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Extreme-field experiments

I am the Alpha and the, um…

Dude, that is one awesome new laser you’ve got there. But I’m a little alarmed by the description of the OMEGA EP. It’s going to be involved in extreme-field experiments. Not only that, it will interrogate high-temperature and high-density regimes.

So basically we have here a bunch of extremist scientists, practising what John Ashcroft would rightly call evil physics, who are planning to “interrogate” — ie talk to — “high-temperature and high-density regimes”, rather than promising to obliterate them, as any sane public figure would. ((Yeah yeah, the laser boasts that it “supports a wide variety of target irradiation conditions”, but really, merely irradiating these regimes is too good for them: you might as well offer them a glass of milk and a hot bath, like Barack Obama wants to. In fact the laser sucks so hard it won’t even make a “thermonuclear burn wave”. So what possible use is it in Middle Eastern negotiations?))

Can it be very long before such irresponsible appeasement is rightly denounced by those who stand up for sound science ?

7 comments
  1. 1  Naadir Jeewa  May 20, 2008, 12:36 am 

    Isn’t Omega EP a weapon in Final Fantasy VII?

  2. 2  Steven  May 20, 2008, 12:12 pm 

    Apparently in many different Final Fantasies.

    Omega XII, for example, was:

    Originally created by a scientist to fight a great wyrm.

    I told you it was evil physics.

  3. 3  Alex Higgins  May 20, 2008, 8:27 pm 

    A weapon that combats high-density regimes?

    Must… avoid… obvious… joke… pun strength… increasing…

  4. 4  Steven  May 20, 2008, 11:10 pm 

    Don’t resist!

    I wouldn’t want readers to exhibit greater self-control in the face of a tempting cheap joke than I do myself.

  5. 5  richard  May 21, 2008, 12:15 am 

    Wyrd.

  6. 6  Picador  May 21, 2008, 9:58 pm 

    So basically we have here a bunch of extremist scientists, practising what John Ashcroft would rightly call evil physics, who are planning to “interrogate” — ie talk to — “high-temperature and high-density regimes”, rather than promising to obliterate them, as any sane public figure would.

    Steven, you forget that “interrogate” is a term of art used by the Bush administration and its DoJ cronies to mean “torture to death”.

    It would be funny if it weren’t true.

  7. 7  Steven  May 22, 2008, 1:08 am 

    You’re right! This is good physics after all!



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