throwaw4ybio
edit: I like this analogy the more I think about it. If I tell my friends I strongly disagree with Steven Pinker today and his "valuation" continues to fall, I can gain social credit. There is a risk involved in this, however, because sometime in the future science may gather strong confirmatory evidence that Steven Pinker was right all along, and I'll have to trade in an even greater amount of social capital (e.g. because I'm forced to admit I was wrong or go all defensive kook).
Sorry, following the increasingly bizarre news with cryptocurrency and GME is something I've been doing too much of lately.
Two things that might serve as food for thought:
1) I guarantee that know-it-all, newly-minted young adults getting mad at professors didn't start in 1975, though simultaneous social shifts (e.g. things like the anti-Vietnam-War movement) might have made it more socially acceptable for the youngins to speak up in those places.
2) People complaining about being oppressed on campus because of their ideas frequently seem to have the same weird idea. Whereas, no one goes and yells at Lee Smolin when he bags on string theory.
1) Disrupt the nuclear construction contracting process. Until fleet contractors like Bechtel et al are stopped from parasitizing the industry, it's going nowhete due to spiralling costs.
2) Lower the cost of reinforced concrete.
3) Close the fuel cycle.
3 is technically feasible, 2 isn't very sexy, but possible. 1 seems insurmountable.
E.g. if you implement tit-for-tat in your marriage, you're gonna have a bad time.
Would this involve an application? Perhaps a committee?
You don't think this is over-egging the custard a bit?
My wife and I have a setup up in our house (it's all GRAS and Biosafety Level 1 stuff) and have mostly bought off ebay and govdeals. She's a neuroscientist and I'm a physics/engineering guy. My job is to handle the business end, acquire gear, and maintain it so that she can science as hard as possible.
Most of our lab gear is 80s and 90s-vintage gear we've fixed up. You'd be amazed what a little analogue electronics knowledge can do here; people will throw out a device rather than replace the belts or motor brushes. We'll get used and broken gear at a fraction of of the cost of new and certified refurb machinery.
I'm currently modding our venerable Labline orbital shaker incubator. Over the course to two months the tachometer and both of the remote bulb thermostats on it went out, so I'm installing a Johnson Controls A421 to manage the heater and adding a $20 Hall effect tachometer to replace the analog tach. The mechanicals are solid, though (got it for $300 plus freight!) and getting another would be a slow expensive crap shoot.
BTW, readers, do you think that there is an audience for a blog that talks about the details of rebuilding old equipment like this? I'm not big on video, so it would mostly be long form writing with lots of images.