Re: Mission Impossible: Obama Taps Crack Team Of Scientists To Do The Job BP Can't
- From: Jack Linthicum <jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 06:41:24 -0700 (PDT)
On May 14, 6:33 pm, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Remember Richard Feymann, yeah, I know he was coached, but he broke
through the institutiolized bullshit.
Mission Impossible: Obama Taps Crack Team Of Scientists To Do The Job
BP Can't
Zachary Roth | May 14, 2010, 5:36PM
Scientists tapped by the Obama administration to help fix the Gulf
Coast oil spill. From left to right: Richard Garwin, Tom Hunter,
Alexander Slocum, Jonathan Katz and George Cooper
President Obama's new plan to fix the Gulf oil spill is so crazy it
just might work...
As BP's high-priced industry experts flail, the president has turned
to a rag-tag band of big-think scientific renegades, and sent them on
a mission to somehow MacGyver a way to stop up the leak -- before it's
too late.
OK, maybe that's going a bit far. In fact, the news that Obama and his
energy secretary, Steven Chu, have sent a team of leading physicists
and engineers to the Gulf to work with BP offers further evidence of
the administration's essentially technocratic approach to governance,
and its faith in knowledge-based expertise. That might seem like
common sense, but it represents a shift from the Bushies' faith in the
problem-solving power of industry, and its willingness to let science
take a backseat to the concerns of its religious base.
Still, asking one of the key inventors of the hydrogen bomb, along
with an engineer who helped develop techniques for mining on Mars,
counts as out-of-the-box thinking. Here's a quick rundown on the
president's unlikely team:
The Old Hand: Richard Garvin
In 1951, 23-year old Richard Garwin was working at the Los Alomos
nuclear laboratory,
when he was asked by Edward Teller to devise an experiment that would
demonstrate the principle of "radiation implosion." Garwin's detailed
sketch served as the basis for "Mike," an 80-ton device, that was
detonated the following year as the world's first hydrogen bomb. "I
wasn't the inventor," Garwin has said. "I was sort of the architect."
In 1952, Garwin went to work for IBM -- where he remains a fellow
emeritus -- on the understanding that he could spend a third of his
time working with the federal government on national security issues.
He's a recipient of the national medal of science, and a member of the
JASON, an elite think tank that studies complex scientific problems on
behalf of the U.S. government. In 1991, Garwin convened a symposium of
experts to discus ways to stem oil flows from Kuwait wells, set on
fire by Iraq during the Gulf War. For Garwin, now 82, could this be
his last hurrah?
The Establishment Man: Tom Hunter
Tom Hunter yesterday announced his resignation as the president of
Sandia National Laboratories, an outpost of the U.S. nuclear weapons
complex that conducts high-level research for the National Nuclear
Security Administration. He had been at Sandia since 1967, and served
as president since 2005 -- a job that reportedly paid him $1.7 million
a year. He has a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of
Wisconsin. Hunter said yesterday he had no particular plans for what
he'd be doing in retirement. That may have changed.
The Maverick Genius: Alexander Slocum
Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teaches a world famous design
and manufacturing class that culminates in a remote-controlled robot
competition. He holds more than 60 patents for inventions relating to
biotechnology, robotics and computer science, but his research
interests also include "going faster on my snowboard, staying down
longer SCUBA diving!," according to his website. A colleague told
Bloomberg: "He has a lot of creative ideas. One in 10 are really
brilliant ideas, but nine are dumb. You can't miss that one that is
brilliant." Here's hoping genius strikes in the Gulf.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/mission_impossible_...
President Obama listened to Frogwatch and names two more geniuses
The No-Nonsense Engineer: George Cooper
George Cooper might have the most relevant experience for the mission
at hand. A professor of engineering at UC Berkely, he spent much of
his career in industrial research with Britain's National Physical
Laboratory and now serves as Senior Petroleum Engineer at DOE's
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. But he can branch out too: According to
Bloomberg, he once worked with the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration to adapt mining techniques for use on Mars.
The What-Am-I-Doing-Here? Guy: Jonathan Katz
Jonathan Katz, a physics professor at Washington University in St.
Louis, is another member of JASON. But Katz's major research focus has
been astrophysics, and in an interview Friday with a St. Louis paper,
he didn't seem confident that he had been much help with the mission.
"I was honored to be invited and enjoyed the experience," said Katz.
"Did I have anything much to contribute? I think I have some ideas for
how to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, but I
don't have anything very specific to offer on the present problems. It
is very much in the hands of the real pros." Asked if he'd be willing
to go back, Katz said: "I'd be happy to, but someone's got to send me
an email or a phone call."
.
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- From: Jack Linthicum
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