Atomic Nerds

Today I received a letter from Los Alamos National Lab’s HR division, informing me that I had not been selected for a job I applied for with them.

A job I applied for a full year ago.

Thanks, guys, but I kinda guessed.

Your friendly nuclear weapons lab wishes to remind you today that bombing Pearl Harbor may result in adverse side effects, such as excessive rubble, lingering sickness, and a national simultaneous expression of “Holy shit, what the hell was that?”

Please remember, for your safety and ours, do not bomb Pearl Harbor.

Hugs, kisses, and fallout,
Los Alamos

…free state style. Last week I finally broke down and got a flashlight holder for my belt. Yada yada, sometimes bad guys are in the dark, etc. Mostly I just finally realized hey, if I have a light with me I won’t be squinting and trying to figure WTF I’m looking at in less than brilliant direct sunlight. So far I’ve already been reaching for my flashlight as much if not more than my multitool (though still nowhere near as much as just for a pocketknife). Not only is it useful as hell, but it brings a nice balance to the weight distribution. It does, however, take a bit of getting used to in some respects.

Since weekends are homeowner chore marathon days, I of course had some errands to run around town. And since Los Alamos didn’t get the memo that it’s supposedly the coldest winter since Gramps was killed by exploding trees walking uphill both ways, even wearing a hooded sweatshirt out was pushing the borders of overkill. With that in mind, I grabbed a sweatshirt that normally does fine covering sidearm, magazines, and leatherman but apparently is just a skosh too small to hide sidearm, mags, leatherman, and flashlight.

Standing at the grocery checkout, it was surprisingly slow at the store, so the cashier and I were chatting. The manager, a pleasant enough fellow but not someone I’d conversed with further than general pleasantries and such when he was manning a register was around too. I finished paying and went to leave and in departure from normal, he followed and motioned me slightly aside. I thought I’d forgotten something, but apparently not.

“So what do you shoot?”

Had I mentioned that previous conversations were just “How’s your day, nice weather, etc” already? ‘Cause I hadn’t ever said word one about toys that go bang around him before.

“Well, I’m fond of pretty much anything that goes ‘bang’….” I must’ve looked confused at this point. Turns out my sweatshirt had ridden up over the flashlight. When he saw that, he then noticed the magazine carrier, and from there saw the bulge – still well covered, he was kind enough to point out – on my hip. As it turns out, he’s rather fond of shooting too, and through the rest of the conversation we wound up just shy of actually setting a “Lets go plinking” get together.

Ok, there isn’t really much else to the story, I just wanted to gloat that there are still some places and people downright cool about guns, despite all the hand wringing and doom floating about over things like the college panicking over a single round of ammo. Hell, might even wind up with a shootin’ buddy out of all this too, and given that the closest folks we socialize with other than my parents are a good 45 minute drive off at best (or a couple hours for others), I’d call that a win.

Peter, the Bayou Renaissance Man, along with a fairly good sized chunk of the rest of the nation, has noticed that Los Alamos National Labs has once again done screwed up (article courtesy of him). To people outside the town, and frankly to a good number here too, these ongoing security problems boggle the mind. How could we go from developing the bomb in near total secrecy to this current shoddy state of affairs where classified material can be found in meth labs?

If you’re one of the people asking those questions, I think the most accurate response is another question: Mister, you’re not from around here, are you?

I suppose it’s probably best to start with the basics. Los Alamos, and its detached suburb White Rock, holds around 20,000 people, give or take a few thousand. Roughly eight or nine thou live in White Rock, with the rest “on the hill.” That’s not the smallest small town in America by any stretch, but I think it’s a safe bet to say it’s the smallest small town that could manufacture the capacity to destroy all life on this planet. We have more PhDs per square mile than any other place on earth, including MIT. The town itself is very small, roughly 100 square miles, much of which is mountain-goat steep. Locals joke that the only way our high school football team can advance the ball is to put it on the field and just let it roll end over end towards the goal post. There isn’t a whole lot of land that’s suitable to build housing on, and that’s reflected in the local market for such. Surrounded by federal land such as Bandelier National Monument, the huge tracts of acreage that LANL occupies, and the Indian Reservations, we don’t have much in the way of expansion options either. That means you have to actually want to live here to find a place and stay in it.

I’m going to be quoting a good bit from this account. Some parts of it are rather out of date (it was written in 1994, and $diety help me, I actually knew the cheerleaders in the pictures there), but a great deal of it is accurate. Especially things like

Before I showed up, I figured the town and the lab would contain a random sampling of the technical elite. That was true during World War II when the lab sucked in every available physicist and engineer in the nation. I hadn’t been there long before I realized that a process of self selection obtains here. Consider the thoughts of a graduating PhD physicist.

“Let’s see… I’ve got my PhD and I want to move to a state where I’ll be left alone. That means Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, or Wyoming. I don’t want to have to talk to students so that rules out universities. Maybe I could even find a job where it would be illegal for me to talk to more than 1000 other people worldwide. Say, that pretty much narrows it down to Los Alamos.”

That part is still fairly accurate, and the type of person that follows that thought process is a non-trivial factor in why anywhere else in the state people automatically look at you with some suspicion when you mention you’re from Los Alamos. Many teens leaving the town for college at either UNM or NMSU simply claim to be from Santa Fe, or even Espanola when their classmates ask where they’re from.

To be fair, yes, we are a weird town- and though this is pretty roundabout, I’m working on including that in the “how this happens” thing. A while back LabRat and I were at a cigar club in Santa Fe, shooting the breeze and generally enjoying a night out off the hill, since Los Alamos has less nightlife than McMurdo Station*. While there, we met a pair of tourists who were spending the summer in Santa Fe, and who were flat incredulous to meet people who actually lived with those weirdos. Apparently they had been told that the camping in the Jemez mountains and Bandelier was not to be missed. They got some (bad) thumbnail directions, and set off towards the mountains. After first getting over their shock that there was no store in town carrying even budget camping supplies (“You guys don’t even have a Wal-Mart! We had to drive another 40 minutes each way to get sleeping bags!”), they returned to the hill and set about trying to find the mountains. Apparently the big rocky pointy things off over n’yah were too subtle for them. At any rate, when they entered town, they did so with a broken tail light. Then they noticed someone seemed to be following them. At first, they said they shrugged it off, but when it eventually became clear that they really were being followed, they got understandably nervous. A few random “can we shake this guy?” turns later, they stopped, grabbed camp shovels from their back seat, and got out to ask the stranger just WTF. As it turns out, yes, he was following them. Why? To tell them about the broken tail light. The cops up here will ticket you for that, y’know (and they will, too. Just sayin’.). I will readily admit that is not the kind of behavior you see just about anywhere else these days.

Ok, so we’re weird as hell. Does that alone explain the security problems? A bunch of “leave me the hell alone, I’m working here” physicists who just don’t want to interact with others? Yes and no. A good number of infractions are, in fact, a direct result of some conehead (our local semi-but-not-really affectionate term for the PhDs who walk around wearing Velcro sandals with black socks and shorts, etc) essentially coming to the conclusion that the administrative processes in place around classified materials don’t apply to him or her because they’re so good at what they do, etc. The deeper cause, though, is that they’re not One Of Us.

To my eye, there have been two incidents with the most impact to security, and the sometimes flawed execution thereof at Los Alamos National Labs. The first is the fall of the Berlin Wall. Before 1989, the atmosphere in this town was very different. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, as it was even impressed on kids such as myself, knew that the purpose of Los Alamos was to make sure we could nuke harder than the commies. End of discussion. Yeah, there’ll be some useful science spinning off from that mission, and that’s cool and we want to encourage that, but keep your eye on that glowing blue prize there, bucko. Good men and women in many fields came to Los Alamos with that in mind, and with the understanding that global annihilation of mankind was a very real possibility of failure to have a convincing deterrent. In the very first days of Los Alamos, the threat was different, but the weight of the duty was still high. Basically, until the Berlin Wall fell, the consequences of fucking up were pretty damn dire. The exception in this was the period immediately after World War II ended, when we had our first, and arguably most severe, security leak courtesy of the Rosenbergs. A slack time without a life-or-death mission bred complacency. The same took root after the wall fell, when the threat of the USSR getting pissy largely went away.

The second major event follows as a direct result of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As with the post-war scenario, the workload was still here, but with considerably less “do or die” mentality. Again, this led to relaxation and sloppiness. Also during this time, the lab underwent a large reduction in force. A large number of very dedicated cold warriors took the early retirement incentive package, and went on about their business. A whole hell of a lot of those folks were One Of Us.

On one of my summer mountain bike excursions, I stopped to talk with a woman who lived in White Rock, a satellite town of 8,000 that makes Los Alamos look positively cosmopolitan. Now that her kids were grown, didn’t she mind living in White Rock with just her husband?

“Oh, we moved here a couple of years ago because we like the outdoors and the West. White Rock is great. Of course, you recognize everyone because you see them every day at the Lab or in the supermarket, but people create their own sense of privacy by not saying `hello’ even if they’ve seen you a hundred times before.”

This is simultaneously dead-on accurate, and flagrant bullshit. Now as I’ve sprinkled in the term One Of Us through this, I hope the three of you still reading have been getting appropriate choruses of “Gooble gobble” when I use it. For someone just moving to this town, such as the PhD who wants to be left alone to his work, other people are basically very complicated Eliza programs. For the people who like the work, but want to live in Santa Fe, social lives follow more traditional routes with dinner parties, normal gossip, and all the petty bullshit associated therewith. There is a third group though. This is a group that by and large doesn’t need the “dinner invitation every night as I did back in Boston.”

“I had lots of friends back in New Jersey. But I’ve been here for two years and people don’t really even meet my eye on the street,” was a typical lament.

Two years, huh? I think I see your problem there, slick. See, Los Alamos is by no means the birthplace of the Good Ol’ Boys network, but by gawd did we take a run at getting it up and working here. By and large, it was wildly successful. The average leave-me-alone physicist will probably rotate out for another lab, or a university position fairly (relatively) soon. No point getting to know a short timer, right? This third group of course has the normal career, family, and to a degree social concerns as anybody else. But this group also just plain fundamentally loves Los Alamos, and all its bizarre quirks. You don’t have to have been here for multiple generations, but it helps. Some people, the town sticks on ‘em, and they successfully become One Of Us in fairly short order. It’s not common, but it certainly happens. On the other hand, this also tends to attract the posers. The folks who see the obvious advantage to membership in the good ol’ boys, but they’re still mostly just looking for their Nobel ticket (or field equivalent). So far this probably sounds a bit like a judicial definition of pornography – I can’t tell you what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it. Let me give you an example.

When I was growing up, right around the start of my teenage years, I of course did something stupid. I don’t remember what it was, specifically, just that it was the sort of thing I didn’t want mom and dad to find out about. Being the ever-wise youth, I simply wrote off the observers as people I didn’t know, and hadn’t seen around my parents. A few days later, I found myself in water rather warmer than expected seeing as how there were no witnesses of note. Well, it turns out that someone who knew my grandmother’s second husband saw me, and mentioned it to the barber. The next day when said husband was in for a trim, the news passed along to him. From there to granny, to dad, to my suddenly sore backside. A day or two later, my entire local family was in one room for some trivial occasion. Mom, dad, grandmothers on both sides, and step-grandad on dad’s side. I think if my maternal grandfather hand been there, what follows would have been an even more complete humiliation. At any rate, I was still irate over being caught by such a loose net and made an indignant remark along the lines of “I can’t do anything. The five of you know every person in this town!”

Nobody objected in the slightest to this notion. Naturally, I took umbrage with such social-networking arrogance and called them on it.

“Oh yeah? You all know everybody? Fine! Let’s see!” I grabbed the local phone book and flipped open to a random page. “Jack House!”
“He’s in the car club. He’s got a ’65 Vette,” my Dad replied.
“Lucky shot. Stephanie Hafer!”
“We both worked as secretaries when it was still the Zia Company providing staffing,” offered my grandmother.
“Coincidence! Richard Lebeda!”
“He was my lasers instructor at the UNM branch,” Mom told me. It continued in this vein for a good ten minutes. They didn’t miss a single name. Some might suppose that they were just making up these details to keep a step ahead of the kid, but having watched my family in action in this town for as long as I have, I’m gonna go ahead and take their word for it.

Back to security, a lot of people who were in this known-to-all group took that early retirement. Being that familiar with each other, even if socialization was not of the type considered normal everywhere else (remember, I already copped that we’re weird here), they were really just that familiar with who was who, who needed access to what, and whether so and so was allowed to see such and such. There were formal rules in place for all this, of course, and the clearance system was (and is) still overseen by the FBI for background checks and the like, but with everybody this familiar with everybody else, some rules could be bent a little here and there. Forget to take the battery out of your phone in the classified area? Well, if it’s that new guy from Jersey that spends every night in Santa Fe even though he lives here, better write him up. Oh, it was just Frank? Give him some shit about it and don’t mention it. Obviously this is flawed from a strict security standpoint. There are copious examples of spies building the sort of confidence and trust necessary to gain access to these “I knew his pappy when his pappy was a punk” environments. It’s not easy, but it’s certainly possible, and I’m sure that it happened a few times here too. Only the fact that the history of this town is so relatively short, and so many of these folks truly were multi-generational inhabitants to really know “Yes, Ralph is ok” offered any extra layer of protection. The formal rules of course helped, but iron-clad and inflexible is almost as bad as too loose and sloppy. I won’t roll this into anything about zero tolerance policies, because even now things don’t work that way here. They’re closer to it, but there’s still some small degree of discretion.

Unfortunately, there are fewer people in positions to exercise that discretion who actually have the local knowledge to do so. The folks who saw the network and wanted to gain the advantages it brought were playing along well enough to get a bit of clout, even though they couldn’t recite the local family trees. That brings us to the second major come-to-Jesus incident for lab security, Wen Ho Lee.

Between the wall falling and Mr. Lee’s actions** security was going on more or less as usual. The strict rules were enshrined and in place, though bent with increasingly questionable judgement by the nouveaux good ol’ boys. Classified got a little fast and loose with “Well, normally I wouldn’t, but the Russkies don’t care anymore, so what the hell.” I exaggerate some, but not as much as you’d probably like. So eventually Mr. Lee comes along and with improper GOB oversight gets his red-badged*** hands into all sorts of things, and moves them hither and yon whence their movement is not blessed. The resulting situation is basically a clusterfuck all around, and going into what all went wrong and what went right and so forth is worth a few thousand words of its own. The main result though was to expose just how much vouching and rule bending was going on – obviously way too much.

This freaked seven shades of shit out of lab management, and rightly so. There were work stoppages, and more than a few points where it looked like the lights would be shut off by the end of the month. Management vowed to concentrate on security and clean this mess up. The slow but steady stream of incidents like the recent missing laptops is mostly because of this. Partly, Los Alamos is under greater national scrutiny. We’re the Big Lab in terms of public recognition, so similar incidents at Lawrence Livermore or Sandia don’t get covered as much (and they have had their share as bad as some of the ones reported here, they just didn’t get the press). Blaming it all on that, however, ignores some other, bigger problems. The Good Ol Boys, for their part, have closed ranks. If a rule is bent in this little cabal now, it is only for the sort of person so trusted that even if it does turn out he’s a spy, he’d better hope China is a lot bigger than anybody said. Either that or find transport off-planet post haste. The new breed, however, is confused. Not having actually assimilated, they didn’t notice the old guard growing tight lipped and taking their badges off when leaving lab property**** and more or less kept on keeping on. Rules were bent a little too much for folks they shouldn’t have been bent for. The cantankerous physicists now came into their role as an exacerbating factor.

It’s a fair piece easier to spot someone who’s obsessed with his work and doesn’t give a damn about that bothersome Eliza that keeps nattering at it than it is to vet the new guy. The scientists, for their part, are of the mindset that information largely should be free and distributed far and wide. Now combine the guy who wants to keep working after he goes home***** with the guy who’s inclined to bend the rules so he can fit in better, and you’ve got the incident with missing classified removable electronic media. I don’t want to get too far into the realm of tinfoil hattery, but the way it went down outside the CNN stories, well… there was a definite air of “I’m looking! I’m looking! I know I put it in my left desk drawer because it was Thursday and then I ….” to the whole thing.

On top of that, the lab has been changing management. Repeatedly. We’ve been through a small handful of directors, and the overseeing body is no longer the University of California. Each change there brings with it a new pack of “We know best!” outsiders for the management side of the house. Each cycle through, something turns up missing. Or misfiled. Or maybe in a meth lab. Los Alamos National Lab is a multi-billion dollar organization, and that equates to one metric assload of red tape to keep everything running. For the scientist trying to get what he or she needs, they do try to make it fairly transparent, but other departments, and the management for those science divisions still have to balance books. People are people, and mistakes do happen. Ain’t reality a bitch?

So there you have it. 67 missing laptops, and a Blackberry in a “sensitive foreign country?” For starters, given the inherent trouble in keeping precise track of several thousand computers, mobile and stationary, I’d bet a fair sum that a good number of those turn up in a spare-parts closet with a note “Enter these into the system soon!” For seconds, I consider it a pretty good improvement that the biggest worry with these is private personal information. Identity theft, or nuclear secrets? The lab is far from perfect, and there are a boatload of reasons that things like this keep happening. It’s somewhat depressing to realize that no matter what, they will also continue to happen. This town has its own unique culture that contributes a lot to the security picture that simply isn’t visible from a CNN story, or a watchdog group. Sometimes those contributions are helpful and appropriate. Sometimes they do need a second look and improvement. But we’re weird here. This is how we do things. We try our damndest to do the best job we possibly can, and sometimes that falls short. Bringing in a fancy New York or Washington security attitude has its advantages, but I gotta ask… you ain’t been here long, have you?

*I’m really not kidding, and only slightly exaggerating. Shops that stay open until 8pm advertise that they’re open late, and most restaurants where you sit to eat close in the 7:30-8pm range. We have four fast food joints, and only one of them is open past 10pm, with two closing by 9. We only got a local movie theater in about 2004, and it sucks since the teenagers desperate for anything to do other than homework or going into the mountains to drink or smoke pot flood it and treat it like an overgrown daycare. The last time we visited, the theater was rowdy enough to warrant complaint to the manager, who we interrupted in the middle of a conversation with one of the brats while saying, and I am not making this up, “Yeah, so I can climb out my window and meet you at about 11:30.” Not that I’m still irritated or anything…

**It is still a subject that will generate rather heated debate in town here as to whether he really was a spy and managed to game the courts, or if he really was just a dumbass conehead that screwed up.

***Foreign nationals, regardless of security clearance, wear red identification badges.

****LANL policy has always said that badges are not to be worn around the townsite for security reasons. Before the wall fell, everybody ignored this because everybody was paying that close attention to the situation. After that but before Mr. Lee, nobody cared because hey, no Russians. After Mr. Lee, you could tell who was at least taking a stab at trying to play ball by a conspicuous but empty lanyard around the neck, etc. The New Guys still wear their badges around town.

*****Los Alamos traffic is amazing for this phenomenon. The morning rush is like Death Race 2000. The speed limit raises by about 15mph, and intersections are packed with people in a Big Damn Hurry. The evening rush, on the other hand, you’re doing good if you’re only doing 10mph below the speed limit, and parking lots and intersections are clogged with “Nah, you first”-ism. It’s frickin’ weird.

LabRat’s big bio post she promised is turning out to have way more meat to sort through than she expected, so after a shitty day at work she opted to punt to me for content for today. Rather than offer up Standard Internet Tech Rant #4 (“I hate my users so damn much”), I’ll just perform my own punt for a little of whatever grabs me that I can work through without the urge to stab and stab again until the stupid stops.

First, an “Only in Los Alamos” moment. Thanks to aforementioned shitty day, cooking was growing increasingly unlikely as dinnertime drew near. Since LR indulged me recently to scratch an itch I’d had for hot wings, it was my turn to indulge her, so we went to the local Greek place. Since Los Alamos restaurants live or die by the lunch crowd from the national labs, dinner services are… spotty at best. This particular place is normally a tomb after about 6:30, but tonight there were actually a few people in there. Sitting a few tables away from us was a pair of older gents. Not doddering old, but certainly not spring chickens either. Since the joint was still pretty empty, and LabRat and I aren’t the garrulous and noisy types when we eat out, bits of their conversation kept drifting over. A few of the more choice bits included “But that was back when you could actually find someone with a working understanding of rotational momentum,” “Right, but if you get 10^20 neutrons you still won’t be able to measure anything significant!” and “Well yeah, you can pulse it all you want, but until you get the proper wavelength the energy field is going to be trivial!” Betcha don’t hear that kind of side chatter at your local pub!

Next up, a quick reach into the history wagon. Way back when we were first starting this whole blog project up, I put up a review of the Sog Twitch XL. Since there were one or two things in there that have changed with time and use, and for some reason “sog twitch xl review” is still one of the more frequent terms cropping up in our sitemeter logs for some reason, I figured I should at some point throw some sort of update on it. Not really enough for a full post, but it’ll do to stretch this one out, by crackey! In the original review, I opined that the thumbstuds on the blade were next to useless. The spring assist on it was too tight to lever the blade open without the use of either both hands, or the thumb-spur on the back. The spring finally did loosen up some, to where it is possible to use the studs without it seeming more likely to open my thumb on a partially-opened blade than anything else, but I still think the thumbstuds are overall useless. The spring is still tight enough, even with more than a year of regular use, to make thumb slicing seem a little too probable, and really, the spur is just plain easier to manipulate. If they’d either moved the studs forward on the blade a little for more leverage, or left them off entirely, that would’ve done the trick. Also, the safety does tend to engage itself more often than I’d like just in the course of riding around in a pocket, but so far I’ve never had to deal with a charging cape buffalo with only my trusty pocketknife that suddenly wouldn’t open, so still not a huge deal. Otherwise, still a great knife.

Hey, speaking of sitemeter, let’s see if they’ve got something good to pad a bit. Mining those search terms works pretty well for other folks after all. Hmm…”roseholme cottage” Nope, sorry. Try one of these two lovely ladies. This is Nerd Ranch, Roseholme is a time zone or two over.

“view from the porch blog-=tam” Ok, what the hell. Did Tam haax0r my blog and take over or something? Sheesh.

“dealing with pushy men” I’m partial to 124gr at about 1100fps, but your mileage may vary. 230gr at 850ish is popular, and it’s damn hard to argue with 240gr at about 1200fps if you’ve got the wrists for it.

“new mexican californian texan drink same twice” A Texan, a Californian, and a New Mexican are sitting in a bar having some drinks. The Texan finishes his drink, smashes the glass, and says “In Texas, we’ve got so much money from oil we never drink from the same glass twice!” The Californian finishes his drink, and smashes the bottle of wine he poured it from. “In California, we’ve got so many grapes we never drink from the same bottle twice!” Finally the New Mexican finishes his drink, and shoots the Texan and Californian. “In New Mexico, we’ve got so damn many Texans and Californians we never drink with the same ones twice!”

“google crom problems” His definitions of just and mighty flames has been getting a little strict lately.

Finally, just to make sure there’s a little hate in here for everyone, please familiarize yourself with this sign. I could spew profanity over that increasingly popular little demonstration that folks weren’t paying attention in English class, but it won’t do any good. The dumbasses most frequently guilty tend to prefer digging themselves into deeper and deeper holes rather than say “Oh, I have made a mistake in proper use of the language. I will remedy this in the future,” and then call me a Nazi for getting worked up about grammar and spelling in a medium of communication entirely based on grammar and spelling. Fuckers.

G’night everybody!

Eight years and five months ago, a forest service asshole by the name of Roy Weaver approved a controlled burn somewhat to the west of Los Alamos. The results were unpleasant.

Because I’m too sick of politics, especially that evil* Biden, to say more on the subject, let’s instead enjoy some of Mother Nature’s fireworks displays. Pictures are linked to full-size.

Busy weekend ahead with a pig roast in Albuquerque tomorrow, and a Corvette party on Sunday, so posting may be a hair light. Oh, and if anybody happens to see where the bolt catch spring for my AR build landed, I’d appreciate it if you’d just leave it on my desk.

*Espousing policies that are blatantly marxist such as government adjustment of mortgage principal is evil. Communism killed more people than several wars and the Holocaust combined in the 20th century, it is an inherantly evil doctrine, and it is sickening that one of our potential leaders is openly calling it a good idea.

…you own or use one of these.

I know it’s customary these days not to make hard judgements and the like on any group. I should say “most” or “generally” or something. No. If you use a trailer for your bicycle to put your small child in, you are a bad parent. In Los Alamos, they apparently hand those wretched things out in the maternity ward. On the one hand, I applaud this as any parent stupid enough to use one should not have reproduced in the first place, let alone encouraged their offspring to reach driving or voting age. On the other hand, I hate stupidity, and attaching your not-as-fragile-as-you-think-but-still-not-THAT-sturdy child to a two-wheeled implement notable for a certain lack of stability, and then dragging the child INTO TRAFFIC is just fucking stupid no matter how you slice it.

Normally I like to try to get information directly from the horse’s mouth. I’d try that in this case, but I’m pretty sure that by the time you think it’s a nifty idea to drag Junior out to suck on exhaust fumes, the spandex has cut off the blood going to the brain a long, long time ago.

Just yesterday, for example, I was too near for my comfort to hosing baby pate out of the undercarriage. Driving home from dropping the dogs off with my parents, as I came around a curve, I saw Retardo-Mom 9000 out in the middle of my lane with her uterine dumpling dragging along behind her bike as she went around a parked car. “Not to worry,” I thought to myself, “I can simply go around!” Ah, nay nay! In the oncoming lane was a truck even larger than the one I was driving. “Hmm,” I pondered, “Would I like to test my airbags, or would I like to wash Little Johnny Doomedfrombirth out of the wheel well?” Fortunately, with residential street speed limits so low the third option of “brakes” was viable, and the only negative consequence was Retardo-Mom giving me a dirty look for having the audacity to operate a motor vehicle on her bicycle route.

Y’know who else is too dumb for their kids’ good? The parents who push baby strollers in the street when there’s a sidewalk three feet away. This group of winners doesn’t even have the flimsy excuse that bikes aren’t supposed to be on the sidewalk to cling to (though the former group strangely never notices all the other things bikes aren’t supposed to do). Here in Los Alamos and White Rock, every single intersection even has those handy little cutouts for wheeled traffic (such as wheelchairs and walkers, and baby strollers amazingly enough) to facilitate pedestrians STAYING THE FUCK OUT OF TRAFFIC.

As for the decrepit mummy I frequently see pushing her walker along in the street on her afternoon walks, for her I can make an exception. If I was old enough to have been Ceasar’s wet nurse, I’d be hoping for a nice swift Buick to the midsection too.

Granted, there are one or two roads in town, such as the one we live on, which do not have sidewalks. Strangely, the wonderful geniuses which make this town so special have managed to still out-do themselves for idiotic ambulation. Returning home one evening, laden with guns and butter as a good American should be, I spied an entire brood spread out marching up the street like some sort of age-staggered sweeper line. The youngest, naturally, was smack in the center of the road. Now, having spoted a bizarre horseless carriage of weight considerably greater than young Sally Soontosplat approaching, might it perhaps make sense to at least move the family to a single file column until the strange metal creature prowling this exceptionally broad paved footpath was past? Nay, nay! Stay the course! Worry not if the creature’s strange round feet must climb the curb to avoid your curiously anencephalic offspring! Glare harshly at it!

I really don’t know what the deal is here, folks. The statistic everyone loves to quote is that we’ve got more PhDs per square mile than anywhere else on earth. How this can square with the fact that you can drive around on any pleasant evening and not see a single pedestrian use the sidewalk escapes me. They’ll even go further into the street to go around parked cars, rather than risk using the dreaded concrete ribbon of shame.

Fuck it. I’ll just start driving on the sidewalks. No cyclists to worry about there, attached babies or not, and no pedestrians either. It’d be nice if I didn’t have to pick mailboxes out of the grill, but at least when you hit one of those, the other mailboxes don’t sue. Ahh, the joys of life in a small town.

You know it’s going to be an interesting (in the curse sense) day when it begins with a phone call explaining how someone you’ve met is about to be arraigned for first degree murder, the first in over 15 years in Los Alamos.

Posts from me will be a tad sparse for the moment.

I normally don’t have a very high opinion of our local newspaper. From the complete and utter lack of quality control to the only marginally literate staff allowing some truly shocking spelling and grammar errors to slip through, even with the dubious help of spellcheck, they’re mostly only good for the classified ads and the editorial page getting my rage up. Today they managed to actually pull off a rather interesting local interest story.

Here we have the tale of a man LabRat and I have actually been slightly curious about (though always, sadly, too busy to stop and find out WTF), one John W. Snell, a local ham radio buff (archival copy of the article reproduced without permission or formatting here). The upshot is that he’s a historical ham buff, and walks around town with his rig strapped to his back. Given some of the equipment descriptions I’ve seen in my very limited exposure to ham via the lovely alpha-geekette Roberta X’s posts on the subject, and my even more limited exposure to morse code, I gotta say, this guy is just plain slick. From the linked article, which given The Monitor’s shoddy website presence may or may not stick around for any length of time:

“Snell uses Vietnam-era radio pack and World War II-era telegraph key, combined with a five watt transmitter, 12 volt battery, folding solar panel, and an adjustable vertical antenna.”

And he keys at WWII pilot levels of 20-25 words per minute, well above the required 5wam speed to get a license. If any of the ham operators that read here are curious his call number is KD5RDD. See if you can add another pin to his map of contacts.

“Bleh, I hate this time of year.”

“Buh? You love this time of year. Trinity was a few days ago, and in a couple weeks you get your obligatory easy blogfodder for nuking Japan.”

“Well, yeah, but then there’s all the damn hippies running around for moon-a-hippie day, and they screw up the whole town for a week or so with their idiot little “arrest me” stunts that never get them arrested, there’s all the self-righteous hand-wringing and crybabyism in the paper, and to top it all off, those miserable little physics-denying rejects from “Tron” clog up just about every main road while they practice sending traffic into the oncoming lane or whatever it is they’re supposedly trying to accomplish. And it’s hot.”

“True, true. What we need is an influx of cool people or something to counter the idiots.”

“Yeah, we could have a hippie mooning contest or somethi– I just had the best idea ever.”

“Oh no…”

As usual with my more, ah, “interesting” notions, actions, and sentiments, there is a distinct possibility that alcohol had entered into the equation some time before this all transpired. The following has since been well and accurately described by someone cleverer than I as “…the product of drunken maunderings in an already deranged mind.” What is this besotted and ill-advised (and thankfully already dismissed as a bad job) notion?

Why that would be the Atomic Nerds Hiroshima & Nagasaki Shooting Match! On August sixth, when they dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima, we hold a 1911 match. On August 9th, when Fat Man hit Nagasaki, an M1 Garand match. See? Little Boy and Fat Man on the range! We could give out chunks of trinitite for prizes, drive by Ashley Pond and catcall/moon/laugh at the protesters, and on the 7th and 8th, let people either recover from the altitude shock, or cruise around and see the sights. It’d be a bit close to pull off this year, but next year would leave plenty of time to organize.

They say drinking and driving is one of the most dangerous combinations out there. With notions such as above, I’d say it’s probably much more dangerous to give me a couple beers and set me off about hippies.

You know you live in a small town when you go bopping along a meandering path on the interwebs, find a blog by a local, and realize you’ve probably exchanged pleasantries and currency on multiple occasions with the author.

Maybe next time I won’t immediately scurry off like a startled rodent when approached by a salesperson while in the midst of Book Reverie. Or maybe I’ll just give thanks that I’m not nearly “interesting” enough a customer to be blogfodder.

While LabRat is fully in the grip of NyQuil to deal with the cold I brought home, my own mental faculties are only slightly improved as I shake off the last of it myself – don’t expect anything award winning in this post. Taking this into consideration, it’s probably for the best that I scrap my notion of pointing out how skilled orators are often considered Satanic in some form or other, linking that with how often Republicans are labled some variant of “the Devil” vs. Democrats, and tying it all up with a pretty Obama-shaped bow. I tell you, that cherry-flavored stuff is not to be trifled with.

Rather than leave you all with nothing for a few days, it’s time to once again trot out the “Our Town Is Frickin’ Weird” trolley for another lap around the hill. Last week while trying to find the hours of one of the local eateries, LabRat stumbled upon a travel wiki. With entries concerning local attractions, accomodations, cuisine, and so forth, we were somewhat shocked to find a page dedicated to our sleepy little redneck white bread mountain town.

While broadly speaking the page is technically accurate, it decidedly lacks for flavor. Let’s just take a look at where it falls flat, shall we?

“Get around
The downtown area is compact, and the museums and most restaurants are within easy walking distance of the main hotels and many of the B&Bs. Public transportation by Atomic City Transit includes both fixed routes and an on-demand service.
Many Los Alamos residents bicycle to work and around town. Cycling is feasible for visitors as well, but be aware that the town is at an elevation of about 7320 feet (2231 meters) and quite hilly. Puffing up the hills before you’ve acclimated to the altitude can be a surprisingly exhausting experience. White Rock is nearly a thousand feet lower and about 10 miles (16 km) away by road; riding to it on a bike can be a thrill, but oh, that hill coming back! Atomic City Transit will be adding bike racks to its buses.”

Sweet shivering Shinto priests in Akita, if you come to Los Alamos and plan to ride a bike for transportation anywhere except a mountain trail, be sure to stop by so I can punch your face in. Now I’m going to try not to turn this into a total tangent rant about our local cyclists, but I will say that I have not met a single person in town who actually likes and encourages such activities who was not a cyclist him or herself. Our mountain trails are absolutely gorgeous, and perfectly suited to the athletic type who wish to go wheeling about without an engine, and I wish those folks all the best. Our roads, however, are not as well suited. In Los Alamos proper, there are three main roads: Central, Trinity, and Diamond. I will grant that it is more-or-less possible to ride a bicycle safely on these roads, provided it isn’t rush hour. If it’s rush hour and you try to ride while 20,000 people use three roads, you’re an idiot. Period. As for the highways, two roads in and out of town look like they came straight from a James Bond movie. There is no shoulder and there is a cliff about five feet away. On other roads, there is still no shoulder, plenty of blind curves, and while there isn’t a cliff to plummet from, there is still no place for a car to go should one come upon a two-wheeled hood ornament at an inopportune time.

Look, just don’t ride a bike in Los Alamos on the roads, ok? We’ll all be happier. Right. Moving on.

“See:

* The Art Center at Fuller Lodge [4] maintains an Art Gallery with exhibits that change monthly. The Art Center promotes the development of local and regional artists. The center provides art classes and hosts two Arts & Crafts Fairs, one in August and another in October. Special interest groups meet at the Art Center for photography, Life Drawing, Painting and Collagists gathernings. The Art Center operates a Gallery Shop that specializes in hand made art works including jewerly, picture postcards, paintings, ceramics and more. Regular Hours are 10 AM to 4 PM Monday-Saturday. The Art Center’s website has class and exhibit schedules. (505)662-9331. “

I have no major bones to pick with this section. The art center isn’t my cup of tea, to put it mildly, but Fuller Lodge is a fascinating building, and the museums listed are well worth your time. Personally, I prefer the Historical Society’s museum, as it deals more with life here in town and less on LANL’s role past present and future, but I may be biased as the Bradbury museum is where we usually wind up taking guests first, who then don’t want to see the other one. The most interesting part of the Bradbury museum, personally, is the comment book near the exhibit concerning the pros and cons of nuking Japan. While occasionally there is a comment of actual worth, most are simply a hilarious illustration of people who Just Don’t Get It (examples here from last year’s Hiroshima anniversary). If you do plan to go, spend a few extra bucks and try to find your own -unedited- copy of “The Town that Never Was.” The version they play at the museum has been cut, shamefully, to about sixteen minutes. The original is closer to 45, and is much more informative and illuminating about the town and life here during the war. The edits were made, supposedly, because material presented in it would be of value to (Iran) foreign (Iran) nations (Iran) trying (Iran) to (Iran) go nuclear. How aspects of life at the original Ranch School that was here before the Manhattan Project will further the enrichment of uranium eludes me.

“The Black Hole, [5] a surplus/salvage/junk lot at 4015 Arkansas (and more formally known as “Los Alamos Sales Company,” although absolutely nobody among the locals, even its proprietor, uses the name), is known locally as the best place to see genuine LANL artifacts and get a real feel for the contrary nature of the town. Drop by and buy some oddity, but do it soon; the proprietor, one of the most notable eccentrics in a town well endowed with the breed, is well along in years.”

Fuck the Black Hole, and fuck Ed Grothus. The best thing you could do during a visit to Los Alamos would be to firebomb this miserable hypocrite’s shit-pile and piss on the ashes. “Don Juan De Eduardo De Los Alamos,” as the miserable town pustule calls himself, is a subject for a rant all its own that could span an even greater length than the cyclists. Having worked for the lab for a good chunk of his life, he now makes his living by decrying the lab while selling LANL surplus from the salvage yard at a huge markup. In the midst of telling anyone who will listen, and even more who won’t, why LANL is the worst thing to ever happen to the world and how nuclear fission is the worst abomination in the history of ever (and I am only exaggerating through simplifying his frequent inane blitherings in local public forums), he has spent the last few years extoling the virtues of Chinese labor and government by building a huge granite anti-nuclear monument, which only he wants. He tried to donate this 50-foot-tall obelisk to the town, and was told in polite governmental nomenclature to piss up a rope. At least the county council gets something right now and then.

“Ashley Pond, or is it Ashley Pond Pond?”
Whatever you call it, watch out for the copius amounts of duck crap, insanely agressive geese, and water that wouldn’t qualify as clean in Detroit. It’s pretty if you’re just driving by though.

“Eat

Los Alamos used to have a well-deserved reputation as a culinary wasteland, but things have improved considerably in recent years.”

This is a bald-faced lie. A lie this immense casts doubt on the honor and integrity of even the family of whoever wrote it. There are three good restaraunts in town: Chili Works, Cafe Sushi, and Bob’s Bodacious BBQ. The latter two suffer from never being open. Have you ever heard of a BBQ joint that closes Saturday and Sunday? They’re only open a few hours a day during the week, and trying to figure out when Cafe Sushi will be open is even worse. For Cafe Sushi, it can at least be reasonable since you can only cram so much fresh fish into the hole-in-the-wall they operate out of. For bonus points, both of these rarely open shops have been complaining of late about road work near their establishments preventing customers from coming in. Having braved the minor detour on a weekday afternoon only to find them closed, I am less than sympathetic.

Chili Works, however, is quite possibly the best greasy spoon in the state. It isn’t formal. It isn’t pretty. But the fact that the line can, has, and undoubtedly will again grow to over twice the length of the parking lot should tell you what you need to know. They even have their own Greasy Spoon Language for the just about every breakfast burrito permutation they serve. Me, I like the Cricket – Chorizo, Red chile and Cheese.

“Los Alamos contains more churches than bars, which is a probably sufficient commentary on the night life.”

Enough said. I actually don’t know how many churches there are in town, but I can think of about 20 just off the top of my head. NOTHING is open later than 8:30 except the grocery stores and a bar or two, and most things are closed by 6, some eateries included.

“Stay safe

Violent crime is almost unknown in Los Alamos; it is one of the safest communities you’ll ever visit. The biggest lawbreaking threat to life and limb is drunk drivers. Northern New Mexico has an unfortunate and well-deserved reputation for DUI problems. Until recently Los Alamos was an exception to this, but not any more. Be alert when driving on the arterial roads after 10 p.m. or so, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. Another driving hazard is wildlife. Herds of elk come down from the Jemez Mountains during the winter and often congregate around the roads. If your car hits an elk at highway speed, the elk may lose, but you will most assuredly not win. Again, be careful driving after sundown during the winter months. “

It would be more accurate to say that the police in Los Alamos were more inclined to look the other way until recently. Fortunately, since there’s nothing open after sundown anyway, the roads are almost entirely empty so you have plenty of room to negotiate around the occasional drunk. As for the elk, you better be on the ball. Northern New Mexico apparently is home to the most suicidal herd of elk in the known world. Either that, or the herd considers it sport to see who can take out the biggest vehicle in the most spectacular fashion.

“One final note: bubonic plague is endemic to northern New Mexico, and plague-bearing fleas and rodents have been trapped from within the city limits. As cautioned in the article on Bandelier National Monument, if you see a distressed or dead rodent or other small animal, leave it alone; buzzards are immune to plague, you are not.”

And don’t forget Hanta Virus!

In all fairness, the town is beautiful but basically dead. It’s home to a bunch of folks who live to work and not much else. If any of y’all are going to be in this neck of the woods, we’d be happy to show you around, but don’t expect the tour to take terribly long, and bring a book for when it’s done.

All right, I know I promised a photo tour of Los Alamos as a whole, but we ran into some snafus there. Thanks to our normal hermit-like attention to the machinations of others, I wasn’t aware that yesterday’s car show was going to be a part of a huge town-wide Fest until we got there in the morning. Thanks to that, a lot of the more interesting landmarks around town, such as Ashley Pond, and Fuller Lodge, were obscured by a funk of hippies holding an arts and crafts fair. Not wishing to spend the day followed by an angry glowing orb, I stuck to the car show section of town. Pics are thumbnails to (mostly) 800×600 versions, since there may be a few weirdo heathens in the crowd that don’t care about Corvettes. Sick freaks.

The show was split into two groups, one group on display only, the other group for actual judging and trophies and the like. In this map, the show-only group was parked in the parking lot under the “F” of Fuller Lodge Park. The show cars were parked along Central, which was closed off from 20th to Oppenheimer. This is the view from the northwest corner of the lot around 9:30ish. A few more cars trickled in by about noon, but this is the bulk, around 50 cars total. There were about 35 cars along Central for judging.

A view of the north row, with an unintentional concentration of C5s:

Here’s a 2003 Z06 I’m partial to. Lacking my own plastic penis extension to enter in the show, one of my jobs was hot-shoe for the folks with more money than sense cars than drivers. This particular Z06 does very very nicely on East Jemez Road.

My photography does not do the color or quality of this paint job justice. This car belonged on the street for judging.

The view from the western end of Central. The roof of Fuller Lodge is visible in the background. The hippies are on the other side of the lodge.

When I was creeping up on driving age, the only vehicle we had at the time in running condition with a standard transmission was my dad’s ’65 Stingray. The clutch was half burned out from an ill-advised entry into a parade some years earlier, so with an attitude of “Can’t make it too much worse…” my old man set about teaching me the fine art of clutch operation in a classic. I’ve had a soft spot for ’65s ever since. Neither of these, unfortunately, is the one I learned in. It’s currently garaged and waiting for new wheel bearings and wiring.

The next few thumbnails link to slightly larger images than the rest. This car is a C5 that belongs to a family friend named Lori, who lives in Albuquerque and loves this stuff more than enough to consider a hundred mile jaunt the start of a great weekend. Lori, and her husband Larry, have invested a tremendous amount in customizing her C5 for racing, both drag and regular, and the woman can drive the wheels off just about anything. The paint job on her ride is simply beautiful.

Like a dumbass, I forgot to snap a picture of one of the more impressive parts of the work. The inside of her hood is painted as well, depicting the back of the eagle on the hood. It sounds slightly gimicky, but the effect is truly impressive. In this next picture, we can see the results of a trip to Bowling Green for the 50th anniversary museum tour. Those signatures are the members of the team that assembled her particular Vette. And yes, that’s a big-ass supercharger sitting there as well.

For some reason, she has a non-standard shift knob and some extra switches.

Lori’s car doesn’t have as much room for luggage as other Vettes.

The paint theme continues. It also continues down the side of the car, but apparently that picture fell victim to failing camera batteries.

At last check, she reported 640 rear-wheel horsepower. Yes, she can use it all.

The show attracted entrants from as far away as Colorado Springs. Since I don’t recognize this paint job I’m going to have to conclude this is an out-of-towner. Again, my pictures don’t do it justice.

A few days ago, Skeeler from Industrial Strength Science and I were discussing the new ZR1 Corvette, and more to the point, the supercharger they’ve added. I opined that while I’m sure the huffer they used is more efficient and better suited to Corvette applications, I still prefer to see a big bug scoop sticking out of the hood when someone says “supercharged.” Fortunately, one of the folks that came up from Albuquerque was kind enough to oblige me.

And finally, a shot from the southeastern side of Central, with our still mostly-barren mountains in the background.

Now I mentioned some failing batteries a piece back. This bit of bad luck actually led to a damned fortunate discovery. While we trooped down Central an extra block to the hardware store, we passed one of Los Alamos’ landmarks, a department store roughly older than time. In its original incarnation, the building was the town movie theater during the Project. Previously known as Clemment & Benner’s (and still known as such to some folks who have been here long enough and are too stubborn to learn new things), the renamed CB Fox is basically a modern version of the general store. Selling things from furniture to luggage to suits, it’s a popular town spot. Walking by the window of the downstairs furniture section, LabRat spotted one damn cool clock.

All in all, an excellent, if tiring, day marred only by some bumbling ineptness on the part of county officials, but that particular rant I suspect is interesting only to those involved in planning the show.

Oh god they’re all watching us… too much pressure… can’t think… can’t write…

Welcome, new arrivals! Always good to know there’s a few folks out there with the same warped sensibilities that years of exposure to what hippies would assure you are abnormal levels of radiation have instilled in us. Unfortunatly, we are currently busier than a one-eyed cat watching nine rat holes. Y’see, tomorrow is the Corvettes In the Jemez Car Show. While I don’t have a plastic radar magnet of my very own just as yet, I have been dragooned by the show organizers into helping out. Tomorrow we’ll have real content, with pictures galore of a great many examples of America’s favorite sports car (there are entrants coming from as far out as Colorado) and a brief photo tour of Los Alamos for those of you who have always wondered what the secret city looks like, but today is being spent mostly in chaos. LabRat is working up a post on one of Zydeco’s antics, but given the muttering coming from her direction about flow and tone, that may not be out today.

In the meanwhile, help yourselves to a drink, there are chips in the cabinet, and the archives are just right over there if you just can’t hold out until tomorrow.

So in the process of working up a good head of steam about the RailRunner and anything else stupid at which I could turn a few hostile brain cells, it was noted that our Friday Night in Los Alamos Kit (beer) was rather low. By luck of the draw, today I happened to be wearing one of my favorite shirts for when I don’t give a damn if someone is offended (or when I give even less of a damn than usual). Standing in line while the soccer mom ahead of me gathered her uterine dumplings kids and reassembled her overnight bag purse I hear a question directed at me from the bag boy not involving “paper or plastic?”

“Hey, are those Colts?” he asked, gesturing at my shirt. I looked down.

“Some of ‘em,” I replied, “but there’s something for everybody.”

“That’s cool. I thought I saw some 1911s on there.” At this point, I was caught off guard.

“Well of course there are!” chimed in the early-20s cashier, a petite female who couldn’t weigh more than 115 soaking wet as she gestured at the appropriate locations on my chest. “How can you have any sort of decent collection of pistols without at least one 1911?”

Y’know, after the rest of that conversation I think I can hold off with the scorched-earth mindset for a while.

Drinking and driving.
Shooting and drinking
Barack Hussein and Hillary Rodham
Mayonaise and picnicks
Tiger balm and jock straps
Reading Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International and being buzzed by a semi-notorious locally owned Huey running for no apparent reason at about 250 feet altitude.

See, there’s this local fella that lives across the canyon from us. He’s apparently in one of the better funded LANL positions, as he owns his own Bell Huey. He likes to fly this little whirrlygig around, but it seems he’s got himself a busted altimeter or some seriously whacked depth perception, because he’s rather fond of dropping down to under 300′ as he passes over our part of town on his way to the Santa Fe airport where he keeps the thing parked. He even petitioned planning & zoning to let him put a landing pad in his back yard.

The real kick in the pants is that he’s got the thing painted up just red and white enough to fool a quick glance into thinking he’s medivac, but just different enough not to count under any of those impersonating-official-vehicle statutes. The local FAA has gotten a few complaints about him already, but thanks to the paint job, not apparently enough to do anything. Tonight’s pass was up at a whopping 250 feet, give or take, but in the past he’s come by low enough to kick up the dust on the driveway.

Efforts are underway to get his tail number to add our complaints to the FAA’s pile so they’ll… I dunno, shake their finger harder? They don’t seem to do much anyway. Personally, I think it’s about time to see about building Abomination.

Mr. Chas S. Clifton of Southern Rockies Nature Blog recently posted a highly accurate listing of the types and styles of New Mexican Barbie Dolls. Strangely missing from this list however, was Los Alamos Barbie. Given that we are unquestionably considered the weirdest city in the whole damn weird state, this of course would not do. Stephen Bodio calling LabRat and I specifically to fill this niche in the comments only added fuel to the flame. Thus, I submitted the following over in the comments:

“Los Alamos Barbie’s hair appears to have been styled and maintained by the dog groomer. She comes with an assortment of textbooks, and one Esoteric Hobby Kit ranging from stargazing to shark diving. Los Alamos Barbie has three choices of car, either a Subaru, Volvo or Saab. None of these choices will go as fast as any other Barbie’s car, as Los Alamos Barbie cannot find the gas pedal with both feet, a map, a team of sherpas, and a “Best of Riverdance” video. Unique among Barbies, Los Alamos Barbie often comes with the optional child accessory, availible in either the Nervous Wreck Overachiever, or the Chronically Unenthused Slacker variants. Los Alamos Ken looks suspiciously like Taos Ken with his birkenstocks, hiking shorts, and extremely silly hat, but is distinguishable by the addition of socks to the sandals and by wearing a dress shirt in some state of dishevelment rather than a tie-dye tshirt. Those mistaking Los Alamos Ken for Taos Ken frequently find themselves on the receiveing end of a three hour “discussion” on the non-linear equations governing meteorology, string theory, self-balancing binary tree algorithms, and of course nuclear energy no matter what his actual field is.”

This seems to have done the trick. Only problem is that Mr. Clifton managed to poke my oddball streak with his approval.
“OK, you got it.
*exit singing*
Quantum foam,
Take me home ….”

If you don’t recognize, the tune is John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” (not to be confused with his smash hit, “OH GOD A TREE!”)

Almost nowhere,
Pajarito,
Jemez Mountains,
Rio Grande River,

Town’s still new here,
among the burned down trees,
Used to be a Ranch School
The kids all had skinned knees.

Quantum foam,
Take me home
To the place
Where qbits roam,

Los Alamos,
Weirdo central,
Take me home,
Quantum foam.

All my projects,
Q-cleared secrets,
But I can’t find them,
Check behind the xerox

Wet and muddy,
when the snow melt’s nigh,
Spicy taste of chile
Making tourists cry

Quantum foam,
Take me home
To the place
Where qbits roam,

Los Alamos,
Weirdo central,
Take me home,
Quantum foam.

I hear a voice in the morning oh it calls me,
FBI man warns me not to talk of what we see,
And when I leave The Hill I get the feeling that I’m gonna end up dead just like Marie Curie…
Marie Curieeeeeeeeeeeee

Quantum foam,
Take me home
To the place
Where qbits roam,

Los Alamos,
Weirdo central,
Take me home,
Quantum foam

Take me home,
Quantum foam.

The Great Relative Appeasement of ’08 is, for now, over. Aside from an enjoyable evening with Chris Byrne, the trip progressed just as a rational person would expect a trip involving phrases like “Why can’t this wait until the three-day-weekend” and “what do you mean five days?” to go. Resupply of aspirin and Rolaids is already underway, but they can only move so much freight down our street at once. Instead of focusing on the throbbing located directly behind my eyes (thanks, in no small part, to the god-awful, interminable “Sweeney Todd: 3 Hours Of Johnny Depp Looking Broody With Marla Singer”), I’d like to instead bring a bit of light to life in a truly small town that you big city folks might take for granted.

Compared to Phoenix, driving in Los Alamos sucks swollen, infected donkey balls. In Phoenix, speed limits are these quaint little suggestions that one may observe in a light-hearted mood. In Los Alamos, the speed limits are iron-clad rules of existence, to be slighted at the driver’s risk. While in the Valley of the Sun, it was a routine occurence for everyone including the blue-haired granny to blow my doors off while I cruised at 60 mph in a 45 mph zone, hell, even a city cop passed me at that speed, attempting a similar stunt in the town that never was would damn near bring out the S.W.A.T. team. Between the reservation cops surrounding us (who instead of radar guns use honky guns that measure how big a ticket you get by how white you are), and the local PD who have no crime to police beyond occasional underage drinking/pot possession or bringing the FBI donuts while they look for missing nuclear secrets and thus have their radar guns turned to 11, this is a cruel situation, as I truly love driving (fast, but I suspect that goes without saying). When I graduated college, my parents were kind enough to send me to Bondurant’s to get better at it. In Phoenix, between the excess oxygen in the air from the piddly 2000′ elevation, and the natural tendency of Chevrolet’s LS1 engine to produce mostly adequate horsepower and torque, chirping the tires on the way into third gear was nothing more than a friendly, and enjoyable, hello to the rest of the road.

The average Los Alamos driver, on the other hand, is incapable of finding the accelerator with both feet, four friends, and a “Best of Riverdance” instructional video. A journey of 550 miles, conducted in slightly over seven hours (not counting lunch), despite copious construction, semi-inclement weather, and absurd drops in the speed limits through towns and north of Santa Fe, came to a decidedly frustrating conclusion as I was reacquainted with my neighbors. No more was to be the notion that arriving at a destination was desirable, but instead the rolling insult of “I’d Rather Be In My Lab” traffic was firmly under way. Our already paltry highway speed limit of 50 mph, a radical enough departure from a loose interpretation of the tens column of the interstate speed limit, had worked its way down to a safe and sensible 35-so-I-don’t-have-to-see-the-family-for-as-long mph. Profanity ensued. Since the local elevation is a punch in the crankshaft to horsepower no matter what the tuning, I hope the withdrawal symptoms will be slightly lessened, but LabRat has already begun threats to put me on valium until I detox from driving like a sane person again.

But don’t even get me started on the miserable little monkey-pricks that can’t make a right turn without first slowing to sub-glacial speed or require enough room in oncoming traffic to make a left that one could drive the Titanic, three Thanksgiving parades, and a confused duck through first.

Anybody remember the local dumbass that set me off a while back regarding how we weren’t being nice enough to bicyclists? Well, he’s struck again. What is he on about this time?

We’re not handing out Medals of Honor for actions in Iraq and Afghanistan fast enough for his liking.
The bitchslapping which may or may not be published commences below.
(more…)