science funding, the communications failed to affect
positively what ultimately became a highly partisan appropriations
process. To attempt to rectify the damage caused by the Fiscal Year
2008 (FY08) Omnibus Appropriations Bill, APS President Arthur
Bienenstock will soon be asking you to e-mail your Members of
Congress urging that they take emergency action early in the next
session. But first, a summary of what is known and documented:

Two weeks ago, almost three months into the new fiscal year, Congress
finally passed an FY08 budget - unfortunately, it is devastating to
significant programs in the physical sciences. It represents a
dramatic turnabout in a time of unprecedented outspoken support for
science across party lines, legislative chambers and branches of
government.

Science funding in FY08 was originally set to increase substantially.
Consistent with the America COMPETES Act, President Bush's American
Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) and the Democratic Innovation Agenda,
the National Science Foundation would have received a 10 percent
increase; the National Institute of Standards and Technology Core
Programs, a 17 percent increase; and the Department of Energy's Office
of Science, an 18 percent increase. The increases represented the
beginning of a 10-year plan to double federal investment in physical
science and engineering research.

Early in the summer, the House passed all 12 appropriations bills that
cover discretionary spending, totaling $955 billion. By early
October, the Senate Appropriations Committee had acted on many of
them, but the Senate leadership did not bring any of them to the floor
for a vote. President Bush had already warned that he would veto
appropriations bills if, in the aggregate, they exceeded his $933
billion ceiling. Two weeks ago, responding to the President's veto
threat, Congress, having already passed the Defense appropriations
bill, rewrote and passed the remaining FY08 budget bills as an omnibus
spending package.

The Omnibus Bill is a disaster for the very sciences that our
political leaders have repeatedly proclaimed essential for our
national security, economic vitality and environmental stewardship.
Several reports have suggested a picture less bleak, but they do not
take into account the effects of either earmarks or inflation. In
fact, numerous programs will have to be trimmed or canceled.

Hundreds of layoffs, furloughs and project shutdowns at Fermilab,
SLAC, LBNL and other national laboratories and research universities
seem unavoidable. U.S. funding for the International Linear Collider
project will be curtailed for the balance of the fiscal year, placing
extraordinary stress on the high-energy physics program. FY08 funding
for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will
be zeroed out, abrogating our agreement with our European and Asian
partners. User facilities will see reductions in operating time and
staff, and university research will contract. The list is long and
the damage significant.

How could this happen, given the strong bipartisan support for science
research and education? There is much speculation that with
negotiations having broken down and the President adamant on the total
spending, Democratic leaders made the following assessment: First,
that there were insufficient votes to override a presidential veto of
their spending plans. Second, since the Senate had failed to act on
the appropriations in a timely fashion, Democrats would be blamed for
any government shutdown that might result from a spending stalemate.
Their strategy was to accede to the President's $933 billion bottom
line, but, to get there, "by whacking GOP priorities" as the
Associated Press reported on December 10. So, with ACI carrying a
presidential label, much of the increases for NSF, DOE Science and
the NIST labs were erased to meet the budget restrictions. Since ITER
was seen as one of the top Administration's priorities, its entire
funding was zeroed with strong language to prevent reprogramming of
funds to save the project. House Appropriations Chairman David Obey
(D-WI) suggested that the $9.7 billion in earmarks be removed to allow
funding for other priorities, but his colleagues refused to go along.

Added to this calculus is a well-known fact: Science has rarely, if
ever, been a factor in determining the outcome of an election. Even
for scientists, funding for research and education most often is not a
major determinant in whom they support -- unlike members of other
interest groups, such as the National Rifle Association or the
American Medical Association, who frequently vote based on their
"special" interests. Given such a history and the hard-ball politics
that played out this month, letters from scientists to their Members
of Congress, unfortunately, did not rule the day.

When Congress returns later this month, Members may be more receptive
to listening to their science constituents. We will be sending you
another alert next week, after we have determined that the landscape
is more favorable. Please respond when we contact you. Your voice
may well make the difference at that time.

Sincerely,

Michael S. Lubell
Director of Public Affairs
The American Physical Society

Happy Fascismus, Everybody!

2007-12-21T18:36:27Z

Enjoy the golden showers!

fascinet @ 2007-12-10T09:25:00

2007-12-10T15:26:13Z

Last night for the first time in a long time I went to Borders [it's almost on my way back home, and I wanted to buy another bottle or two of Dogfish Head's Chateau Jiahu—which Central Market no longer had, and the interweb says is only brewed in June], and I saw, completely randomly, a copy of Daywatch. I hadn't think that it had come out yet. And, I must say, that I am extremely happy that I picked it up. Superlative. Better than Nightwatch.

There really is a kernel of meaning wedged in this special effects-laden vampire action movie. But, it's only a kernel in the casserole of not particularly graphic but highly stylized murder and sex.

Also, the bad girl was really hot.

I enjoyed it immensely, although I cannot say that I was sober the whole time (nor would I advise sober viewing, nor can I guarantee that I was sober as I typed this).