I propose to found a Museum of Fiascos. Informational and instructional exhibits would describe and demonstrate notable fiascos, failures, blunders, botches, collapses, and cock-ups through time. My university’s IT department can sponsor a wing. X could be Exhibit A.
If you’re worried about complex computing systems developing artificial intelligence and wiping out humanity, you might stop navel gazing about that and worry about complex computing systems wiping out humanity by critical failures due to an expired SSL certificate.
The Game of Life isn’t what it used to be. Today’s children are expected to have working knowledge of indirect costs, ERE, overhead, & in-kind contribs, plus Excel spreadsheets and responsibility-centered management. With IDC+benefits, a scientist costs $200K and sees half that.
Everybody has limited time and has to choose what to work on, so it would say something to choose to work on this.
This is funny, because I visualize most things - not literal faces of characters, but certainly scenes, or physics problems - but I feel like drawing things / visual expression comes more easily to you than to me.
If your response to a “being a junior faculty/staff is hard, all the responsibilities” thread is to say that it’s not so hard at your institute, maybe it’s not hard there. Or maybe it’s that the junior faculty and staff are afraid to speak honestly to you.
For ex, there’s always a temptation to trigger a ToO toward the end of the semester if you haven’t used it yet. That’s an example of how any resource allocation (TAC, market, auction) has artificialities that people are tempted to game.
The order in which ToOs are allowed to interrupt scheduled observing is contentious at every observatory. With a queue, it is eased b/c the ToO isn’t taking away a specific person’s time, but you’re still reliant on the good faith of the ToO to only trigger on the best targets.
A time allocation system based on competitive bidding is likely to make the internal anxieties worse. We already have competitive allocation in the form of TACs and buying telescope time, but at least with a TAC a project (such as a ToO) must gain a consensus to use the resource.
Taking a step back, time domain astronomy is highly competitive, sometimes unnecessarily. For ex, I care that someone gets on the telescope fast enough to take a spectrum of an interesting transient on night 1, but I don’t really care about the order papers or ATels appear. 1/
Coordination for followup observations is essential - I already see duplication within just one observatory - but would like to see a structure that isn’t a marketplace or auction metaphor. Can almost guarantee that will cause bad feelings among the users, even if not abused.
That guy that always emails you about how you should have cited his paper would be the most prolific commenter.
I am not sure how this would avoid the fate of all other internet comment sections.
New plan to get astronomy-famous: enroute to next conference, get loaded on double scotches in the airport bar and tweet ignorant remarks about cosmic inflation, “This is why Americans think the matter-energy balance is terrible,” “Hubble tension is caused by coastal elites,” etc
I’m not strongly pro or anti civilian nuclear energy, but think Germany went off nuclear for reasons that have nothing to do with proliferation, but assuaging local environmental fears at the expense of exacerbating global environmental costs.
I agree France is the biggest and for Gaullist reasons (why do France or the UK even have nuclear weapons? To preserve the idea of their pre 1939 status as great power). Germany has been drawing nuclear down, only OK if they can spend enough to replace it with not-fossil fuels.
This is sort of an odd critique since it’s a bit of “large countries are large” and not reflected in the chart of EU countries’ energy source (eg Spain, Germany, etc). Countries are also motivated to develop nuclear energy when they lack local fossil fuel resources.
Social media is no joke, it can kill. Think carefully about what you say lest you murder some poor teen’s parents.
