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Today's Opinions

  • Path to efficiency is regulation

    Year after year, mining and petroleum operations and motor vehicle manufacture steadily improve their methods, tools and products. These advances do not happen by whim or by chance.
    Behind the steady climb in efficiency are colleges that develop curricula and supply trained mining engineers, petroleum engineers and automotive engineers. The course work begins with the fundamentals of applied science and proceeds to the technologies of the named industries.
    In their fields, the schools also do original research projects that produce new knowledge and tools. Efficiency is driven by basic disciplines, application of basics and inventions from applying basics.
    The same path is the way to make regulatory systems efficient.
    The steps are clear. We need schools to supply regulatory engineers trained in the basics of engineering, with a major in regulatory applications. We need schools doing research to develop new regulatory knowledge and more powerful tools.
    This column examines new products of research that build efficiency in tasks of all kinds. Imagine if tools were created so regulating was done more surely in less time for less money. Surprising things are possible.

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  • Cinco de Mayo a holiday for all

    On Sunday, America will celebrate the most increasingly popular day of
    the year.
    It is ironic that just four days earlier, on May 1, we almost completely ignored the celebration of a day with many reasons to observe.
    May 1 has been celebrated as a pagan festival to welcome spring and encourage fertility since long before the beginnings of Christianity; then it was International Workers Day; then the day the Soviet Union paraded its military hardware; then it was Law Day and Loyalty Day.
    International Workers Day still is celebrated in most industrialized countries, but in the United States and Canada, we recognize labor in September, so May 1 passes without notice.
    But on May 5, we let it all hang out. It is Cinco de Mayo and we celebrate a Mexican victory in a small battle to stop the French invasion, which soon succeeded in taking over the country.
    The big celebration in Mexico is on Sept. 16, commemorating victory in the long struggle for independence from Spain.
    So if the United States wants to help its neighbor to the south celebrate a glorious occasion, why don’t we celebrate their biggest day on Sept. 16?

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  • Politicians and N.M. universities

    Former Gov. Garrey Carruthers is one of five finalists in line to become the next president of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
    NMSU’s presidency has been something of a revolving door in recent years with one president after another passing through in remarkably rapid succession, leaving onlookers to wonder what if anything had been accomplished during their brief tenures.
    Count this reporter among a good many other New Mexicans who has often wondered why the Board of Regents of that university has for so long failed to see the wisdom of putting an end to the turmoil by tapping Carruthers for their institution’s top job.
    His Ph.D. in economics is from Iowa State University, but he earned both his Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts at New Mexico State.
    After his four-year term (1987-91) as governor was over, Carruthers spent a few years in the private sector with management and development activities in the health-maintenance field.
    But for over a decade now, he has been dean of NMSU’s business college and he is plainly devoted to that institution. Indeed, Carruthers has reportedly told his six grandchildren that he will pay their way through college, “tuition, room, board and books,” with the proviso that they “have to go to New Mexico State.”

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  • Give credit where it's due

    Imagine my surprise when returning from out of town I find a brand new (huge) trail sign behind my neighborhood proclaiming The Satch Cowan Trail. And all this time I thought that Joe Devaney had built this trail, although it had almost disappeared after the Cerro Grande fire and Joe’s subsequent death. And then I thought that I had never seen Satch Cowan on this trail or on any other near the Quemazon trailhead in more than 30 years of hiking here.
    And then I remembered the spectacular trail that Jim Billen built single-handedly in Pueblo Canyon, possibly the most scenic in the county — a great wide path 1.2 miles long cut into the Bandelier Tuff below the rim.
    I even attended his trail completion party where he bought donuts and coffee for the hiking community.
    And then I did a little asking and found out that trails are not named after living people in this community and I thought about the Mitchell and Knapp trails that bore the names of the young men who built them and the Devaney Trail in Los Alamos Canyon named after Joe while he was still alive.
    What does it take to get the county to name the Jim Billen Trail after him while he is still alive? Why can’t credit be given where credit is due?
    Andi Kron
    Los Alamos 

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  • Special thanks to run volunteers

    What a wonderful community we live in! On behalf of the Los Alamos Chapter of Hadassah, we want to thank all the runners, walkers, sponsors and volunteers who supported our Third Annual Run For Her Life To Fight Breast Cancer 5K and 10K Run Fundraiser on April 14 in Los Alamos.
     Although it was a very cold and windy morning, we had
    70 participants and made $4,100 that will be sent directly to Hadassah for breast cancer research. Every dollar counts when we are helping Hadassah help everyone in the world.
    We want to acknowledge our gratitude to the following individuals, organizations and volunteers for their generous support:
    Los Alamos Monitor
    Ruby K’s in Los Alamos
    Dr. Phillip and Jeri Hertzman, Los Alamos/Santa Fe
    Sam’s Club of Santa Fe
    Chalmers Capitol Ford and Lincoln in Santa Fe
    Santa Claran Hotel and Casino in Española
    Los Alamos Medical Center
    Pearl V. White with Real Estate Associates, Los Alamos
    Los Alamos Jewish Center
    Kendra L. Henning with ReMax of Los Alamos
    Delaney Rieke with White Rock Sewing, LLC
    Mary Anne Beard with Mary Deal Realty
    Whole Foods Store in Santa Fe
    C B Fox Department Store
    KRSN Kommunity Radio
    Desert Tees and Sporting Goods, Santa Fe

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  • Nation's security relies on science

    The occasional neighborhood forest fire is one difference between Los Alamos National Laboratory and its offspring, Sandia National Laboratories, which was born in 1945 as LANL’s Z Division. A rich literature is another.
    One book that makes my list of essential New Mexico books, required reading for understanding the state, is Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
    While Los Alamos remains in the national defense and nuclear business, it, like Sandia, does much more. Web site wandering at lanl.gov uncovers some of the diversity.
    LANL’s most recent point of pride is Mustomo Inc., a start-up working with the University of New Mexico Hospital on a breast-cancer ultrasound system that produces “three-dimensional images of virtually every fraction of tissue being examined,” the Albuquerque Journal reported.
    LANL.gov states the mission as “scientific inquiry supporting nuclear deterrence, reducing global threats, fostering energy security.” The Science and Innovation tag on the top left of the lanl.gov home page lists a dozen “capabilities.”

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  • When glittering job creation deals tarnish

    It seemed like a good idea at the time.
    That’s a phrase that we can apply to all of life’s situations that didn’t quite pan out — impulse purchases, former marriages, job decisions, bad investments. It takes on a different flavor when it comes to our sometimes desperate efforts to create jobs.
    We’ve seen two economic development disappointments lately, and these things have two stages — the cost of the mistake itself and the fallout and recrimination that follow.
    First, there is Clovis, where a new cosmetics company was supposed to begin operations after the city provided $2 million to bankroll the deal in hopes of adding 350 jobs. Now the city is hunting the entrepreneur — and its cash — in Guatemala.
    How did the guy slip under everybody’s radar? I have in the past interviewed Chase Gentry, Clovis’s economic developer, and he’s shrewd and experienced. I’ve also interviewed banker Kent Carruthers, a board member of the Clovis Industrial Development Corp., and he’s nobody’s fool either.
    Boards of economic development organizations are usually a Who’s Who of a town’s major players. If these people could be snookered, it could happen anywhere.

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  • Derby Day fundraiser takes aim at tetanus

    The Kiwanis Club of Los Alamos is hosting a Kentucky Derby Party on Saturday, May 4 from 2:30-5:30 p.m. at the Dixie Girl Restaurant on Central Avenue. 

    The event, which is co-sponsored by the Los Alamos Medical Center, is a benefit for “Project Eliminate,” a Kiwanis International-UNICEF effort to wipe out maternal and neonatal tetanus worldwide. 

    Kentucky Derby Party Chair Linda Daly says, “Put on your best Derby attire, grab a Daily Racing Form and join us for an afternoon at Churchill Downs for the 139th Run for the Roses!” 

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