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in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places), and a shared resource for popular memory and nostalgia (evoked, for example, in a recent volume of poignant photographs of Manhattan Project workers and their families). Occasionally, this process becomes reflexive as the historical agents and practices of nuclear representation are themselves taken as an object of representation (e.g., in a recent film celebrating the work of Air Force photographers responsible for visually documenting nuclear weapons tests). Another outcome, however, involves a self-consciously unofficial bricolage and pastiche of forms created from the fragments of nuclear culture (e.g., when a California media production company creates a 'warplane theme' in its office by using parts of decommissioned B-52 bombers that also signify its aggressive 'psychological warfare' in the marketplace).

This theme encompasses tactical and entrepeneurial attempts to develop nuclear-historical resources for 'profitable' ventures (e.g., the conversion of abandoned missile silos into domestic residences, and the recycling of ICBM rocket propellant as commercial heating fuel). Ideally, these ventures open up new operational 'markets', and return desperately needed revenue and legitimacy (e.g., when the famous RAND think tank -- the original developers of nuclear war strategy -- diversifies to become the nation's largest private health policy analyst). The agents of this development can be individuals, commercial organizations, local and state governments (e.g., Los Angeles recently converted a former Nike missile command center into a park with hiking trails and picnic tables), and federal agencies (e.g., the ultra-secret National Security Agency recently opened a gift shop in their headquarters). Often, this development reflects a mandate adopted by post-Cold War nuclear organizations to reduce their historical secrecy, and increase -- to an extent -- public awareness of and investment in their operations. The Illinois Argonne National Laboratory, for example, has literally opened a 'window into and onto the laboratory' by creating an educational exhibit that allows visitors to remotely observe and participate in actual experiments being conducted by employees.

This theme also encompasses the manner in which defense conversion -- the widespread economic 'rehabilitation' of Cold War subjects and institutions -- becomes an object of media scrutiny (e.g., in news coverage of 'killer' Russian dolphins originally trained to locate mines that are retrained to work with autistic children). This media treatment occasionally borders on the comic, as in a 1996 news photo of two senior U.S. and Russian defense officials, posed in a Missouri cornfield and appearing equally awkward with the actual performance of destruction, jointly setting off an explosion to 'retire' an empty ICBM silo. The concreteness of this image produces incongruity which clarifies the disorienting rate of change in post-Cold War politics, in which former enemies are now collaborators. The ironic tone of this image is echoed in copy accompanying a newspaper photograph depicting a milestone demolition at a former nuclear weapons production facility: 'Most companies hold a ceremony when a building is erected. Rocky Flats celebrated Monday as a building came down.' Potentially, these depictions can evoke popular-cultural images of of Cold War military operations -- as when a news artic