Lamont received a rare amount of coverage in the CU's Record this week - not only a great photo of Doug Martinson doing his "Ocean Station Obama" thing, but also a good write up on the passage of the Research Professorships though the Senate - marred only by its (incorrect) inference that this was an initiative restricted to the senior staff. Speaking of errors - I was wrong last week when I said that Lamont should be proud that we had won two outstanding student paper awards at the last Fall AGU - the truth is that we won three! I apologize to Jenny Arbuswewski for not previously recognizing her accomplishment - her paper was entitled "Towards a global calibration of the G. ruber (white) Mg/Ca Paleothermometer".
I spent five hours in four different EI meetings downtown on Monday afternoon and had eight appointments in my diary for Tuesday. And on Thursday enjoyed an excellent event in the Rotunda of the Low Library in honor of the great Benefactor and CU Trustee Gerry Lenfest. President Bollinger recognized him as fourth largest donor to CU of all time - and joked that given Gerry's competitive spirit he was sure that Gerry would want to become number 1! Anyhow I promised Gerry an opportunity to drive Langseth when she comes to the east coast - an offer of which he may take advantage!
The week ended with the usual marathon 3 hour long ExCom this morning and a really entertaining Colloquium by the PBS NOVA producer Paula Apsell.
Probably the most important news all week was the release of the President's FY2010 budget which, I am very glad to say, contains a really strong NSF budget request of approximately $7B - which represents around 7 per cent increase on 09. We need to maintain that same level of steady growth for the next decade. I will be spending Thursday and Friday in DC next week in order to articulate the importance of doing just that - and hope to meet (for the first time) Presidential Science advisor John Holdren.
The 09 West Marine catalog arrived in the mail this past week, so spring must be close - time to start making lists of all the things that need to be done to the boat before the launch date. Making the list is the easy part - figuring out who is going to do them (and when) is a little trickier.
Anyhow - have a great weekend
- Mike