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Private Donor Saves Fermilab
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed May 28, 2008 08:54 PM
from the do-particles-fight-terror dept.
from the do-particles-fight-terror dept.
sciencehabit writes "In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country's only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently."
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Science: US House Approves Over $300 Million For Science Agencies 176 comments
sciencehabit notes that the US House of Representatives has allotted an additional $337.5 million in budget increases divided amongst four science agencies. NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science will each receive an additional $62.5 million, and the National Institutes of Health will receive $150 million. The money will help to offset the decision to reduce budget increases earlier this year. Early plans for the money include the training of new math and science teachers, and another reprieve for FermiLab's financial troubles.
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The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Congress and Senate slashed the budget, not the DOE.
Maybe you can say "well they didn't lobby hard enough to maintain or grow their funding...
but it's pretty obvious that science has not been a USA priority for quite some time now.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with you, but I think the timing of the US's scientific stagnation is also uncanny. It's been several generations since the last influx of extremely bright and educated scientists (and philosophers) from conquered lands. Iraq, I have to say, hasn't netted anything of the sort (with all due respect to Iraqis).
Is there a problem with the handing on of scientific knowledge in the US? Or is this a reflection of American cultural shortcomings? It seems to me that US culture is too shallow to recognize the importance of free & fair education 'for all'. If you don't provide equal opportunity to every child to excel and prove themselves in academia, then the chances of plucking the brightest from the far reaches of the bell curve diminish.
I say this knowing full well I'm going to be modded a troll or flaimbait or something.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. However, I'd let someone else design the user interface for the machine.
They have a vested interest not in good machines, but in more machines.
Engineers usually want to build the perfect machine. Unfortunately, it will then require another engineer to operate it.
If engineers designed machines like lawyers made laws, you'd need to hire an engineer to operate even the most trivial machine (car, elevator, TV). We don't let the engineers get away with that. Why do we let lawyers ?
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, I know they *complain* a lot about their pay, but here is some pay scales here in maine: http://www.teacher-world.com/teacher-salary/maine.html [teacher-world.com]
not huge, but be aware of the median values in the state: http://www.state.me.us/spo/economics/economic/householdincome.htm [state.me.us]
I'll save you the math, statewide the average income is 34.5k/year for an entire family.
So, a teacher with NO experience can walk into a teaching job and start earning almost as much as most households in maine.
and they get 3 months off a year plus vacations.
Really, my heart bleeds.
The teacher's union cares nothing for education. Standing in the way of vouchers proves it. any place in north america that has experimented with parent choice as a motivator for schools and assignment of funding has seen dramatic success, yet, the teacher's union won't hear of it. really, read up. harlem is looking to switch wholesale..
I love teachers and have several as close friends. and the union is a horrible monstrosity that shows that wild un-unionized labor is horribly exploitable, so is a system with a heavily entrenched union, just by different people.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
No sir, it is clearly you who is peddling "a load of twat"--- whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, you illiterate tard.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the real world, you don't pay people for the education they have, you pay them for the education you need. So if someone with a master's degree flips burgers, he's not going to be a freakin' six figure burger-flipper.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Once they get tenure, they are nearly impossible to fire for even the most egregious misconduct. Tenure generally requires 3-5 years of teaching in the same district and little else, it's not like in higher ed where you have to jump through a million hoops to prove yourself worthy.
b) Pay raises are based entirely on seniority, and in most places CANNOT be based on actual achievement, evaluations, good work, etc. The only exception is raises for getting an advanced degree.
Yes, teachers get the short end of the stick in a lot of ways, but the union is not really helping things - it's hell-bent on securing the jobs of the worst teachers out there to the detriment of the average teachers, the decent teachers, the great teachers, and the students. There's no other job where you could do shitty work and not only not get fired for it, but continue to get the same raises as your colleagues who are doing far better work. Even if your boss wants to fire you and doesn't want to give you raises.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't really a tin-foil-hat flavored conspiracy though, since no one actually sat down and though about this, or implemented this. Its more like a form of social evolution, accidental, and based on survival values. Plus, why the hell would I go against my own interests for YOUR benefit? Its just like how it isn't in the criminal justice systems interests to eliminate crime (loss of profit, employees), or the lawyer based legal system to make sensible laws (loss of profit, employees), or the pharma industry to cure ANYTHING (loss of profit, employees). Again this has nothing to do with the conscious will of individuals, but the very structures involved.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Being poorly paid, commensurate to the qualifications, experience, and quality/scale of work. If I did what I did for a company, I would have been a senior executive on a large bonus. As it was, we got no performance pay to increase motivation, no bonuses whatsoever, few holidays, and we were packed into a cramped office fighting over crumbling PCs). Did I mention that HR considered it a good days work to start us off on the bottom of the pay scale regardless of experience, talent or qualifications.
2) Spending half of my research time applying for grants and maybe 10-15% of what was left to complete mystifying administration work (hint: perhaps the admin staff could help us out by doing something useful rather than just giving leaflets out or showing presentations).
3) Ethics committees being too PC and panicking any time we approached the public. I had to submit a 52 page questionnaire before I could issue a paper-based survey to people even if I just asked them anonymously what their favourite colour was.
4) Low status - "rock star" professors are all well and good, but plain researchers get relegated to the bottom of the heap beneath administration in terms of resources if you can believe it. I once requisitioned a pair of headphones for an experiment. 18 months later, I had finished my thesis and still had no headphones. You guessed it - I had bought my own because it was easier).
5) Little chance of advancement regardless of talent or accomplishments.
6) Bad security - researchers live on temporary contracts and a permanent one is extremely rare. The problem is that with a family, I need a place to live etc and at least some idea that I might be able to stay in the same place for a few years rather than just 6 months.
7) Having senior staff with inferior knowledge of methods tell you to change your design to one that is compromised. Admittedly this is rare, but annoying nonetheless.
The points about lack of advancement, lack of pay, poor conditions etc, all seem to stem from management cocking it up. Because we didn't produce anything with a price tag on it, we couldn't demonstrate our worth in terms that they can understand. Instead, I left academia with my ideas and training and I am going to make them work for me. I tried the university's business start-up service, but they wanted a large percentage, control over how everything was run (if it's anything like the university then be prepared for another SCO), but they weren't interested because I was just a research fellow and therefore unimportant. Once they realised what my position was, they didn't even ask me what the idea was.
The business isn't properly started yet, but we're getting there; and it's a very big market. We're just hoping to scrape by until the product begins to get momentum.
In case you're interested, this was a UK university.
Parent
Re:fundamentalists (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, the way words like "fundamentalist" and "evangelical" are used as if they were synonyms, which they are not. Also, some of the ideas of Pentecostalism are associated with Fundamentalism, and indeed many individuals these days practice a mix of both, but they are really different (and somewhat antithetical) things.
Usually, when we hear "fundamentalist", it is used to refer to somebody who is a conservative, evangelical Christian who believes in Biblical literalism and practices an ecstatic form of worship in a large, media driven community.
In fact, this is something of a recent mish-mash of distinctive and sometimes opposing American religious groups. For example, up until the mid twentieth century, Christian fundamentalists were antagonistic to the kind of mystical worship practiced by Pentecostalism. That is because the Christian Fundamentalist movement is essentially pseudo-rational in nature.
"Creation Science" is quintessential Christian Fundamentalism in its historic form. Fundamentalists of this sort don't see themselves as anti-science. They see themselves as pro-science, but against an intellectually corrupt scientific establishment. It is therefore quite practical for a "fundamentalist" to pursue a scientific career, provided it is in a field that either has a well established fundamentalist counter-movement, like biology, or one in which Biblical issues don't arise very often, for example solid state physics. You won't find many "Fundamentalists" in scholarly fields like Near Eastern languages or Biblical Archeology -- not for long at any rate.
There is a lot more diversity in religious belief than our labels allow for. The right wing Christian movement has laid claim to a number of American religious traditions, sometimes conflicting traditions. They're even flirting with Catholicism, which was long seen by native Protestants of all stripes as alien and wicked. Bringing these traditions under a single terminological roof is about institutional and political power. We sometimes call that roof "Evangelicalism" and sometimes "Fundamentalism", even though these are again two different historical phenomenon. The two words serve complementary political purposes: to unite those under the roof, and to stand them against those outside.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know, maybe this just highlights how screwed up the congressional seniority system really is.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite amusing, really!
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
But making it free would make libertarians and wannabe economists cry out: "Socialism ! Bad ! Why should my tax money support anything, you communist swine ? Free market ! Free market ! Free market !"
It's politically better to have a wasteful payment system than to give the appearance of being anything but ultra-rightwing free market fundamentalist.
Parent
It's a biological imperative... (Score:5, Insightful)
Though, there is variation in any population, so I suppose you do have the choice to turn your back on about 2 million years of human evolutionary success and just be a selfish git. ;p
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Said federal budget is $2.7 trillion in 2008, while Phoenix and MRO combined barely break a billion, and both are invaluable in terms of knowledge we get from them (have already gotten and are still getting from the MRO mission, and expect to get from Phoenix).
And a final bit of perspective: the $5 million Fermilab gets from this private donor is less than what half an hour of Iraq is costing the US.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
(disclaimer: I play with NASA images for a stipend.)
Parent
Small government, private philanthropy (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this just a reflection of the style of government in the US? There seems to be a strong emphasis on small government, and then relying on private philanthropy to keep other things running.
Parent
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:5, Interesting)
Some other slashdotter posted a good idea awhile back: That taxpayers should be able to directly allocate their taxes to the issues(and possibly the charities) that they care about, rather then just sending lump sums to the government(who will do what the government, and not necessarily the taxpayer, wants).
Parent
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:5, Interesting)
Not quite "pure" democracy, but getting pretty close to the ideal is Switzerland. And they seem to do alright for themselves.
Also, despite being a part of the British Commonwealth, New Zealand is also much closer to the ideal than most other English speaking nations at least, and doesn't do too poorly either.
For the first time in my life, I'm living in a Democratic Republic at the moment (Germany), and while I do love it here and they have yet to do anything that I am strongly against, it does worry me from time to time how much control the government potentially has.
(on the plus side, I'm only a few hundred km away from a country that would take me in (due to my heritage) in the unlikely event that something really bad was decided and I needed to get out of here FAST)
Parent
Re:Small government, private philanthropy (Score:5, Interesting)
The result is that they meet each other socially and work together in a way that lets them bond together should make Americans really think about what corporate leadership can do. It's a form of networking we've never really tried.
Parent
Re:The sad thing... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait!
Parent
Taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the Republican party's low appraisal of science probably has a lot to do with it- after all, what good is science that might change peoples' minds about something (FLIP FLOP FLIP FLOP) when there's Muslims to kill?
Umm, both houses are (D) - cuts are from congress (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Umm, both houses are (D) - cuts are from congre (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Taxes (Score:5, Informative)
The administration asked for increased funding for the DOE Office of Science. Congress instead slashed its budget --- all while fully funding Bush's multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq.
When Congress cuts the budget, there's nothing the administration can do.
If the Democrats in Congress really wanted to end the war in Iraq, they could do it tomorrow by revoking its funding. But why would they end it, when it's their best polling issue?
Sometimes, Democracy just plain sucks.
Parent
Re:Taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
Democracy? Since when is America a democracy?
The problem is that America is not a democracy, and is nothing close. It is virtually guaranteed that:
So, because of this "republic" two-party system, we're screwed. We have no real voice.
Parent
Re:Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
democracy is 2 foxes and 1 chicken voting on what's for dinner.
Parent
Parent has the right idea but not the facts (Score:5, Insightful)
When Congress cuts the budget, there's nothing the administration can do.
1) Congress decided to increase funding to natural sciences. Republicans and Democrats agreed on it. The Bush administration (which does have heavy, heavy influence in the Republican-sponsored budgets in congress) agreed with Congress. Things looked good.
2) Democrats in Congress and the Republican Congress/Presidential administration started fighting about funding for veteran-benefits (D's wanted more, R's wanted less), the war (D's wanted a timeline for withdrawal, R's didn't), and several other issues. They needed to compromise, as usual.
3) The compromise they reached ended up cutting the funding increase that they ALL had supported, and which was already being spent. Instead, funding for natural sciences was cut. This is why the DOE, NSF, etc. are in their current situations.
Why did the politicians cut something they all agreed was worthwhile? I'm going to speculate that it was because they didn't really care about it much one way or another, and also because research funding is such a tiny part of the budget with virtually no lobbyist support that our esteemed leaders essentially forgot about it.
Parent
Re:Taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
You're welcome to your partisan opinions (it is Slashdot after all) but at least apportion blame fully where it is due.
Parent
SCIENCE? Who needs that shit? (Score:5, Funny)
RS
Re:SCIENCE? Who needs that shit? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:SCIENCE? Who needs that shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Umm. It's NOT the only remaining particle lab (Score:4, Interesting)
very humbled (Score:5, Interesting)
I work at Fermilab, and everyone i know (and that's a lot of people) is
Thanks a million (x5!) mysterious friend!
now back to the antimatter and neutrinos...
Re:very humbled (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
ugh, what spin. (Score:5, Insightful)
They might have had to lay off 200 employees. Out of TWO THOUSAND. Because their budget was "slashed" by just 22M (less than 10% of the budget.) Christ. It's not embarrassing, and the lab was in no danger of being "lost."
This is an apolitical issue (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a Republican or Democratic issue, it is a societal one. Year after year, administration after administration, we as a society have been saying "we don't really consider science/education/research all that important."
Just look at the trends: companies are increasingly seeking out technical professionals overseas because they're churning out greater and greater number of graduates with science/engineering degrees with China pushing out 600,000 such graduates compared to the US' 70,000 per year [businessweek.com]; and how can we compete in biotech when the majority of our citizens can't grasp genetics nor do they even believe in evolution [livescience.com] (we beat Turkey though!)?
With the way we've been funding education and paying our teachers, we collectively give educators the big middle finger tipped with stinky poo every year. We're making these choices as individuals so we all have a hand in this appalling state of affairs.
Fermilab died a long time ago (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Is That Embarassing??!! (Score:5, Informative)
Next time you or someone you care for gets radiological treatment, think: accelerators make lots of things which are used to diagnose and treat cancers.
Parent
Re:Why Is That Embarassing??!! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Research (even esoteric) can have completely unexpected practical applications. Remember the steam engine? For hundreds of years it was nothing but a novelty, and then whammo! Industrial revolution. Just because something has no clear immediate practical applications now, doesn't mean squat for the future.
2. Compared to how big a proportion of your 'tax dollars' goes to funding despotic regimes, terrorist cells we use against 'other' terror cells, and kickbacks to the arms industry, I think you can wear the tiny percentage that goes to 'esoteric' research.
I'm sorry, but I wish people had a bit more perspective on these things
Parent
Re:No, this is what's great about the US (Score:5, Insightful)
And before someone says it, corporations have no incentive to do basic research, there is no profit motivation for them to do it. Try telling GE 100 years ago to do basic atomic research, at that time there were no known applications for that research. However, after government funded nuclear research, GE now has a nuclear energy division, making a developing better nuclear reactors.
Parent
Re:No, this is what's great about the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent