Re: Trintiy Site as Positive PR?? -Reply

["Frank "Free Spirit" Borger" <frank@rover.bsd.uchicago.edu>]

> From:          "Sue M. Dupre" <dupre@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
> Subject:       Re: Trintiy Site as Positive PR?? -Reply
...
>  I disagree quite strongly with Jim 
> Muckerheide's view that "Most people who think about it ... easily 
> put weapons in the spectrum of things nuclear and radiation ...." 

1.	Hmm. "Nuke it!" is a common term used by the layperson
	to describe cooking something in a microwave.  You also
	see periodic "reports" about the bad things that microwave
	cooking do to foods. 

2.	Some years ago when I was operating a then experimental
	linac adapted for use in  radiation therapy, we had a small
	vacuum problem, and a back-room  alarm went off. Hearing
	this the patient jumped off the treatment table and exited
	the treatment room at high speed, firmly convinced that the
	linac was ready to blow up at a moment's notice.

3.	From may sources you can buy units for your PC that block
	the "harmful radiation" coming from the monitor.

4.	Radiation from cell-phones and police radars are asserted to
	have caused cancers.

	A large portion of the general public lumps anything having
	the word "radiation" in it into one big mental basket, and they
	equate that with scenes of TV sensationalists holding up
	"This tiny bit of Plutonium..."

	I unfortunately feel that trying to do positive PR about radiation
	is like King Kanute trying to turn back the sea. Yes, sites like
	Trinity can do something, but they are preaching to the already
	converted. 

	As the sargeant said to Andy Griffith, "Whatever happens don't
	make waves!"

Frank R. Borger - Physicist      ___       "If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd  
Michael Reese - U of Chicago   |___       live in Hell and rent out Texas."
Center for Radiation Therapy   |   |_) _   P. Sheridan, Civil War General
net: Frank@rover.uchicago.edu     | \ |_) 
ph: 312-791-8075 fa: 791-3697        |_)