Musing on Leadership, Localized Authority, and Time Constants

In the serendipity of looking through various RSS feeds, I came across Don Vandergriff’s recent post, The Best Leadership Article I have Seen, which reprints and links to William Deresiewicz’s lecture Solitude and Leadership posted on The American Scholar. I agree with Vandergriff that it is a very timely and thought provoking piece of writing. […]

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 Damage Done by He-Said, She-Said Journalism

On the Twitter side, I’ve wandered into the discussion about the inaccuracies and damage to public understanding resulting from ‘he said, she said’ journalism. This is most simply defined as journalism in which both sides of a ‘public debate’ are quoted without regard to their actual expertise and scientific accuracy. Back in 2004, Chris Mooney […]

AGU, OCO, Science Writer’s Dinner & Twittering

I’m off to San Francisco again for more of the AGU conference and tonight’s Science Writer’s dinner. Yesterday I caught the press conference on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), scheduled to fly “not before 30 January”. The OCO session talks and posters are today and tomorrow. The OCO takes us from about 100 flask samples […]

Helping Local and Regional Decision Makers Deal With Climate Change

Today was the first day of this year’s fall American Geophysical Union meeting. It was also the first time I attended an AGU meeting under freelance press/media credentials rather than as a scientist affiliated with an organization. But let’s move on to content. I spent a goodly portion of the day, first at a press […]

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 […]

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 […]