Signs of the Times

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As read on a military blog, passed along without comment, merely a sagely nod and a few puffs of the pipe.

"Detectors are simple enough to thwart. Throw a handful of fertilizer (which will almost certainly contain nitrates such as ammonium nitrate) onto the ground in the parking lot at the airport, where everyone walks through it. After the 600th false alarm, the detector is shut down as it's obviously defective. Once that happens, THEN you smuggle in your device. The detector-happy people are nuts with no sense of reality."

Along a similar line: “It's an interesting war. Billions of dollars worth of air strikes and covert operations versus exploding jock straps.”

As someone in the Nixon administration once said "Things that can't last, won't." This will be true about this stupid "War on Terror" , just hope that doesn't bankrupt our sanity and our society along the way. Far too many angles for people to make way too much money off of this shit* that would justify keeping it going.

On another side note, yesterday I read about a study that found that of the large majority of those with higher education degrees involved in either Fundamentalist Christianity or Radical Islam, that the propensity of those degree fields were all in Engineering. Fascinating. And there's probably something deep there. Politics seen as an engineering problem to whit is applied jerry-rigged explosives of some complexity and power on one side and high tech detectors and robot drones to thwart, on the other. Neither of which really conclude the problem or address the fundamental human questions underlying the conflict - mere false technological salves, which are eminently profitable, applied. It's a dumb engineers war, isn't it.

And lastly on a personal note - I have been pulled aside for "secondary screening" three times in airports. The underwear bomber, despite being on CIA watch lists, was not. I am starting to wonder if I need to be on one of those lists, you know for future travel expediency.

*see "Drugs, War On".

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About Me

So that's me there in that picture. Or me in anime/manga form. I'll probably change that picture from time to time. What else? Well, I call New York City home. My passions include, but are by no means limited to music, politics, capoeira, and good single malt scotch. I suppose if you need to know more than that just mosey on over to the about page more info.

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