This is almost too "inside", both bloggish and totally of New Mexico-- but too funny to ignore. Stingray at Atomic Nerds has taken my challenge over at Nature Blog to add a Los Alamos Barbie to the already excellent collection of New Mexico Barbies there. Here is an excerpt.
"..Los Alamos Barbie often comes with the optional child accessory, availible in either the Nervous Wreck Overachiever, or the Chronically Unenthused Slacker variants. Los Alamos Ken looks suspiciously like Taos Ken with his birkenstocks, hiking shorts, and extremely silly hat, but is distinguishable by the addition of socks to the sandals and by wearing a dress shirt in some state of dishevelment rather than a tie-dye tshirt. Those mistaking Los Alamos Ken for Taos Ken frequently find themselves on the receiveing end of a three hour “discussion” on the non-linear equations governing meteorology, string theory, self-balancing binary tree algorithms, and of course nuclear energy no matter what his actual field is.”
2 comments:
Oddly enough, when I used to compete in High Power Rifle (KD or Service Rifle) competition, several examples of Los Alamos Ken were active shooters. One (not actually from Los Alamos but of the type, also a Distinguished Rifleman) was conducting a DCM qualifier course and instructed the attendees to "hold the front sight tangent to the bullseye in a six o'clock position" for the proper sight picture. Given that and a few similar instructions, confusion ensued.
As my student James pointed out in his comments, the Colorado version, with nearly identical wording, circulated when he was in middle school, which puts it around 2000-2001.
Textual analysis supports him, if we apply the principle of "hard" and "soft" readings.
Nevertheless, Stingray's contribution assures us that New Mexico's version has been localized. It wouldn't be New Mexico without the Secret City of Atomgrad.
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