My recent ejection out of the mainstream of LLNL projects has underscored the limits of personal professionalism. Last fall, with the management transition from the University of California (UC) to the new LLC, I had accepted the job with the new management, retired from UC two days after the transition, and then cut back to [...]
A week after becoming “roadkill” in LLNL’s involuntary separation process, life goes on. During the past week, I’ve filed a fictitious business name under which to do technical consulting, and rounded up the required two sponsors and sent in my membership application to the National Association of Science Writers (NASW). The latter is a delayed [...]
Back in April, while still at LLNL, I was working on a proposed project to improve methods and observations for fossil fuel emissions verification (FFEV). AB32, California’s landmark climate change legislation, requires fossil fuel emissions verification, as well as including mandatory source reporting. Part of FFEV is modeling where emissions are transported by winds. [...]
The Massage Therapy Foundation (MTF) is launching a new peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal — the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork: Research, Education, & Practice. The first edition is scheduled for August. As co-chair of the MTF’s Best Practices Committee, I submitted a 33 page paper to the editor today covering the committee’s work [...]
My last post quoted from Siegfried Hecker’s testimony on 30 April 2008 before the Water and Energy subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Hecker’s statement on risk aversion reminded me of a Science editorial by Harold T. Shapiro, “The Willingness to Risk Failure”. Shapiro opened the editorial, drawn from a prior commencement address, with:
Let me [...]
For thirty-six years, I was a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), most of the time spent doing some variation of atmospheric science and simulation with an extended foray into nonlinear solvers. But no more. As of last Friday, I became part of the “road-kill” in a process of lab downsizing. Following a [...]
In his Times Eye on Science Blog of 11 July, Michael Lemonick addresses the issues of Saving American Science, the theme of a recent meeting by the Aspen Science Center. The theme of lagging U.S. innovation in science and technology has been rising as a concern for several years now. Congressman Frank Wolf provides some [...]
One of the interesting things mentioned at this year’s Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop was the use of writing a book review as a venue for one’s own essay. John Horgan, who was the leader of my small group at the workshop, did this with his review of Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science.
The [...]
I’ve been reading the comments Elise Hancock makes on scientific opinion and consensus (pages 14-18) in her book on Science Writing, Ideas into Words. Hancock characterizes, correctly I believe, that scientific consensus is not like the precedence of law. In law, there are conflicting opinions and the precedence of former court cases, but there is [...]
