Amazing paid travel and meeting of fine minds, the freedom to know first hand the world Dr. Hawking lives in, the ability to say whatever you think to whoever you want -- ZOUNDS! all this and money, too?

Focus on finances :: troubling.

I would take this job in a heartbeat, and figure out the wires, hardware, and software interface as I go. It's obviously custom, and I m able to pickup where the former person left off. Credentials--Scientist who is comfortable setting up complicated lab equiment, learning to run and troubleshoot HPLC and PCR (piece of cake) and microarras, surf along the growing information network, as new replaces old. Experienced coder on-the-fly Perl and Java Python concatanations.

Better question is this, "Sir: Is there a person leaving who will train me?"

Forget about the money. Take the job.

The author of the original article had "once overseen an IT department as a former dean of the College of Psychology and Human Services."

Right there at the top of the linked article is the reason IT is perceived as having a personality problem. IT is managed by people incompetent to manage IT. Being aloof is the only way to fend off uneducated management.

I worked in the industry, as She who understood enough IT to talk respectfully to IT. You should not tell them what to do You describe a problem-and listen to solutions brainstorming. Unfortunately, it is an inevitable case of management not-knowing-what-they-don't-know, and perceiving the perfectly reasonable behavior of IT as these ridiculous (I'm sorry, but they are) ridiculous personality profiles.

IT gentlemen and ladies are fun-loving, overworked, camaraderie-driven people. They are not ! aloof (perhaps a trace shy, or apt to speak Jargon) except when aloof is needed to prevent management from not-knowing all over the place.

Personality profile written by an IT manager? Conflict. Bias.

I never thought of that! MightyMartian has a valid point that valuable, difficult-to-manufacture long chain hydrocarbons are being squandered to produce combustion.

That's the same way I feel about sequestering gold. This non-tarnish metal is an extremely valuable manufacturing commodity. And diamonds, the hardest substance known to man, are another stupidly sequestered resource.

Homo sapiens are dingbat dumb.

This baffling story is raw inspiration. The suicide of one's online self is a serious event. Do you suppose, if Mark began again, he would create another space of vision and beauty? Of course. A new vision.

He was (?) singularly poised at a wrinkle-in-time to become Our Voice. Yet, our wins are our losses. We lose the ability to hear the muse. Sometimes one cannot even see the new task, when there is clamor (hands vibrate and wave) loud eddies that distract from the quiet voice of curiosity.

Mark will find the muse again, find his new task, and may each of us ( me least of all ) seek a location where we can hear the muse most clearly.

Love, attention, bliss.

Quiet.

Transporting a telescope that big is a Darwin Award waiting to happen, so this means: No longer a winning incident in the making. "good job kids" - Charles R. Darwin

"Anyone with an IQ over 100 can filter stuff."

That's not true: We have inherent unconscious bias (M.Gladwell, et. al.) and it's powerful enough to make us eat more food, buy more products, etc., because the "game" of selling to you capitalizes on your blindness, yes you (yourself) will have a subset of the human traits that make you a sheep to some marketing campaigns. Moo.

# (: There are two kinds of people in this world: You, who think youre immune from the science about human behavior ("Duh I filter all that stuff out") and me, who thinks that immunity lies in accepting my gullible side and avoiding the "marketing matrix."

Howto: Framing Your Thoughts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM&feature=player_detailpage#t=222s

Please add back in my "vexillate.livejournal.com" link and do not edit a single word of this story, if I may be so bold as to request.

And dude, kindly, can you stop making me preview each and every post? In that noxious window you've invented? I read my post, I know what I'm doing, and if I hit the "submit" button too soon, what;s the harm.

If I were goddess, anyway, that's what I'd ask for.

Please remove my "vexillate.livejournal.com" link from any posted story. Also:

"The U.S. military developed the technology to marry microexpression-recognition software with state-of-the-art systems capable of making instant interpretations."

My birth defect - blepharophimosis ptosis - makes microexpression analysis exceedingly dangerous to me, particularly since I appear guilty to anyone who "looks" for guilt in my face. Microexpression analysis of crowds is dangerous to me.

PS My face is a beneficial evolutionary advantage: My expressions are far more bizarre than any cultural differences, yet people, one on one, can easily understand it. I can communicate with anyone - stroke victims, autistic people, speech impediments, language-strangers, etc. Each person with Blepharophmosis ptosis makes a unique muscle arrangement; how cool would it be if our future evolution allowed us each to have our own unique expression set?!! Awesome.