In US popular culture the matter of nuclear weapons has of course been trivialised; like in this 1957 photograph of Miss Atomic bomb. Is that bad taste or what!?
Now trivialisation and irony are two different matters.
I found this blog from 2001 on Microsoft testing of nuclear devices. I thought very amusing. It begins:
“World leaders reacted with stunned silence as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) conducted an underground nuclear test at a secret facility in Washington state. The device, exploded at 10:55 am PDT (1:55 pm EDT) today, was timedto coincide with talks between Microsoft and the US Department of Justice over
possible antitrust action.”
In it Bill Gates supposedly claims the rights of Microsoft to market it’s products by ”any and all necessary means”.
Bush supposedly retaliates; but to no avail:
“In Washington, President Bush announced the US Government would boycott all Microsoft products indefinitely. Minutes later, the President reversed his decision. "We've tried sanctions since lunchtime, and they don't work," said the President. Instead, the administration will initiate a policy of "constructive engagement"
with Microsoft.”
And what about this supposed quote from the then Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myrhvold, where he warns users to replace Microsoft NT products with rival
operating systems:
"I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator inside of every Pentium III microprocessor," said Myrhvold, "but anyone who installs an OS written by a bunch of long-hairs on the Internet is going to get what they deserve."
Read article in full here: Microsoft Tests Nuclear Device
And finally to round off with some more nuclear irony. Kallis comment on picture below: “Nice to see the great military powers treating their soldiers like human beings“
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