Alondra Nelson has publicly resigned from the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation. In case you haven't heard of her, she is former president of the Social Science Research Council, Deputy Director and then Acting Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy under president Biden, and then returned to her position at the Institute for Advanced Studies. This among other achievements far too numerous to mention.
I know why she resigned -- she made that very clear.
Last week, as the Board held its 494th meeting, I listened to NSF staff say that DOGE had by fiat the authority to give thumbs up or down to grant applications which had been systematically vetted by layers of subject matter experts. Our closed-to-the-public deliberations were observed by Zachary Terrell from the DOGE team. Through his Zoom screen, Terrell showed more interest in his water bottle and his cuticles than in the discussion. According to Nature Terrell, listed as a “consultant” in the NSF directory, had accessed the NSF awards system to block the dispersal of approved grants. The message I received was that the National Science Board had a role to play in name only.
Who is Zachary Terrell? He's a 23 year old with a B.S. from Kansas State. But my question in the title is why whoever is actually running the Dump administration decided to give this clown the power to veto National Science Foundation grants. What is their goal? What are they trying to accomplish by this? I'll be happy to hear any suggestions.
3 comments:
Well, Cervantes, you have suggested at least two or three plausible reasons for the havoc and destruction that Musk and Shitler are wreaking on our government and our lives:
1) They are narcissistic madmen who want to control the universe.
2) Being narcissists, they think they know better than everyone in the world about everything, when in fact they are execrable jackasses.
3) they want to kill everyone, including probably themselves.
Freud called it the Thanatos drive. I believe it means that people like this are motivated in all their actions by the dive toward death. That would certainly make sense in terms of these two engines of destruction.
I was just thinking how totally insane it is that a government that falsely claims to be protecting Jews using the misnomer of "antisemitism" has been employing a neo-Nazi to destroy everything that's healthful about our government.
Do we need any more reasons than these to explain these monsters' actions?
PS: I still maintain that everything that is happening with this crazy, destructive unconstitutional administration Is based upon a racist view at Caucasian men should be the only people in charge of anything, and that no one else – – except, I suppose, Caucasian women in a subservient role – – deserves to live. it is this country's complete failure and unwillingness to take any responsibility whatsoever for its founding based on genocide and enslavement that is at the heart of all the utter rot. If something was rotten in the state of Denmark, everything is rotten in the United States of America.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/06/us-racism-maga-fascism-anti-woke-democracy
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