By RICK NEBEL 
Los Alamos 

The best response on the age of the president was the one Ronald Reagan gave in the 1984 presidential debates. It was so good, that it even cracked up Walter Mondale. 

Here is the link to it.

Is age discrimination a problem in Los Alamos? 17 years ago when I worked in X-Division they were very hesitant to hire anyone who was within 10 years of retirement. The rationale was that it took 5 years to train people in nuclear weapons and they didn’t want to train people and then have them retire. That’s understandable, but I suspect that it is also age discrimination.

At Tibbar we presently don’t have any employees under the age of 60. There is a tremendous amount of talent in the retired community in Los Alamos and it is a shame that more retirees don’t go back to doing science. The financial independence of being retired gives retirees a lot of scientific freedom.