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A
Journey Through the Pentagon's Most Innovative World
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Incompetently
researched,
ill-written and uncorroborated, Sharon Weinberger's bitter
and "mean-spirited" book is a total failure.
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"Real
name" customer reviews at Amazon.com
"A battle to read, not
worth it in the end" - Chris Knight, AU.
"Don't
waste your time" -
D. Muhr, Chicago
"Just
awful!!" - H.
Kimble, Loveland, OH
"Axe
to Grind" - Sean Malowney, Seattle
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Imaginary Weapons is a mean
spirited attack on dedicated scientists callously selected as
sacrifices to Sharon Weinberger's narrow political agenda. |
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New
- John Gibbons and Peter Zimmerman quoted, scroll down.
| Explore
the book
now. |
In her book Imaginary
Weapons, Sharon Weinberger reminds us that vast amounts of the
taxpayers money (about $50,000 per second) are spent
on the technology of war. Improving of the technology requires
understanding of the underlying science, a complex and challenging
task. In order to "simplify" decisions that direct (or redirect)
billions of dollars of contracts there have emerged cadres of "Experts"
whose massive certainties about what can (and more often, what cannot)
be done become the dominant factors in decisions about "who gets the
money." Membership in these elite cadres having been known as "the
JASONS," or "the Best and the Brightest," is usually secret,
self-perpetuating, and void of diversity. In Imaginary Weapons, Sharon
Weinberger claims to address this topic. However, what she produces is
a portrayal of 2-dimensional actors in a grotesque morality play that
is written without concern for the number of casualties that will
result from her labeling of real people as being either Good or Evil
according to her shallow level of understanding of the issues.
In fact, Imaginary Weapons tells only the story of the battle that
ensued over an insignificant 5 seconds of Defense expenditure.
Imaginary Weapons also illuminates the dangerous threat to that
existing totalitarian management of scientific research that underlies
war technology that must not advance too rapidly, and certainly not too
cheaply. In most of Imaginary Weapons, Sharon Weinberger has focused on
one "obscure Texas scientist" whom she labels the "antihero" of the
book - a full Professor of Physics for 31 years, who refused all
security clearances and elected to work only openly with a sequence of
36 Graduate Students who got the PhD under his direction and who were
drawn from the most diverse origins. In a team of 15 Faculty and
Students from 8 laboratories in 5 countries, they proved that the great
energy storage of isomeric Hafnium nuclei could be released on demand
by winning, in open international competition, considerable access to
the world's leading research tool for such experiments, the great
synchrotron light source in Japan. The US facilities used by the "Best
and Brightest," remain tied for 4th rank in the world and so proved
inadequate for such research. The Climax of Imaginary
Weapons by Sharon Weinberger describes the
destruction of that collaboration after 6 years of leadership in Isomer
research.
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"Let them
work at
Wal-Mart"
- Sharon Weinberger
empathizing with the students and young professionals who lost their
jobs because of her book.
"Dr.
Alp [p.205] advised that he did not provide Spring-8 officials with Ms.
Weinberger's magazine article, contrary to the account in the book."
-
Chief Counsel, Chicago Office of the United States Department of Energy.
Amazon.com book rankings:
Comparative rankings
of
Imaginary Weapons by Sharon Weinberger with a pleasant children's book
that started at the same rank.
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The Earth's premier
synchrotron source
of precision X-ray energies
where nuclear isomers have released
the greatest energy densities.
Proving the strength
of diversity
this team continued to prove the easy
release of energy stored in the
nuclear spin isomers of Hafnium-178. |
Book Reviews
Do we believe ...
Peter Zimmerman
Professor of Science and Security in the Department of War Studies at
King's College, London, UK
"I have no idea..."
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"...an isomer bomb would not be a nuclear weapon. That
would mean that it ...could even be tested in the atmosphere, despite
the 1963 limited test ban treaty....she walked into my life ...I agreed
to talk....
I thought we had killed the hafnium bomb with laughter...Victory...well
not exactly. Did [Dr. P.J.] McDaniel [at Sandia Natl. Labs. confirm]
that isomer triggering occurred? I
have no idea....
So it almost worked out....former presidential science advisor Jack Gibbons, whom
I admire greatly, called me a hero in his review of Imaginary
Weapons....
That's good enough."
-APS News, 16, p6 (June 07) |
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"The book is a shocking
reminder...involved gullible weapons enthusiasts who had more spending
authority than good sense.
...reminds us that the government must support and use highly credible
analysis groups, such as...the Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment. which was dismantled in 1995 during the Republican
Revolution led by Newt Gingrich....
For me the hero in Imaginary
Weapons is Zimmerman,
who quietly used his scientific training and experience in Washington
to nudge the fable of a Hf bomb into a deservedly deep hole."
-Physics Today.
60, 58
(2007)
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John Gibbons
Owns
his own lobbying firm, Resource Strategies nearby Washington, DC
" ...real money...."
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