Curly, Larry and 99Mo

I’m a newspaper publisher’s dream. I not only read news stories, I also read advertisements. The most spectacularly silly ad in recent days was one for Canadian Light Source. I was drawn to the prominently displayed and decently sized (5″x11″) ad because I was intrigued by the name of the organization.

Hoping to find out more, I read the first paragraph. Turns out it’s a national synchrotron light facility located on the University of Saskatchewan campus in Saskatoon. OK, I now knew where, but I still didn’t know what. The next sentence told me the organzation “is engaged in the design, construction and commissioning of a pilot 99Mo production facility at the CLS, based on a high-power electron linear accelerator (linac) producing 99Mo through a photo-nuclear reaction on 100Mo.”

The ad went on to say that CLS is looking for expressions of interest to help them develop a “full envisioned” downstream processor. Too bad, I thought, I only swim upstream. Downstream’s too easy.

You have to ask yourself, why didn’t CLS just call the three people in the world who know what the heck that all means to see if they’d like to help. A full envisioned approach rather than a $7,500 (my estimate) ad would surely be more likely to find a partner than this broad and blathering brush.

I can only hope no public money was involved.