Word: wooding
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...Alamos today, Merri Wood, a tall brunet with a bright, clear-liquid voice and a designer of nuclear weapons, is in a sense Agnew's heir and creation. Not only does Wood not question the connection of her work with the military, she is pleased to have it. For one thing, that connection has provided jobs for those like herself, a former Ph.D. candidate in physics at Georgia Tech, who was specializing in particle transport and found a shop to apply her studies. (Particle transport is a general term for the motion of atomic particles through various materials.) Designing weapons...
...matter, Wood has to think about the military, since the military, by making requests and assignments, gives direction to her work in "thermonuclear applications" (designing warheads). "The military wants XYZ bomb, and you give 'em the best you can." She tests a bomb's size and, like Agnew before her, measures yield. "If they [the military] say they want two megatons, I give 'em two; if they want 2,000, I give 'em 2,000." The measure of success is if a bomb tests satisfactorily in Nevada and then goes into stockpile. In that case Wood works with the engineer...
...Wood enjoys the connection between her work and its military market because she sees a philosophical underpinning. The people at Los Alamos when Agnew was there were working toward something they knew was going to be used. The people at Los Alamos now work on things that are never supposed to be used. "And we don't want to use them. Nobody wants to see these guys used." Nor does she feel that there is something antilogical or frustrating in designing a weapon for the explicit purpose of not using it. The "in-point," she says, is in the test...
What goads them? What makes former Harvard Oarsman Tiff Wood keep training into his 30s? Why does onetime Yale Rower John Biglow ignore severe back pain to continue his training? Why is Brad Lewis, a brooding Californian, so determined to beat the Ivy Leaguers at their own sport? Certainly it is not money, and surely it is not fame. Halberstam, who took the time to get to know the oarsmen in their boats and onshore, offers some provocative answers. They are not likely to make the sport or the sportsmen popular, but they provide valuable insights into the psychology...
...bound by hand-hewn pegs to a 20-ft. by 30-ft. rectangle. Inside this architectonic web freshly spun along the rear of the Bakers' blueberry-shingled farm house, Babcock, 50, in red plaid shirt and worn, blue work pants, ministers to a most ungraceful tangle of rope and wood...