Monthly Archives: August 2006

Zyklon-B zombies

So I've been thinking a little about how these “liquid terrorists” apparently were planning on taking out the plane, and whether it would work or not. Rather than creating a “bomb” with the liquids, the goal was to create a poison gas, which would kill or incapacitate everyone on board… But the problem is, the plane might not crash — depending on the system of autopilot in it, it might even be able to land at its destination (and if not, at least fly for hours until it runs out of fuel), fully automated, full of nothing but corpses. It's certainly a poetic attack.

Bullshit security.

Terrorists, at least the methods they use, are stupid and primitive. The shit they do is really, really lame, and any hillbilly fool could do it better. So some terrorist plans on bringing liquid explosive on a plane, or blowing up his shoe, and what do we do? Treat them like the expert and ban liquids, shoes, and now all carry on luggage (there's not a chance in hell I'm flying and checking my laptop given that hundreds of thousands of pieces of luggage are stolen every year by airline employees).

If you want to know how to blow up an airplane and bypass security, you need to look at two industries:

1. Prison
People figure out how to get all kinds of crazy weapons inside prison, both by smuggling them in and by manufacturing them inside prison. Hell, you could build a battery operated hot-wire and use it to cut an insane shiv out of a strip of hard plastic in a jacket if you wanted, and that's primitive in comparison to the really scary stuff you can do. But seriously, buy any book on prison weapons and you'll see hundreds of weapons that could be brought or built on a plane that would bypass current security.

2. Drug Smuggling
How do drugs get across borders? Again, buy a book on drug smuggling and you'll see how easy it would be to get stuff onto an airplane if you applied the same rule to weapons, components, and explosives. The fact that terrorists don't use these methods suggests that the “buying pot pays terrorists” link is abstract at best.

The point is that if intelligent people with a small amount of money (less than $100,000) want to blow up an airplane, they can do it in their sleep if they have at least one person willing to go down with the plane. It's not hard. Thankfully very few intelligent people actually want to cause mass harm to others that isn't financially profitable. The real smart terrorists are in government.

This new security is idiotic. There are three answers (not all winning or sustainable) to terrorism:

  1. We can institute prison-admittance-level security internationally and repeal privacy and expression rights, and enforce them with an iron first.
  2. We can all keep on being assholes to each other globally and accept that the fighting will never end. So everyone once in a while something or someone we care about goes kaboom.
  3. We can be fucking polite to each other and stop fighting.

Option three seems a whole lot easier than the rest.

UPDATE: And let me just parrot yttrx by saying:

Welcome to the mid term election season!

(Original forum unavailable, sorry)*

Why bomb screening will NEVER work

So I've been watching the news incredulously, stunned at how clueless airline security is (to say nothing of how clueless the commentary is). In general, the “better” security is at finding bombs, the more invasive and inconvenient it is. And the problem is, bombs can be hidden in ways that would force screening that's invasive to the point of making it pointless to bother at all.

I've mentioned this before, but take a look at BME/HARD's “all things ass” section (or look at the free thumbnails in the video section on anal stretching, or for a more mild starter view, read this anal stretching interview. My feeling is that if you're willing to blow yourself up, you should be willing to blow up your ass first. It's certainly easier than learning to fly for example.

Can someone give me a serious explanation as to why someone can't shove enough explosives up their ass to blow a hole in an airplane big enough to tear off a wing if the passender is sitting next to it? Or if they have other plans, why can't they shove a gun and bullets up their ass? Drug mules are willing to do this. Is the tiny amount of money gained by drug mules for using their ass as storage though security and borders a stronger motivating factor than the gods of religious extremists?

Aww crap, now I'm probably gonna get ass-screened next time I fly.

You know what they say about Portland…

This has to be one of my favorite postcards ever. I wonder if it's from someone I know, or a stranger. I think I recognize the handwriting but I'm sure I'm dreaming that. I hope it's written by some superhot, slightly crazy girl that plans on taking me on an adventure through time, but sadly I suspect it is written by some fellow deranged traveller through interzone…

But seriously, best post card I've gotten in a while. Thank you to whoever sent it!

Getting a lot done

Barry has a forum for juice recipes on his page (he had to go one-up me and get the fancy ,shiny, probably-doesn't-leak professional version of my “pro-sumer” model, ha)… I admit that I like really simple single-fruit drinks most (although I'm open to suggestions). From left to right (pardon the bottles; I'm cheap) is red grapefruit, apple, and watermelon.

At this point I've basically cut caffeine and alcohol out of my general intake, am eating relatively light but healthy, am getting more sleep most nights, and really feel a lot better for it. I still have some problems controlling my drug intake though, but as I feel better that gets a lot easier as well. That said, they're not rules, and I still occasionally have a drink. Think of me of a vegan that occasionally shoots a caribou.

Speaking of feeling better, the database cleaning I've been working on all week is finally complete (at least the first step), so I'm off to do another stage of that now.