Astronomers are Procrastinators with No Lives

[astra_nomer]

First some background. Every ten years, the NRC conducts an eponymous Decadal Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Right now, they are soliciting white papers from the community for the 2010 review. So everybody gets to submit their own ideas of their own vision of where astronomy is going in the next 10 years.

White papers are due February 15, the day after Valentine's Day. So guess what all the astronomers in this country will be doing tomorrow night? Spending some good quality time with their computers furiously finishing up their white papers, of course, because there's nothing like a good deadline to make an astronomer all hot and bothered.

Now, I had mostly been watching from the sidelines, except this week I got two requests to contribute to or comment on white papers. So now I get to be caught up in the madness, too. Kind of throws a wrench in my plans for the weekend. *grump*

Comments

[vfish.livejournal.com]

The whole timing of Astro 2010 has been unfortunate. The announcement went out right as many astronomers were leaving for the holidays. Then there was the AAS meeting. Letters of intent were due the following week, and white papers a month after that. The whole thing might have gone much more smoothly if they had given another one or two months' notice of the whole process.