One of the things Pete "Don't call me George" Nanos did as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (aside from shutting us down for several months and wasting millions of your tax dollars over the issue of non-existant "missing" harddrives) was to install the hideously offensive motto, "The World's Greatest Science Protecting America," as part of our official logo, which appeared on all lab letterhead, business cards, powerpoint slides, etc. Now this might have made Pete and his yes-men on the fourth floor feel great about themselves, but for those of us who traveled to scientific conferences and had interacted with the outside world, this was somewhat embarrassing.

Having a motto that basically boils down to, "We're better than you," is not a move in the right direction, particularly for people who deal with an international audience—an audience that, in general, is not impressed with the arrogance displayed by the United States political apparatus. When I talked to folks from elsewhere during my recent travels, the impression I got was that they thought our political administration was ghastly but they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt because, as scientists, we're supposed to rise above all of that sort of thing. And I wasn't about to give a talk to these guys with a logo in the corner of every slide that said, "your science is second-rate," or something to that effect.

So I modified the LANL logo for my slides and business cards, which is somewhat of a transgression. Well, today I can finally put the official LANL logo back on my slides and business cards, because they've axed the motto altogether. Humorously, their new design is basically identical to the one I generated (not that I'm some amazing graphic artist; it's the same logo just with the moto deleted).

They released a bunch of updated graphics for us to use and changed the business card design—sort of.... one of the available card designs still has the motto. I guess they're leaving an option open in case Pete wants to order some more cards.