Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

Computing Community Consortium (CCC)

Over the past couple of years, a group of us helped bootstrap the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), as part of the Computing Research Association (CRA), with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Quoting the CCC web page:

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives.

HPC and Climate Change: Senate Hearing

On Thursday, May 8, I testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology. The full committee hearing was on improving the "Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling for Decision Makers and End-Users." The other members of the hearing panel were

• Alexander (Sandy) MacDonald, Director, Earth System Research Laboratory, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes, Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• James (Jim) Hack, Director, National Center for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory 
• Edward Sarachik, Co-Director, Center for Science in the Earth System, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington
• Bruce Carlisle, Assistant Director, Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management
• John Walsh, President's Professor of Climate Change, Chief Scientist, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska

Jim Hack and I represented the computing and computational science issues, and the other four focused on the climate aspects. Within a few weeks, our written testimony will be posted on the Committee's hearing page, and in due time (many months), our oral testimony will appear in the Congressional Record.

Eudora, You Got the Love?

As I was unpacking boxes of books recently, as part of my move to Microsoft, I opened my copy of the collected stories of Eudora Welty. This awakened memories of my southern childhood and two anecdotes about Ms. Welty, one technical and another cultural.