It started as a joke to Noel about the spam I get touting 532 nanometer green lasers available in bulk. That ranks up there with the spam for industrial conveyor belts. Do people needing large numbers of green lasers and industrial supplies go looking around in spam for their purchasing needs? Rolex watches, sure. Scam credit relief, sure. Porn, definitely. But industrial supplies? I just can’t comprehend what chain of events would lead to that spam generating the required return for the generations of the emails to be worthwhile. Some poor schlep wanders into their bosses office to be brought up short with a request to come up with “a few dozen green lasers, STAT!” The schlep sits down at their computer, the Mentos commercial music starts playing, and magically an email appears to answer their sudden and pressing laser needs? Far fetched at best. And Noel replies with “Or radioactive isotopes.” Yep, you got that right. Radioactive fricking isotopes.

Cheesy 70s ad and all!!

Noel says, go over to http://www.unitednuclear.com/ and check it out. Sho ‘nuff, radioactive fricking isotopes in all their animated-gif-spinning-red-and-green-text-spammer-generated-page glory. “It’s a joke, or a hoax” I say to myself as I do a Google search. No, I’m not so sure it is. Looks like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was pissed at them because they apparently “intentionally provided false information to the NRC”. I’m not sure which one causes me more concern: the version where traffic in fake radioactive material is profitable enough to be spamworthy, or the version where the radioactive material actually shows up after you place an order. Mostly I just think I’m gonna stop joking with Noel about things like this.