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So maybe he was right
So perhaps Dubya was right about those Iraqi WMDs after all.
To illustrate, a story:
So I'm sitting around in my workspace, doing nothing, when a package arrives at the mail room down the hall. I knew that had happened because, even though the box wasn't that big, it weighed about a ton. In fact, it took two forklifts to move the damn thing down the hall, which made a lot of noise and almost ran over one of those mice that we have (we've been giving them asylum ever since they ran away from the Psychological Research people). This was loud enough, and I was bored enough, that I wandered down the hall to see what happened.
The first thing I noted is that this box (about the size of a refrigerator box) was addressed to a co-worker who I'll call Gary. Now Gary is a nice enough guy, assuming that he's in a straight-jacket and you're on the opposite side of the one way mirror. He is the kind of guy though that, if left alone with a microwave and a toaster for two minutes, will take them apart and assemble a killer death ray and use it to conquer a third world country. This isn't too bad because you can go and visit him and sit in his nice air-conditioned lounge (all the countries he conquers are tropical for some reason) and enjoy some really good drinks and the fact that his small army of bodyguards consists almost entirely of busty women wearing skimpy bikinis. But sooner or later some smooth-talking British guy breaks up his operation, and then he's back hiding under the stairs until the FBI stop bumming around the lab and stealing coffee from the coffee machine. Then you're right back where you started, except you no longer have either a microwave or a toaster, which is why we've stopped letting him use the break room. But I digress.
So then I look at the return address and try and read it, but I can't, because it's in Arabic. Uh-oh, I think. He's finally managed to offend one of the Grand something-or-others in the Middle East and we're about to get blown to kingdom come, which is bad because there's a few episodes of some shows on my computer that I haven't watched yet. Then I realize that it's not ticking or anything, so I take a closer look. Someone has helpfully written down part of the address in English. I can't understand much, but it's from Baghdad, and it was shipped out over two years ago.
Unfortunately for my insatiable curiousity (and that of my other physics friends who by this time had gathered 'round to look at the new addition to the department) the box was locked and sealed. Clearly this was a private package of sorts, which necessitated a momentary pause while someone went to the computer lab and fetched the Windows XP toolkit, which contains a crowbar just in case you need to do an emergency uninstall procedure. So we lever this crate open (slowly, because whoever packed it thinks that the more nails you use, the better a person you are) and find a giant lead box. Well, that's not a good sign. So we open the box and find dozens of cylinders, each one marked with the radioactive trefoil.
About this time Gary showed up to see what the fuss was, only to find us standing around an open box, holding enough enriched Uranium in our hands to lay waste to most of the city, and looking at him with what I describe as my "sarcastic look". He had the presence of mind, and the mad-scientist instincts, to make a bolt for the door, but Jim tripped him and sat on him for a long moment until we finally pounded the story out of him.
About three years ago Gary, by virtue of the fact that he was too busy to attend the graduate student conference, was appointed to the budgetary committee, a job whose worth and enjoyment is approximately on par with digging drainage ditches in the middle of the Sahara. During those meetings he helped get our department into a spat with the Biology department, who was seeking more funding for extra classrooms for pre-meds. We weren't too keen on that, seeing as that we have no classrooms ourselves, and the whole thing descended into petty bickering. At one point the Molecular Bio people decided to demonstrate their worth to the campus by building a giant model of a DNA helix near the Poly Sci building-whose bad structural integrity threatens to crush passing undergrads to this day. In response, Gary swore that he would produce something too, to demonstrate the inherent superiority of our intellect to that of the Bio people.
At that point the rest of us were watching the news; American troops were closing in on Baghdad rapidly, and it looked like the Iraqis were barely even slowing them down. So Gary goes onto E-Bay and guess what he finds? Enough stock of enriched uranium and plutonium to build himself the A-Bomb trigger to an H-bomb. As far as I can tell his original plan was to build an H-bomb and reduce the DNA sculpture to glass crater. How he failed to notice that we are within the twenty kilometer blast radius of his weapon is beyond me. So anyway he gets in touch with the provider and manages to cut a deal, he gets the nuclear supplies and they get a pair of passports that he managed to buy from a street vendor in TJ (they need a little touch-up work, but you know how that goes). But before the shipment goes through, Americans take Baghdad and the goods end up sitting in a warehouse in Damascus for a long time.
I was not pleased by this turn of events.
In fact, I was making Gary decidedly unpleased with this turn in events by cursing him in every language I know, and describing how the practice of beastiality in his family has been practiced-with specifics-for the past ten generations, when I was interrupted by the fact that the canister of radioactive material I was waving about in one hand was growing rather uncomfortably warm. In fact, with all the canisters freed from their confinement, the whole room was getting a little warm. So we stuffed all the canisters back in the lead box, which gave Gary the opportunity he needed to scuttle back to his lab. So he's safe from my wrath until I go in there and get through all those lasers that he has protecting his office, or until he comes out for the free pizza.
Fortunately for us, the Department of Homeland Security people came by at about that point. They generally show up once a week to harass any post-doc without an American Passport, but this time we got the jump on them by demanding that they take care of all this nuclear firepower that had suddenly fallen into our hands. This seemed to make them nervous, God knows why, so they went into a huddle and made a lot of phone calls and several times attempted to escape the building, only to be dragged back kicking and screaming. Eventually the FBI showed up too, and spent a lot of time laughing at the Homeland Security guys, and keeping thick lead plates between the crate and their reproductive organs. Notice that they didn't bother to shield their brains. But at least one of them had the sense to call Donald Rumsfeld and ask him if he wanted the stuff.
Rumsfeld told them no way; the US military has all the stuff they want, and if they can't find it in Iraq, they don't want it. Also, he claimed that he was running out of space in GITMO, and it's not like he's got anywhere else to put things. The FBI sure as hell didn't want it, they were nervous enough being in the same building and there was no way they were going to let that stuff get in their shiny new cars. And the Department of Homeland Security wasn't going to touch it. If they wanted it, they would have to confiscate it. And if they confiscated it, they would have to admit that they had let enough plutonium to destroy the city of New York through the borders while they were busy interrogating Hispanics to see if they had Arabic accents. So in the end, they all agreed that it didn't exist, and they left, leaving us, as it were, holding the bomb.
Gary called us via the intercom at this point and asked if he could have it, provided he did not make a bomb out of it. I turned him down, because he would probably make some sort of plutonium powered robot that would try to assimilate the computer center, and one of those is plenty, thank-you-very-much. So, a note to all my confederates, do not open the lead box in the fifth floor refrigerator. In fact, don't open the fifth floor refrigerator at all if you can help it. But if the pizza we left in there starts moving on its own, somebody better come tell me. That might be trouble.
No, none of this really happened. Yes, everything I wrote is a lie. You read the journal title, you had your disclaimer. Yes, nothing much happened today. How could you tell?
To illustrate, a story:
So I'm sitting around in my workspace, doing nothing, when a package arrives at the mail room down the hall. I knew that had happened because, even though the box wasn't that big, it weighed about a ton. In fact, it took two forklifts to move the damn thing down the hall, which made a lot of noise and almost ran over one of those mice that we have (we've been giving them asylum ever since they ran away from the Psychological Research people). This was loud enough, and I was bored enough, that I wandered down the hall to see what happened.
The first thing I noted is that this box (about the size of a refrigerator box) was addressed to a co-worker who I'll call Gary. Now Gary is a nice enough guy, assuming that he's in a straight-jacket and you're on the opposite side of the one way mirror. He is the kind of guy though that, if left alone with a microwave and a toaster for two minutes, will take them apart and assemble a killer death ray and use it to conquer a third world country. This isn't too bad because you can go and visit him and sit in his nice air-conditioned lounge (all the countries he conquers are tropical for some reason) and enjoy some really good drinks and the fact that his small army of bodyguards consists almost entirely of busty women wearing skimpy bikinis. But sooner or later some smooth-talking British guy breaks up his operation, and then he's back hiding under the stairs until the FBI stop bumming around the lab and stealing coffee from the coffee machine. Then you're right back where you started, except you no longer have either a microwave or a toaster, which is why we've stopped letting him use the break room. But I digress.
So then I look at the return address and try and read it, but I can't, because it's in Arabic. Uh-oh, I think. He's finally managed to offend one of the Grand something-or-others in the Middle East and we're about to get blown to kingdom come, which is bad because there's a few episodes of some shows on my computer that I haven't watched yet. Then I realize that it's not ticking or anything, so I take a closer look. Someone has helpfully written down part of the address in English. I can't understand much, but it's from Baghdad, and it was shipped out over two years ago.
Unfortunately for my insatiable curiousity (and that of my other physics friends who by this time had gathered 'round to look at the new addition to the department) the box was locked and sealed. Clearly this was a private package of sorts, which necessitated a momentary pause while someone went to the computer lab and fetched the Windows XP toolkit, which contains a crowbar just in case you need to do an emergency uninstall procedure. So we lever this crate open (slowly, because whoever packed it thinks that the more nails you use, the better a person you are) and find a giant lead box. Well, that's not a good sign. So we open the box and find dozens of cylinders, each one marked with the radioactive trefoil.
About this time Gary showed up to see what the fuss was, only to find us standing around an open box, holding enough enriched Uranium in our hands to lay waste to most of the city, and looking at him with what I describe as my "sarcastic look". He had the presence of mind, and the mad-scientist instincts, to make a bolt for the door, but Jim tripped him and sat on him for a long moment until we finally pounded the story out of him.
About three years ago Gary, by virtue of the fact that he was too busy to attend the graduate student conference, was appointed to the budgetary committee, a job whose worth and enjoyment is approximately on par with digging drainage ditches in the middle of the Sahara. During those meetings he helped get our department into a spat with the Biology department, who was seeking more funding for extra classrooms for pre-meds. We weren't too keen on that, seeing as that we have no classrooms ourselves, and the whole thing descended into petty bickering. At one point the Molecular Bio people decided to demonstrate their worth to the campus by building a giant model of a DNA helix near the Poly Sci building-whose bad structural integrity threatens to crush passing undergrads to this day. In response, Gary swore that he would produce something too, to demonstrate the inherent superiority of our intellect to that of the Bio people.
At that point the rest of us were watching the news; American troops were closing in on Baghdad rapidly, and it looked like the Iraqis were barely even slowing them down. So Gary goes onto E-Bay and guess what he finds? Enough stock of enriched uranium and plutonium to build himself the A-Bomb trigger to an H-bomb. As far as I can tell his original plan was to build an H-bomb and reduce the DNA sculpture to glass crater. How he failed to notice that we are within the twenty kilometer blast radius of his weapon is beyond me. So anyway he gets in touch with the provider and manages to cut a deal, he gets the nuclear supplies and they get a pair of passports that he managed to buy from a street vendor in TJ (they need a little touch-up work, but you know how that goes). But before the shipment goes through, Americans take Baghdad and the goods end up sitting in a warehouse in Damascus for a long time.
I was not pleased by this turn of events.
In fact, I was making Gary decidedly unpleased with this turn in events by cursing him in every language I know, and describing how the practice of beastiality in his family has been practiced-with specifics-for the past ten generations, when I was interrupted by the fact that the canister of radioactive material I was waving about in one hand was growing rather uncomfortably warm. In fact, with all the canisters freed from their confinement, the whole room was getting a little warm. So we stuffed all the canisters back in the lead box, which gave Gary the opportunity he needed to scuttle back to his lab. So he's safe from my wrath until I go in there and get through all those lasers that he has protecting his office, or until he comes out for the free pizza.
Fortunately for us, the Department of Homeland Security people came by at about that point. They generally show up once a week to harass any post-doc without an American Passport, but this time we got the jump on them by demanding that they take care of all this nuclear firepower that had suddenly fallen into our hands. This seemed to make them nervous, God knows why, so they went into a huddle and made a lot of phone calls and several times attempted to escape the building, only to be dragged back kicking and screaming. Eventually the FBI showed up too, and spent a lot of time laughing at the Homeland Security guys, and keeping thick lead plates between the crate and their reproductive organs. Notice that they didn't bother to shield their brains. But at least one of them had the sense to call Donald Rumsfeld and ask him if he wanted the stuff.
Rumsfeld told them no way; the US military has all the stuff they want, and if they can't find it in Iraq, they don't want it. Also, he claimed that he was running out of space in GITMO, and it's not like he's got anywhere else to put things. The FBI sure as hell didn't want it, they were nervous enough being in the same building and there was no way they were going to let that stuff get in their shiny new cars. And the Department of Homeland Security wasn't going to touch it. If they wanted it, they would have to confiscate it. And if they confiscated it, they would have to admit that they had let enough plutonium to destroy the city of New York through the borders while they were busy interrogating Hispanics to see if they had Arabic accents. So in the end, they all agreed that it didn't exist, and they left, leaving us, as it were, holding the bomb.
Gary called us via the intercom at this point and asked if he could have it, provided he did not make a bomb out of it. I turned him down, because he would probably make some sort of plutonium powered robot that would try to assimilate the computer center, and one of those is plenty, thank-you-very-much. So, a note to all my confederates, do not open the lead box in the fifth floor refrigerator. In fact, don't open the fifth floor refrigerator at all if you can help it. But if the pizza we left in there starts moving on its own, somebody better come tell me. That might be trouble.
No, none of this really happened. Yes, everything I wrote is a lie. You read the journal title, you had your disclaimer. Yes, nothing much happened today. How could you tell?
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Do the Homeland Security people really show up often?
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Post-docs come to American universities from all over the world you know. Immigration policy sometimes seems to have a problem with this.
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To be perfectly honest, I think there are some definite strengths to the American University system that give it a top-ranked position. I know that attracts at least some students, and the ones we get are rather bright. Especially the Eastern Europeans. Fear them.
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I'm tempted to go off into a culture rant/discussion about the varying value of education across cultures, but I won't clutter up your journal.
Did I say that your story is brilliant before? I can't remember.
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Oh, man! Now I'm disappointed. I was looking forward to the next entries in which you start to glow and develop super-powers!
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:-)
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Clearly this was a private package of sorts, which necessitated a momentary pause while someone went to the computer lab and fetched the Windows XP toolkit, which contains a crowbar just in case you need to do an emergency uninstall procedure.
Ah, yes, the XP toolkit! I used it many a day when I needed to dispatch a CPU quick. But then they started fighting back with magic electric powers, so I had to buy some Italian driving/rubber gloves.
Monitors are another story. There was a company shotgun.
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