Director's Weekly Reports

Lamont Weekly Report, July 29, 2011

The chaos on Capitol Hill should remind us that we're not insulated from the national discussion (if you could call it that - I have doubts) on when and how we should invest in our future. The old maxim that we can't apply science unless the science is there to apply holds more than ever. So we continue to track the budget bills in Congress in as much detail as we can. The House started the process and, not surprisingly, set a low target for federal agency funding. This is ahistorical trend, amplified by the current political rhetoric...

Lamont Weekly Report, July 22, 2011

Kim Martineau and David Funkhouser, with input from Maya Tolstoy and Jim Gaherty, organized a TV Media training workshop on Tuesday. I wasn't able to attend, but I heard it went well. (I was visiting some of our donors in their Park Avenue offices that morning. It's a parallel universe, but that's a tale for another time.) Given the importance of our science to public discourse and the frequent need to respond to press inquiries, we should be supportive of our media team's efforts to help us deliver our message appropriately, professionally, to various audiences and through traditional and "new media" outlets. Although it takes a lot of effort to organize one of these workshops, I hope we can run them on a regular basis...

Lamont Weekly Report, July 15, 2011

I had a smooth, non-turbulent flight back from Beijing on Monday, after an interesting 2-day conference on sustainability at Renmin (People's) University. The link between China's economic growth and CO2 is indisputable, but at least China's latest 5-year plan (the twelfth) is trying to "bend the curve," so to speak. Reality has set in, though. Fleets of bicycles have given way to electric scooters, and private cars have taken over the ring roads. What used to be a 30-minute ride from the airport now takes 90 minutes or more...

Lamont Weekly Report, July 8, 2011

I’m traveling once again, so this will be brief:
 
Several of us went down to NSF on Wednesday to go over some of the final details of the Langseth Business Systems Review (BSR). It was a good set of meetings, and we left feeling confident about the upcoming panel review of our response to the BSR, scheduled for early September. While this has been a “task and a half,” it should leave us in a good position to maintain the Langseth as a crucial part of the academic fleet...

Lamont Weekly Report, July 1, 2011

I missed the delivery cutoff for last week’s report owing to turbulence, flying food carts (tossed salad and tossed flight attendants), a broken Boeing, an unexpected landing in Beijing, and a dicey internet connection. No injuries, but there were some chuckles as business class deplaned with more than a few wine stains on their shirts. Continental found replacement parts at the Capital Airport and we were back in the air about 20 hours later. Stuff happens, but I have to play catch up in this week’s report. So it will be a bit longer...

Lamont Weekly Report, June 17, 2011

I spent a couple of days this week in Amsterdam attending meetings of several IODP governing committees, along with Dave Goldberg and Mo Raymo (whose official starting date at Lamont was Wednesday). The meetings ended with a press conference highlighting the release of the IODP Science plan for 2013-2023, available at http://www.iodp.org and worth reading. The breadth of science dependent on a robust ocean drilling program is significant, notwithstanding the challenges inherent in keeping two drill ships and other platforms at sea. The overlap with the science done at Lamont is substantial, and future NSF support is essential. We are paying very close attention to the ongoing discussions with NSF program managers...

 

Lamont Weekly Report, June 10, 2011

Sunday in the Park with Lamonters:

The World Science Festival landed in Washington Square Park last Sunday, with Lamont providing exhibits, literature, and enthusiastic staffing. Our participation was organized by Stacey Vasallo and Erika Freimuth with additional leadership from Margie Turrin and Jill Van Tongren. The WSF, conceived by Brian Greene, has been a terrific experiment in linking science, the arts, exhibits and lectures, all in service to increasing public awareness of science, scientists, and local institutions. It draws huge crowds across a range of venues; we'll be looking at expanding our opportunities to participate in next year's festival. By the way, one of our network seismometers is installed in the Arch...

Lamont Weekly Report, June 3, 2011

Memorial Day:

A short week, beginning with an untold number of backyard barbecues and the ingestion of great-tasting carcinogens. The unofficial kick-off of summer sometimes obscures a greater message: the recognition that our lives and prosperity are built on the sacrifices of neighbors and friends, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. Some of our colleagues here at Lamont are veterans, and others may have felt immeasurable loss.  The historic clarities of war may have morphed into something else, but there is nothing opaque about the sacrifices made by servicemen and servicewomen...

Lamont Weekly Report, May 27, 2011

Hope springs eternal:

Won-Young Kim was cleaning up his space in seismology and found a brochure for a new "Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics Building"to accommodate "a pressing need to bring together the over 100 scientists, engineers, graduate students and technicians" needed for a new earthquake engineering research center.  That center was NCEER (now
MCEER), which dates the brochure to ca. 1986. The building was to be built on the site where the OBS lab is now, and was designed to complement the Geoscience building, creating a "quad" on that part of the campus. As we ponder what might have been, it's worth noting that the Seismology/Marine Biology Building is approaching its 50th anniversary, not bad for a temporary structure...

Lamont Weekly Report, May 20, 2011

Better late than never:

Paraphrasing a memo dated 20 October, 2009, from the USGS Geographic Names Information System, which appeared mysteriously in my in-box: As a result of a science cruise on the R/V Gould in January 2009, an island 900 m long and 224 m high off the Antarctic Peninsula at 68 deg 36' 16" S and 71 deg 58' 38" W is named Martinson Island by the "US Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names after Douglas G. Martinson, the expedition leader and project co-Principal Investigator."...

Lamont Weekly Report, May 13, 2011

Mark's diaries:

We received a lovely letter from Lillian Langseth about a month ago letting us know that she had Mark's diaries and wanted to donate them to Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  From Lillian's letter:

"Marcus had a life long habit of writing down many things about his daily activities, some somewhat personal but mostly about his thoughts and ideas of the day. A large portion of these writings were in hard cover school notebooks. The collection relative to Lamont started in 1953 when he first came to Lamont as a summer intern working for Jack Oliver."..

Lamont Weekly Report, May 6, 2011

Martin Visbeck and some of his colleagues from Kiel spent this morning at Lamont, to discuss possible collaborations in ocean sciences. Martin is heading up an effort called "Future Oceans," one of Germany's "Excellence Clusters." The idea is to try to institutionalize some of the basic arrangements so that peer-to-peer research collaborations and scholarly exchanges can take place without too much administrative hassle. There is very good potential here, and I'll be working with the Associate Directors and folks at the Earth Institute to get this off the ground. Thanks to Peter Schlosser for setting this up, and to those of you who were able to participate on such short notice...

Lamont Weekly Report, April 29, 2011

There's a scene in the original Disney animated version of Snow White; our heroine is lost in a dark forest, panics and faints. All the cute forest critters come out to investigate and ultimately comfort her. (What can I say? The movie came out in 1937.) That scene, which at the time was a marvel of animation, comes to mind as I try to avoid being distracted by all the wildlife romping around outside my office window. It being springtime, and animals being animals, this is not your grandparents' Disney movie. The only individual left out of the action is that bumptious tom turkey, who is still alone, wandering around in vain. Nice feathers, though.

The following most definitely is not a turkey moment. Much the inverse. Our own Kat Allen has been named the recipient of a 2011 Presidential Teaching Award for Graduate Students...

Lamont Weekly Report, April 22, 2011

Congratulations to Robin Bell and Ed Cook, who have just been named AGU Fellows, a well-deserved honor signifying great professional achievement. We'll celebrate appropriately as soon as Ed gets back from his latest adventure. Plan on attending the next AGU awards ceremony; a prize will go to the Lamonter who comes closest to guessing which T-shirt Ed will wear.

Yet another honor: Tatiana Rautian was awarded the Reid Medal last week at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America...

Lamont Weekly Report, April 8, 2011

The week began with two days of meetings in College Station on the future of ocean drilling. This was an opportunity for me to spin up on some of these issues, to meet some of the leadership of IODP facilities, and to reconnect with a long-time colleague, Kate Miller, who is now TAMU's Dean of the College of Geosciences. Like all major facilities
and science programs, IODP is being examined from scientific and management perspectives. If you're asked, or are interested, get involved in the discussion. It's an important time for the program...

Lamont Weekly Report, April 1, 2011

The week actually started on Sunday with a lunchtime meeting of the Lamont Alumni Board followed by our third public lecture of the season. We varied the format this time with Andy Juhl and Greg O'Mullen, of BPE, and John Lipscomb, from Riverkeeper, providing a panel discussion on pollution in the Hudson River. This topic drew an overflow crowd, and
they got to hear how sound environmental science strengthens environmental advocacy. My thanks to Andy, Greg and John for putting this together. The last lecture is this Sunday at 3, and will be given by Natalie Boelman...

Lamont Weekly Report, March 25, 2011

One wouldn't know it from the snow we had earlier this week, but spring has finally sprung. A rafter of oven-sized turkeys strolled by my office last evening. The hens were pecking away at morsels on the ground, while a well-endowed tom (with a very big and colorful wattle) strutted behind, with his tail spread and feathers puffed out. The hens either ignored him or danced away. I went outside to take his picture, but he ran away. The hens stayed put...

Lamont Weekly Report, March 19, 2011

It was a hectic week, but it ended spectacularly on a beautiful day with our celebration of Taro Takahashi's 80th birthday. Taro is one of those colleagues for whom it is easy to express our affection, and it showed in the speeches and tributes. There is not a better manifestation of the community that defines Lamont than when we get together to honor one of our own. Congratulations, Taro, and may there be many more parties in your honor...

Lamont Weekly Report, March 11, 2011

We received word yesterday from the Advisory Committee on Undersea Features that the US Board on Geographic Names has "approved the name 'Diebold Knoll' for the undersea feature at 43 deg 53 min N, 126 deg 10 min W," off the coast of central Oregon. Our colleagues Sandy Shor and Anne Trehu, as well as several folks here at Lamont, helped guide the naming request through the appropriate committees. This is a fitting memorial to John, and it will be a reminder to future generations of oceanographers of the inestimable contributions made by one of our own. We miss him, still, and we will miss him always...

Lamont Weekly Report, March 4, 2011

A full week, with meetings both here in Palisades and on the Morningside campus. Bev and I discovered one of the pitfalls of modern office management when we discovered that we were looking at different versions of my calendar on the server. So, if any of you expected me to show up but I was AWOL, my apologies. It's fixed now.

 

As we assemble the Observatory's budget for next year, we are paying particular attention to space planning. Several of our divisions are expecting significant numbers of new students and post-docs - a good thing! - and we want to make sure that we can accommodate them. I've asked several of the associate directors to put together some forward-looking space plans, and I hope to put together some of the internal resources we need to make the necessary renovations...

Pages