:(

The assault on Los Alamos National Laboratory: A drama in three acts: Recent condemnations of Los Alamos have been based on remarkably thin, cartoonish descriptions of its culture. Critics have offered only a flat, unelaborated sense that weapons scientists, with their lifetime sinecures, have a sense of privilege that, in the words of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman (US House of Representatives, 2008), makes them “think they are above it all.” Such phraseology is bizarre when applied to men and women who work very long hours and accept government surveillance of their lives that most of us would not tolerate. (They are not allowed to travel abroad without government permission; government agents can question their friends about their finances, drinking, and sex habits; and they can be tested for alcohol in their blood at a moment’s notice at work.)