Drunnnk.

[sub_divided]

Hehehe. Two beers, one game beer pong, one game flip shots, three shots vodka three jello shots and a rum and coke. Oh! And a screwdriver.

Considered staying home from work today to read Initial D, decided not to with the expectation that not all of this week’s Annual DOE Review presentations would be as bad as ours. They weren’t: they were worse. No science to them, all scheduling and budget projections and graphs that don’t have to mean anything as long as they look good. One more day of this, then I can get back to doing things that matter. Er, if I can go in tomorrow. Probably can, there’s free lunch.

DOE = Department of Energy. The one that sets oil prices and sabotages research into alternative power sources and paid for the development of the Atomic Bomb and also (incidentally) funds 90% of physics research in this county. I think it’s hilarious that The Government organizes these meetings to check that we aren’t wasting Government money, and the meetings end up wasting buckets of it. All our energy is going into making pretty slides, cleaning the lab for tours, attending meetings. Not into research.

If you were wondering, the University pays for about $500,000 of SNAP’s annual ten million dollar budget. The rest of the money is from the DOE. They like the project because it’s flashy and prestigious and leads to incidental benefits like the development of space-qualified high-accuracy infrared detectors (good for spying).

I wonder how my parents feel about all of this sometimes. They’re both extremely socially conscious. Whereas I find that I don’t particularly care what my research is used for, provided I am ALSO allowed to launch my telescope and look out into space and rewrite the history of the Universe.

^^;; I realized yesterday that 90% of all the fic I’m currently writing could qualify for the “School of Morality” theme at 31_days. Not the way I suspect Tin meant it (descriptions of amoral behavior). >_< More like the characters are trying to define a personal code within the context of the canon.