Laminate smelter festoon

[hirez]

Reasons to love where I work, part n of a series of m:

"Antimatter gets a really bad press. It's not dangerous at all. Neutron beams, on the other hand..."

They're going to try to teach me French, too. Wish us all luck.

Comments

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Now I'm afraid. French neutron beams ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Swiss ones.

"Generating a neutron beam is very much like making love to a beautiful woman..."

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

How's that, Swiss ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, I was rather hoping you'd tell me.

It seemed to involve a 140 metre earth bank, neutrinos and a lot of hand-waving. But then the chap probably realised he was talking to one of the stokers and didn't go into detail. Or assumed I was the sort of sound fellow who'd keep a particle accelerator in my shed. Just in case.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

So - err - why ? What ? Has your department been transmuted into Geneva by passing a beam of energetic project-managers through it ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Not sure. We were in the coffee-vestibule and gel to talking, because that's the kind of friendly looking black-clad unix admin I am. I guess he's part of the [thing I can't talk about] team.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

What? the Large Hadron Collider Grid ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. That makes more sense than what I was thinking about.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Antimatter gets a really bad press. It's not dangerous at all

Now this kind of thinking is all very well, but what about that episode of Star Trek when the matter guy meets the anti-matter guy and the universe will explode if they shake hands. Eventually they have to wrestle for eternity in a kind of corridor thing which is "like a safety valve to stop the universe exploding." That kind of thing sounds dangerous to me.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The chap was muttering darkly about Trek and how much damage it does to a physicist's reputation.

[steer.livejournal.com]

You should reverse the polarity of his neutrons until his attitude improves. Show me another military force where "Science Officer" is so well respected a position. I can't even name the science officer for the Iraq war.

[bluekieran.livejournal.com]

[steer.livejournal.com]

Ah yes... my time in a physics dept was just like that.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Um. That Chemical chap was full of jibber-jabber that made as much sense as a trek 'explanation'.

There's almost a parallel with the Insane World of Geekery:

Marketroid (Science officer): "... And through leveraging our strategic investment in tetrion-ray servers we can access the Starfleet exchange infrastructure via a sub-space relay..."

Admin team (Engineering): "Oh, do fuck off you pointy-eared nonce."

[squiddity.livejournal.com]

"La sange est dans l'arbre"

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Je suis un(e)[1] travesti executif.

[1] See? Divvent know nuffin abaht nowt else.

[squiddity.livejournal.com]

Does 'travesti' mean what I think (hope) it does?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Well, I think so. Otherwise it's all going to get a bit Miles Kington.

[feyeleanor.livejournal.com]

Just don't say that near the Bois de Boulogne or you could find yourself in all kinds of trouble...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

"Singe", I believe.

[goth-twiglet.livejournal.com]

Pourquoi?

[squiddity.livejournal.com]

Je ne sais pas. Peut-etre la sange a faim?

[feyeleanor.livejournal.com]

erm...
I think I might be envious...
I mean, I thought of sticking a small supercollider under the park nextdoor but it'd be a bit obvious from above, and there's that police helicopter that's always hovering nearby (and which I probably wrote the software for now I come to think of it, so actually it might not have much chance of finding me after all...), and probably someone would eventually notice the huge brownouts and not what when I fired her up and...
erm...
I think I might be envious...

[spride.livejournal.com]

Bonne chance, mon pote.