PASSWORDS can be a nuisance, especially when they are needed for an emergency system and the operator can鈥檛 remember them. Wouldn鈥檛 it be better if managements decreed that systems intended for emergencies had all their passwords set to the same thing, something like 0000000? Then we could all sleep better knowing that a forgotten password would never get in the way of anything critical.
This argument made eminent sense to the officers in charge of the US Strategic Air Command back in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, writing on the organisation鈥檚 website.
It seems that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wanted to make sure nuclear Armageddon didn鈥檛 arrive by mistake, so he instructed the SAC to equip controls for its nuclear-tipped Minuteman missiles with locks that could only be released with a secret password before launch. But according to Blair, this degree of micromanagement of the important matter of obliterating civilisation without delay was too much for the SAC commanders. They insisted all eight digits of the password should be set to 0, a decree not reversed until 1977.
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When Blair鈥檚 story surfaced recently on a science-writers鈥� mailing list, space writer and SAC veteran Matt Bille insisted it wasn鈥檛 true. He declined to say what the real story was, on the grounds that it was classified. When asked, Blair held his ground.
Meanwhile, an old friend of Feedback鈥檚 who spent some time sitting in a missile silo in the dark days of the cold war said that in his time they used physical keys, not passwords. 鈥淚t was much more secure, since we also carried .38 revolvers,鈥� he said.
THE mind sometimes boggles at the names that wind up attached to institutions. The US House of Representatives has proposed a pair of fellowships for US and Russian scientists to study ways to slow or prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It鈥檚 a noble goal, but the peaceable sentiment is somewhat spoilt by the suggestion that the fellowships be named after Edward Teller and Igor Kurchatov, leading developers of the cold war era nuclear weapons in the US and the Soviet Union.
What next? The Jack Daniel鈥檚 Fellowship for the promotion of teetotalism?
THE summer issue of the London Natural History Museum鈥檚 magazine Nature First has some 鈥淪izzling Summer Offers鈥�, Alex Sanderson noticed. One of these is a DVD entitled The Planets: 鈥淭his comprehensive and spectacular account of space exploration and discovery uses state-of-the-art computer graphics and unseen space race archive material and is a must have for enthusiasts of the moon, the stars and beyond.鈥�
If you are an enthusiast of the planets, on the other hand, they clearly don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 for you.
PERHAPS it鈥檚 the pressure of essays and exams, or perhaps British students aren鈥檛 quite as bright as they are reputed to be. Stephen Aggett is about to graduate from the University of Bristol and so was recently browsing for a graduation ceremony gown. He was slightly worried when he found the Frequently Asked Questions section included:
Q. I鈥檓 not sure what degree I am on.
A. We are unable to tell you what you have been studying for. Ask your course tutor or the university or college registry.
Q. What does 鈥淗eight鈥� mean?
A. Your height means the measurement from the top of your head to the ground. This can be in metres or feet and inches.
A REQUEST to Samantha Brown for a career resum茅 or CV, which she had so far neglected to compose, prompted her to search amazon.co.uk for a book that might help. Finding How to Write a Powerful CV in a Hurry: An at a glance guide to writing a powerful CV and covering letter, she thought her task would be made easier, until she read on: 鈥淎vailability: usually dispatched within 4 to 6 weeks.鈥�
THROWING away a shoebox after a purchase from the Lands鈥� End catalogue, Scott Rumschlag noticed a small blue piece of paper on the top stating in bold letters, 鈥淒o not eat鈥�. He was unsure whether this referred to the box itself or the shoes it had contained. To be on the safe side, he refrained from eating either.
WHY, what a soft-hearted lot Feedback readers are. Several have written in, clearly moved by a headline that appeared on both the BBC online news and the Voice of America online news last week: 鈥淪ARS virus found in tears鈥�. Let鈥檚 hope someone gave it a hug to make it feel better.
FINALLY, it seems something strange is happening to childhood in these youth-oriented times. Alexandre Oliveira was checking some symptoms on the EMedicineHealth.com site and came across this: 鈥淧V [pemphigus vulgaris] happens more commonly in adults aged 40-60 years, but it has been found in children as young as 3 years and as old as 89 years.鈥�
Gary Beaton tells us that he was made to ponder for a few moments in his local Tesco supermarket when he noticed a product labelled 鈥淣ew Improved Swarfega Original鈥�