Insert “In Soviet Russia…” Joke Here
So I’m browsing through the latest issue of Tectonophysics when I see that “[s]everal long-range seismic profiles were carried out in Russia with Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE).” Holy oxymorirony, Batman! Don’t nuclear arsenals carry a certain amount of bellicosity with them, which can only be removed by a painstaking ceremony involving lots of little children singing songs about friendship?
Did Pavlenkova and Pavlenkova undertake such rituals before running their experiments? They don’t mention it! You sure can get anything through peer review these days… especially if you publish it in journals owned by international arms merchants.
John Vidale wrote:
PNEs, like dynamite, but with a little more punch. Like Teller’s plan “to excavate an artificial harbor in Alaska using thermonuclear explosives” [Wikipedia].
I used a couple of megaton real nuclear tests to look at fine structure and rotation of the inner core. It is a rare seismic source that has a magnitude of 7 and a duration of a millisecond.
Posted 29 Mar 2020 at 10:49 pm ¶
Lab Lemming wrote:
And you wonder why the USSR lost the propaganda race…
My first job out of college involved compiling a whole bunch of refraction profiles, including some of those. They were a lot longer than the conventional ones.
So save the children holding hands, the organic tofu, and the flower tossing for the natural nuclear reactors.
Posted 29 Mar 2020 at 11:06 pm ¶
yami wrote:
Oh, for sure they’re great for science. It’s just that so many of my current housemates are starry-eyed peace activists who want to shut down the national labs…
LL: Did you mean to include a link there? And, heh. Reminds me of the time some kids went down to Whole Foods to ask if they had any “natural logarithms”…
Posted 29 Mar 2020 at 11:24 pm ¶
Lab Lemming wrote:
I actually tried to link to the Wikipedia page, which seems to have been ripped off of the DOE site you posted, only with the propaganda removed.
For example, they correct
“The radioactive remains of natural nuclear fission chain reactions that happened 1.7 billion years ago in Gabon, West Africa, never moved far beyond their place of origin.”
to
“the non-volatile fission products have only moved a few cm in the veins during the last 1.5 billion years.”
But hey. As long as we get MOST of the words correct, the rest arn’t that important, are they? Isn’t the first rule of writing to dispense with adjectives?
Posted 30 Mar 2020 at 1:10 am ¶
yami wrote:
Nah, that’s the second rule of writing. The first rule of writing is to know who’s paying you, and how much, and write accordingly.
Posted 30 Mar 2020 at 1:45 am ¶
Lab Lemming wrote:
Shouldn’t we be writing suck-up blogs for that one?
Posted 31 Mar 2020 at 2:23 am ¶
yami wrote:
Depends how well we’re paid.
Posted 31 Mar 2020 at 3:11 am ¶
DAMN wrote:
In Soviet Russia joke inserts you.
Posted 29 Oct 2020 at 9:44 am ¶
Red Russian wrote:
In Soviet Russia, road forks YOU!
Posted 08 Dec 2020 at 4:29 pm ¶