What is this?

 For many years there has been a blog for LLNL folks. For a long time it was a good site, full of useful postings about conditions at LLNL, retirement issues, major news stories in Science and Technology, as well as news from DoE that was relevant to LLNL or Sandia Livermore.

At some point that blog also took over for a similar blog at LANL which had foundered after it's moderator quit. Suddenly the nature of postings changed in character. Postings covering Livermore became more and more rare. These days it's almost completely LANL-dominated topics.

Civility went out the window too. Trolls often posted rude comments or personal attacks on other posts. I tried helping the moderator to get rid of the trolls with some success.

But there were other problems, accusations of  censorship. It took a while but eventually I was able to find supporting evidence. The blog moderator was throwing out posts from conservative thinkers, even those posts that were quite mellow in nature.

The solution to all this is a new blog that sticks to just Livermore-related topical matters, uses strong rules to safeguard the community from trolls and hate speech, and rejects the progressive-inspired censorship in favor of polite openness.

In Japan, there is the belief that a person who folds one thousand origami cranes (千羽鶴, senbazuru; literally “1000 cranes”) will be granted a wish by the gods. Each article here will be yet one more crane folded in hope that LLNL and Sandia folks can once again have a forum that belongs to them. The crane legend is a fitting choice -  the Children's Peace Monument in Hiroshima.

 



 * Image courtesy Wikipedia.

I recommend the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes to learn more about the remarkable child behind the creation of this monument.
                                                                                     

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