If you work with a technical writer who's always asking questions and wanting to write stuff down, read this to better understand why we're needed. (Excerpted from Good Morning Silicon Valley blog:
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2009/03/odds-are-shell-have-a-full-dance-card-at-the-laureates-ball.html
Elsewhere in the wide world of science:
* This is almost as embarrassing as KFC misplacing the specs for its 11 secret herbs and spices. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration needs to refurbish the aging warheads on Trident missiles to make sure they remain safe and reliable, but the program has been set back a year, at an additional cost of $69 million, because http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2494129.0.0.php the agency has lost track of the recipe for a key ingredient, a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank. The secret sauce is thought to be a foamy, explosive solvent cleaning agent (hey, I could use one of those sometimes) that plays a key role between the fission and fusion stages of a thermonuclear bomb. Unfortunately, the last batch was made some 20 years ago, and in the interim, not only was the sole production facility torn down, but, according to a GAO report, “NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency.”
Doh! A new production facility has been built but work on recreating the recipe continues.
