Lamont Weekly Report – January 13, 2006

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W Palisades, New York 10964

<> REPORT SUMMARY <>

- Letter from the Director

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<> LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

It has been a tough seven days. Bill Haxby's funeral last Saturday afternoon brought tears to many eyes - it was a fitting tribute to
Bill and was very well attended. I was very pleased to see the well-written and prominent obituary in the New York Times. I am so glad
to see the recognition of Bill's lifetime accomplishments. So very well deserved.

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Washington at a meeting of the Ocean Council. Plans to merge the corporations JOI and CORE are becoming
firm and I believe that, on the ~12 month timescale, we will see the creation of single powerful entity in DC with membership from all the
Universities around the nation involved in Ocean Science. We certainly need a more effective way to fight for our budgets.

While I was in DC I heard that Yochanan Kushnir and been rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, so that was a big worry - I spoke by
phone with Yochanan this morning, and he is home and doing very well, thank goodness.

There are some who would say that the most significant event of the week was the announcement on Tuesday from Apple of their new faster-
than-lightening Intel powered MacBook Pros, but I am not quite sure that I agree with that.

We have a special ExCom next week, dedicated exclusively to discussions of how to move forward with the University to build new
and better positions for the Doherty Research Staff. I will give a preliminary report on where we stand with this in next week's report.

Thank you to everyone for their understanding and patience as we strive to cut our energy usage in the face of large increases in
utility costs. Our efforts are indeed having an impact. Our last meter readings were on December 28th - about half way through the
Holiday break. Those show that, by shutting down over the break, we saved about $15K. We anticipate double that savings when the readings

over the New Year are available. Please do not doubt that this is 'real' money that we are talking about here - these savings can be
used for the many other desperate infrastructure needs we have around the campus. So we will be continuing to strive to be frugal in this
department and it is the daily efforts of Dick Greco that make this feasible. Thanks Dick.

It's going to be cold again this three day MLK Day weekend,

Keep safe,


- Mike




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