04-24-2015, 06:05 PM
Dakine,
"Btw Tom, I see in today's Trib that your facility is being considered for early decommissioning. Are you a part of those discussions? Is there a discourse, as this article implies, with all the stake holders in this matter? If so can you shed a little light on the Hawaiian's opinion of this proposition?
The Trib's article, Talks in works for early decommission of telescopes in part reads:
"There’s been some internal discussion of essentially putting a more definite timetable on what’s in the current decommission plan,” said Bob McLaren, associate director of UH’s Institute for Astronomy.
That will likely involving expediting the removal of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, already scheduled to be decommissioned between 2016 and 2018, and up to two more telescopes that are not expected to operate beyond 2033, he said.
Those include the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, Very Long Baseline Array, and at least one of the other submillimeter telescopes, McLaren said.""
I can't shed any light on this as the first I heard of it was this morning from the Trib. Really nice learning something like this from a newspaper rather than from UH. As you might imagine, there are a lot of upset people at work right now. UH owns UKIRT and the JCMT and has the decommissioning money (sent to them by the STFC), so you can see who the easy targets are for UH.
Lots of stuff going on right now as you can imagine.
As to the threats against TMT supporters, it definitely is in a class of its own. You might not like some comments by TMT supporters here, and nor do I, but this is different. It comes from a prominent member of the protesters, one who has been organising money to support the protest, and is pretty much the equivalent of observatory and TMT staff, just on the other side of the argument. Calling for us to be killed and beaten to a pulp, and a direct threat to beat up an 18 year old high school student, and then lie about the post he made, is on a new level, and should not be ignored or just passed off as, "well, someone said some nasty things here as well". Nothing as disturbing and threatening as this guy's posts have ever appeared in this thread.
"Btw Tom, I see in today's Trib that your facility is being considered for early decommissioning. Are you a part of those discussions? Is there a discourse, as this article implies, with all the stake holders in this matter? If so can you shed a little light on the Hawaiian's opinion of this proposition?
The Trib's article, Talks in works for early decommission of telescopes in part reads:
"There’s been some internal discussion of essentially putting a more definite timetable on what’s in the current decommission plan,” said Bob McLaren, associate director of UH’s Institute for Astronomy.
That will likely involving expediting the removal of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, already scheduled to be decommissioned between 2016 and 2018, and up to two more telescopes that are not expected to operate beyond 2033, he said.
Those include the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, Very Long Baseline Array, and at least one of the other submillimeter telescopes, McLaren said.""
I can't shed any light on this as the first I heard of it was this morning from the Trib. Really nice learning something like this from a newspaper rather than from UH. As you might imagine, there are a lot of upset people at work right now. UH owns UKIRT and the JCMT and has the decommissioning money (sent to them by the STFC), so you can see who the easy targets are for UH.
Lots of stuff going on right now as you can imagine.
As to the threats against TMT supporters, it definitely is in a class of its own. You might not like some comments by TMT supporters here, and nor do I, but this is different. It comes from a prominent member of the protesters, one who has been organising money to support the protest, and is pretty much the equivalent of observatory and TMT staff, just on the other side of the argument. Calling for us to be killed and beaten to a pulp, and a direct threat to beat up an 18 year old high school student, and then lie about the post he made, is on a new level, and should not be ignored or just passed off as, "well, someone said some nasty things here as well". Nothing as disturbing and threatening as this guy's posts have ever appeared in this thread.