Science: Donor Gives $5 Million to Aid Fermilab
… An anonymous donor has given the University of Chicago $5 million to be spent at cash-strapped Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. With the money, lab officials will be able to stop a rolling furlough program that since February has forced employees to take periodic unpaid leave and slashed their pay by 12.5%. The lab will still lay off roughly 140 workers, but officials also announced that those cuts would be restructured to give employees a chance to take voluntary layoffs before the involuntary ones begin.
… Fermilab’s financial crisis began in December, when the U.S. Congress passed a last-minute budget for the 2008 fiscal year (ScienceNOW, 19 December 2007). Legislators whacked Fermilab’s budget from the $372 million requested by the Department of Energy (DOE) to $320 million, $22 million less than the lab had received in 2007 … This is the second time in recent years that philanthropists have bailed out a beleaguered DOE lab.
This is the saddest and, simultaneously, the most beautiful thing I have heard of in a while. The nation’s scientists have turned into beggars, but thank goodness for the generosity of people who prioritize well our necessities and can help.
The 2000 presidential election was very personal. Late that fall, I was to start my second master’s program in computational sciences working on a borehole geophysics project under the auspices of the Department of Energy, more specifically Sandia National Lab. Research funding was all lined up until Bush was elected and my project and several others were put on indefinite hold. “Maybe the recount will bring good news, Maitri,” my advisor said. We all know how that went. For a semester, I paid for classes and conducted research without income until, thankfully, Sandia and other research labs were able to scrounge up enough cash to keep our respective programs going.
Between the time Bush was elected and sworn in, colleagues and I watched as DoE funds were slashed and the Department of Defense coffers grew in size exponentially. If there ever was a sign of the Bush administration’s readiness to invade someone, anyone, that was it and we saw it back in the early days of 2001. Eight years later, our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are dead or dying due to a misbegotten war in foreign lands, while, back home, we have squandered our responsibility to educate, conduct valuable research, grow and compete globally. This is America under Bush and the neoconservative chickenhawks. Are you happy now?
Once I was a libertarian who believed that all research ought to be funded by private donors. Since then I’ve moved to Reality, which is not a closed system, and have realized the depressing fact that the average citizen is someone who can’t begin to understand the concept of enlightened self-interest, i.e. helping others in order to help oneself, and is inherently a hoarder unlike our Fermilab philanthropist. He or she would rather die of a disease than spend the money to find the cure for it, which then everyone else can use. Also, if only certain people pay for and consequently reap the benefits of science and technology while many more could, that is just not a very good world to live in, is it?
Hello, you who want to pay less to no taxes, are you listening? This is partially why we pay income and real estate taxes, in the hope that money goes towards our schools, universities, laboratories, collective knowledge and a strong national research infrastructure and ALL OF US gain from our contribution. In theory, the taxes we pay are all tiny, private donations administrated by a central body that makes sure all of our vital institutions work and work everyday, not simply when Joe Donor throws some coin in the collection plate. We then, of course, run the risk of someone like Bush and his cronies coming along and using the treasury to invade Iraq in the name of less taxes, grandma and apple pie, but whose fault was that? Exactly. It was your own greed that got ALL OF US, including you, nowhere. Are you happy now?
Dear anonymous donor, I love you and wish there were more like you.
Related: U.S. Nuclear Brain Drain Feared
You forgot to mention that was the last particle physics lab still operating in the US.
As a side interest (and possible future career), I’ve always been interested in nuclear power (the non-warhead type). I find it embarrassing how far behind the US is. We’re so rinky-dink now we can’t even forge a reactor vessel in this country anymore, meanwhile the French had a modestly successful fast breeder reactor for 10+ years.
Have you seen the movie “Idiocracy”? Not a very good movie, but the premise seems all too possible when I read news like this.
Peace,
Tim
Yeah, I actually picked up a copy one day. I had never heard of it, even though it was a Mike Judge movie. Fox BURIED the movie. They never wanted to let it see the light of day, but it’s out there.
The movie had no budget, but I like Luke Wilson. Some of the props look like they were made of cardboard.
Not a bad film, although sometime you wonder if you’re laughing at the film or the society that surrounds us.
It’s on the Netflix list but way down there. I have a strict quota for depressing movies/documentaries and we’re going to watch Frontline’s The Persuaders this weekend, which should raise the demand on fantasy and comedy in the coming weeks.