End of a Scientific Legend?

pacopico writes to mention the sorry state of the well-known Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sixty years ago, it was at the forefront of the race for the Atomic bomb. Nowadays, "smugness can breed complacency, and complacency carelessness. In recent years the laboratory has been in the news not for its successes but its failures.The result is a change of management, which the story goes on to discuss in great detail. It begs the question - can Los Alamos hang on as a prestigious place or is it too late for the supercomputing powerhouse and weapons lab?"

Comments

Re:Double standard?

[IHC Navistar]

Um..... China *is* evil, and a lab that produced a bomb that vaporized 25,000 people in a fraction of a second *is* 'presigious' and a 'legend', considering the Japanese threw the first punch, weren't backing down, and were hell bent on traing their civilians on military tactics and warfare. If you start a war, be damn ready to suffer if you lose. The next time you want to criticize history, remember: Survival and History outweigh Propaganda and Liberal "group-hug" sentimentalities.

The Bomb was the best thing that happened during the war. Seeing as how the only other alternative was to stage an even more massive, D-Day-style invasion, which would have (and was projected to) cost far more American lives to carry out than the number of lives taken by the atomic bombs, nobody can create a rational argument against the use of the bomb.

If you are training your civilian population in military tactics (and, yes, the Japanese WERE doing that, down to males as young as 8), then they are just as much a fair target as any Japanese soldier was)

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Sig Sauer

Re:It didn't jump; it was pushed

[twiddlingbits]

Give me a fucking break, you have ZERO proof on any of this, because like you said it's all Classified. Have you EVER worked on a highly classified project? I have, and the extra security is a nightmare in time and money. The reason a lot of it IS classified is that it is experimental, which means it may NOT work!! As far as LockMart and Bechtel, those guys are not dummies they give generously to BOTH parties. You DO know that cby law there is a cap on Coporate contributions, and the money comes from the EMPLOYEE PACs not the company bank account. I know, I'm been there and had money subtracted (voluntary) to support my Employee PAC. Hey dummy, when your party is in power you get to run the WHOLE GOVERNMENT!!! The Democrats did it for 30 yrs and I don't see you bitching about that. Oversight is still there, or have you forgotten the Scotter Libby case?? No that he did anything wrong but there is an way to investigate, which is oversight. Don't let a few things like FACTS get in the way of a good Bush Bashing. When you are smart enough and have been around a few adminstrations then you'll learn how things really work versus how your liberal PoliSci professors want you to think.