Black Markets and Agent-Based Modeling

The other day I was browsing a post by Chet Richards (Certain to Win) at Defense and the National Interest on 4GW comes to a town near you, 4GW being an acronym for fourth generation warfare. In particular, what caught my eye was a statement Richards makes about disconnection from (or marginalization by) the nominal [...]

Thinking from a Flexible Perspective

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I’ve found it!), but ‘That’s funny…’ — Isaac Asimov.
This piece got its immediate stimulus when I read a recent Opposed Systems Design (OSD) post on “Watts, intuition, ‘ahas’ and go”. What caught my eye and mind was the [...]

Roadkill and Resurrection — Nearing Two Months

This is one of those bits and pieces posts. Being almost two months out from being sacked in the LLNL layoffs has added both to my learning curve and to my lists of tasks done. Last Sunday marked the fourth of four weekly required newspaper publications of my filed fictitious business name “Ramblemuse Associates”. What [...]

Having a Science Career Business Plan

In current times, forwarding a science career is a much about business as it is about knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). This statement is not about the business of the institution or company you work for at any given time, but about treating your career as an individual, entrepreneurial business. You need both a business [...]

Having the Bibliography at a Locally Stable Point

I’ve now brought my more general bibliography to at least a temporary stable point. In essence, that means that I’ve included enough content to hopefully make it useful, without so much that it becomes cumbersome. I’ll let go of it for awhile and move my focus on to other endeavors.
Along the way of working out [...]

An Addendum on Environment

Chet Richards, a protégé of the late military strategist John Boyd, recently wrote the book Certain to Win applying Boyd’s concepts to business competition. It’s a book well worth the reading. In a blog post titled “Can Boyd be implemented?“, Richards makes some profound comments on environment; comments that any institution dedicated to accomplishment, and [...]

Science Policy, Culture Change, and Working Environment

In a column in the June 7th edition of the newly revamped Science News, Harvard University Provost Steven Hyman points out the disparities in attitudes between trends in research funding in the U.S. versus those in Singapore and China.
A major difference between the United States and Singapore and China is the rapid growth rates in [...]

Roadkill and Resurrection — Eating the Seed Corn; Razing the Legumes

At just over two weeks since my lay-off from LLNL, the lab is already starting to seem a memory seen through the aerosol-induced haze of distance. By focusing and working intensely on other endeavors, such as networking () and the general bibliography, I’ve deliberately accelerated my own psychological perception of the passing of time. Simply [...]

A Start on a More General Bibliography

Last post I mentioned starting work on a bibliography more general than my bibliography for massage practitioners. I’ve now got a gateway page and a limited number of content entries for the general bibliography up and running. The listings in so far are mostly on freelancing and writing but that will expand with a little [...]

More Entrepreneurial Transition Resources

One of the books I’d gotten when I’d started thinking seriously of freelance writing a couple of years ago was Media Bistro’s first book — “Get a Freelance Life” by Margit Feury Ragland. I didn’t note it when I mentioned Media Bistro a few days ago, but the website includes sections for jobs and profiles, [...]