Fate is an interesting master. We all, one imagines, speculate on our lives in a parallel universe where different decisions were made. Geeklawyer’s last science post provoked an interesting comment from Charon who thanked the government’s HR department for depriving Geeklawyer of the opportunity of a career as a research physicist designing nuclear weapons.
Geeklawyer’s ruminations on that deserve a full post rather than a comment. HR didn’t do anything other than make Geeklawyer an embittered and hostile man. And it isn’t as though the weapons lab’s security was so lax that Geeklawyer could have done much damage. They don’t let you take a 30 megaton warhead home for the weekend to do some fine tuning for the milestone meeting on Monday. Or lend you a couple of microgrammes of Plutonium to poison that bastard next door’s dog. No, one has to do that on one’s own.
Were this a Bond movie Geeklawyer, in the face of such HR stupidity, would have retreated to a mountain lair and plotted to overtake the World. In truth it was attempted, but with property prices rising the way they were back then in the 80’s, and as a new graduate, frankly, he just couldn’t afford a big underground cave, let alone a friggin’ dormant volcano: not even with a 100% mortgage; no, that’s for top rank megalomaniacs, not the new boys. The first bank, Natwest, were skeptical. Geeklawyer said “Lend me the money or I will have my henchmen feed your children into a blender”, but they just called the police and he was ejected. Barclays wanted a business plan. So he was all like,
“6 months from now I will have dropped a nuclear weapon from my orbiting diamond encrusted Death Star onto a small American mining town, as a demonstration, and received $5 Billion from Reagan to do nothing else for the time being. With that I would pay off my Mother, most of my student loan and your overdraft facility.
The rest will be ploughed into directed energy weapons research with the aim of expanding my capacity for manufacturing death on a global scale at reduced cost. Oh, and an advertising budget of £5,000. And a laser printer. I really really like laser printers (this was the 80’s when 24 pin dot-matrix printers were ultra cool), but the lasers in my Death Star don’t work too well in printers, on account of them being rated at 50 terawatts, which burns a terrifically big hole in the paper rather than, you know, printing stuff.”
They said no. Bastards. And the rest is, in this Universe, history.
GL:…. It is quite possible that you would have left a nuclear warhead on the train to Waterloo. Government property does go missing.
I do feel more comfortable with the fact that you are using your Physics skills to mix Mead and Cider….. or are you developing a cunning plan?
I play the long game my dear fellow, the long game.
Indeed, GL…. I also know you like pussy…. in fact… I hear that you enjoy stroking pussies
I NEVER reveal my sources…. not even if you try to cut me in half with your laser printer.