Slashdot Mirror

In a lot of respects I felt as if I had done something worthwhile. I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability.

Wow.

Sounds like a man who's spent 60 years defending an action that, if he isn't quite ashamed of, he can't quite muster genuine pride over. Lehr's defense here amounts to "I did what I was told and despite the fact it was technically difficult I did a realy good job." What kind of justification is that? I'm not saying what he did was even wrong. I'm saying is this kind of reasoning is faulty. An in any case it sounds like after the fact justification. That's the human condition: life goes by to quick to make justifiable decisions, so we justify after the fact.

There are two things which keep us out of trouble most of the time: comparing our behavior to those around us, and experience. Naturally, the less experience you have, the more you count on what other people are doing. Lehr was only 23 years old when he was in the famous series of photos with the bomb initiators and core. Lots of young engineers were doing defense work, and this was the biggest project of all. It must have seemed like a great decision for the first couple of years he had to live with it.

J Robert Oppenheimer was 37 when the proejct started up and about 41 at the bomb detonation. He not only had more actual life experience, but a lifetime of imagination counts towards experience as well. Oppenheimer was the kind man who could quote for the Bhagavad Gita decades before most of his countrymen had even heard of it. But, older and wiser he may have been, in the end made the same decision. The difference is that it embroiled the rest of his life in controversy and struggle.

So, maybe it is best for us if we don't think too deeply over things that have happened in our pasts. But we should think more about the consequences of our next action.

You mean no more dangerous than this http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/LA/Ph oto-Pages-2/LAP-217.htm

I keed, I keed.

Note: Due to additional security procedures following the events of September 11, 2001, the Secret City Scenic Excursion Train is currently boarding at the back gate of the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), formerly known as the K-25 facility. This situation will continue until we are advised otherwise by security officials at ETTP.

Scary as all that sounds, I've actually been on the train ride. It's very pleasant, the rail cars are antiques, and the tour guide's history of Oak Ridge during WWII was interesting. (Checks rad badge again. No problems.)

It's a shame to see the old girl go down, really. She's done a lot in her time in "Happy Valley". K-25 was at one time the world's largest building. (For a sense of scale, have a look at the two-story townhouses at the bottom of the pic. If you look carefully, you'll see that the two buildings in the center are actually just one building.)

Note: Due to additional security procedures following the events of September 11, 2001, the Secret City Scenic Excursion Train is currently boarding at the back gate of the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), formerly known as the K-25 facility. This situation will continue until we are advised otherwise by security officials at ETTP.

Scary as all that sounds, I've actually been on the train ride. It's very pleasant, the rail cars are antiques, and the tour guide's history of Oak Ridge during WWII was interesting. (Checks rad badge again. No problems.)

It's a shame to see the old girl go down, really. She's done a lot in her time in "Happy Valley". K-25 was at one time the world's largest building. (For a sense of scale, have a look at the two-story townhouses at the bottom of the pic. If you look carefully, you'll see that the two buildings in the center are actually just one building.)

Are you sure that there isn't 15,000 tons of silver bullion on earth?

Remember: a small group of what were basically graduate students were able to build a city-buster bomb in the middle of a desert with access to only 1940's-era technology, and not really that much of it.

Funny, 'cause I've heard it took about 90 PhD level physicists, many of which were Nobel Prize recipiants.

Maybe you're confusing the real Manhattan Project with the movie "The Manhattan Project"?

Go check out the satellite pictures of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan pre-November, 2001, and notice how similar they look, from a distance, to Los Alamos circa late 1944.

Go check out the satellite pictures of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan pre-November, 2001, and notice how similar they look to a generic group of buildings!

=Smidge=

The difference is that these "graduate students" (about 20 of whom won Nobel prizes), were trained in the latest developments in atomic and nuclear physics at the time, and had the technical training to use and adapt that knowledge.

Al Qaeda, by contrast, puts its highest emphasis on knoweldge of the Koran, and secondarily on guerrilla training and weapons with minimal technical sophistication. Yes, they have desire, but they have the wrong mindset and training to have any success in such an engineering endeavor.

The only likely way for Al Qaeda to get nuclear weapons is to persuade their allies in the Pakistani intelligence organization or Iran to arrange for a bomb to be "misplaced" on its way to North Korea or some such.