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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: EXPLANATION FOR THE HIGH END CRUSADER

Dear High-End Crusader,

I intended my e-mail note to you (quoted below) as private correspondence. I was thus somewhat taken aback when I saw my note treated as a Letter to the Editor, which one offers for possible publication. I find my private note to you quoted in another article in HPCwire. Unfortunately, I am not a regular reader of HPCwire and so am unfamiliar with your anonymous mode of operation and its significance. I also misjudged precisely whose e-mail address appears at the end of your column; apparently, it is not yours but rather that of your editor.

OMB and OSTP, not unexpectedly, were not at all pleased with the use of the word "stonewalling". Actually, I was repeating that characterization from elsewhere in Washington, but it was irresponsible of me to repeat it. Instead, after discovering much more of what is going on from a reliable source, a far better characterization might be the "continuing review of HECRTF by the Administration (OMB and OSTP)". Naturally, I and many others are frustrated by the length of time this review has taken, but that could simply be because OMB and OSTP attach special significance to HEC in the US and are keen to make the best possible decision, especially in such a difficult budget climate. In any event, HECRTF is most assuredly neither dead nor collapsed.

Alan J. Laub
Department of Computer Science
One Shields Avenue
University of California
Davis, CA 95616-8562

THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE APPEARS BELOW:

Great article! Thanks. Speaking as a co-chair of the HECRTF---and I agree that the fact that the report has not yet been made public is truly "tragic" ---I would suggest that rather than speak of the "collapse of HECRTF", it is more correct to speak of the stonewalling of HECRTF by the Administration (OMB). Congress (e.g., the House Science Committee) desperately wants this report and they can't even get it! How very sad.