The Steamer: NJ Branch Office

Monday, May 7, 2007

The problem with Los Alamos

Los Alamos used to be hardcore. A top research lab in the country during the 1940s, it brought us such things as the atomic bomb and quotes like "Now we are all sons of bitches" and "I am Death: Destroyer of Worlds". What kind of crazy bastard comes up with that kind of crap?! I'll tell you who: An Electrical Engineer With Street Cred. Someone who takes electric shocks, acid burns, and the odd bit of radiation in stride. An engineer's engineer. Someone who doesn't cry out like a pussypants pansyface every time the going gets tough.

Nowadays, things have changed for the worse. The problem is easily summarized by this excerpt of a recent NY Times article: "The trouble, Dr. Nanos said, is that some workers have shown a willful disregard of the rules, even after new standards were put in place within the last year. This summer, an intern's eye was injured by a laser, and on July 7, two Zip drives containing classifed information were found to be missing."

The trouble, my dear Dr. Nanos, is that you pansies are all too busy crying into your earl grey tea about your pitiful lasered eyeballs to protect your sensitive data. Back in at the good old U of D we raise a higher caliber of engineer than that. In the summer of 2000 Bryan shot himself in the eye with a laser and you don't hear him whining about it. We weren't even in the laser lab for a real reason... we were just bored. One laser beam to the eye later we were still bored but slightly less so, and that was it... no boo hoo hoo bullshit, or losing sensitive documents that are probably going to give China "the bomb" or whatever was actually on those disks. But let me guess, you're just covering up the fact that the only "national secrets" that were on those disks were your favorite recipes or a pirated copy of Best of Oprah Winfrey.