How to get things done
Gordon Watts explains that Fermilab physicists often hold contests--especially when something important has to get done. He congratulates one of his colleagues, who recently won two bottles of wine. "I'd just like to point out that in no way, shape, or form is the amount of work required to win these things close to worth the prizes!" Gordon writes. "I doubt people would rise to the occasion unless they were going to do it anyway (and, of course, the competition)."

As the head of a national lab, Frank Linde often has to convince people to get things done. But his "lack of diplomacy is not always appreciated by all his colleagues." So he finally decided to take a management course. After the first lesson, he writes, "I feel bad about how I have confronted those who do not share my communication style!"

And, as Ursula Bassler learns, sometimes you just have to do things yourself. She treated one of her experiment's devices, called a pulser, to a business-class trip to France, where it will be repaired. "Happy X-mass, Pulser!" she writes.

Funding highs and lows
Frank Linde writes that his lab's proposal to develop a BIG GRID computing facility has been recommended for funding. "Personally, I think the real justification for a Dutch national GRID computing facility lies in the opportunities it provides to...the Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities...The past months I learned that in these other research areas really many exciting studies become feasible once you can correlate massive databases in an effective manner (i.e. having lots of storage capacity and compute power)."

Sarah Phillips is less optimistic. "Jefferson Lab is facing huge cuts, like so much of the field right now," she writes. "I am feeling really discouraged about finding a job in this field, and this feeling just gets worse as I inch closer to graduation."

But, on a brighter note, Peter Steinberg reports that Newsday wrote an editorial supporting funding for Brookhaven National Lab. "Who says that no-one cares about basic research, especially the work we do at BNL?"

Parental influence
Debbie Harris wonders "how having two physicists as parents is affecting" her children. Her own father is a physicist, so it seems to run in the family.

Tommaso Dorigo proudly writes about his father, who was recently honored for his contributions to the city of Venice. He was the urban planner in charge of rebuilding the city after World War II.