Liquid Explosives (by alaric)

Here's an interesting technical analysis of all this talk of taking explosives on board planes in liquid form.

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html

Where it really gets interesting, though, is towards the bottom. The author argues that stopping people from taking nail scissors and liquids on board planes is pretty stupid, since a clued-up terrorist could still hide plane-destroying materials in any metal object (sintered iron and aluminium = thermite, basically indetectable until it becomes a fireball), hide bombs in their body cavities, form hard plastic explosives into the shape of any object, convert a soft drinks can into a knife with just a couple of minute's work, etc.

The techniques developed by prisoners to improvise weapons from what they have to hand, or to smuggle and hide drugs, should give us some inspiration of what an organised terrorist group should be able to manage.

So should we give up and cower in fear? No. The fact that the terrorists aren't managing to make planes fall out of the sky can probably be put down to one of a few possibilities.

1. There just aren't enough people willing to die for their cause; motivating intelligent people to be suicide bombers is hard
2. Real security is provided by proper police work - identifying terrorists and tracing their networks to identify all the people involved in a plot, then arresting them - and that's working. Causing all this disruption at the airports in the name of security is pointless; once somebody's decided to down a plane, if they managed to recruit suicide bombers and get the materials and get them to the airport, the opportunity to actually stop them has already passed.

I'd like to see more money spent on actual policing - and less trivially-avoided, expensive, unpleasant, liberty-destroying measures like mass surveillance, laws against cryptography, and airport/train station/port screening. Sure, have an impressive-looking police presence at the airport to deter the weak-willed would-be bomber, but please, don't strip search me and make me spend an eight hour flight without my laptop.

A weekend away (by sarah)

Ok this post has been hanging around to long now - I will endevour to sort phots out later - this is going live like it or not!

Two weekends ago now lots of fun stuff happened which never got blogged about due to the 'jinx' stuff so I thought I'd best catch up on writting about it 🙂

First off there was Thursday, after the business stuff was done and sealed in London, we went to Charlee's perants house to meet up with her and Andy as me and Jean hadnt made it into zone one due to the heat! This was a very pleasant evening were I got given a wonderful purple top with sparkly beads and got to take photos of more cats! Plus I was impressed with the techno garden set up 🙂

Jean really loved it 🙂

Friday was the Front Wire Summer party in Guilford - so off me and Al went to that, it was another nice day with the added bonus of the trapoline!

I found some strange statues in the garden called Paul, Al and Seth!

I was very happy at this party surrounded by geeks doing sport!

Saturday saw us in Romford market buying stupid quantities of bombay mix! as we havent found anywhere that even comes near the fruit and nut stall. We also bought all the prizes for the village feast tomboler whilst we were at it. Then off into London again to meet up with people - a loo stop at Ikea which closes at midnight! resulted in me getting the alien rainbow knives, forks and spoons I saw at the beginning of the pregnancy and wanted to wean Jean with 🙂 I still cant imagine who would desperatly need furniture at 11 at night though?!

Sunday saw my Dad's thing at Rainham Methodist church were Jean made some friends! Followed by a flyby visit to more friends and a charity tea and cake session. (sorry this is probably boring to anyone whos not family). Then of course we picked Mini up and had a lovely everning with Earl and Rime - they have a great roof space where you can see loads of London with funky pigeons and pipes everywhere 🙂

Libertarianism (by alaric)

I just came across this in a text file while cleaning up an old home directory prior to deletion, so thought I'd put it up here...

It occurs to me that we do live in a libertarian world. At the global level, there is no higher level of government; all nations are free, limited only by their own desire to not invoke their neighbour's wrath. Organisations like the UN are voluntary, and have to bargain or impose sanctions to get their will followed, rather than being able to impose.

What does this mean? Read more »

Learning to drive (by alaric)

It's been many months since I passed my driving test now, but as my instructors had warned me, you never stop learning to drive.

You see, in order to pass the test you have to be a super-perfect driver; you need to think carefully about everything, and follow precise procedures, because that's what the examiners want to see.

Then you start driving around "for real", with passengers talking to you, having to think about your route rather than being told to take the next left. Driving starts to happen automatically, without thought.

This is why new drivers are prone to crashing, and have to pay more for their car insurance... Read more »

Hooray for working at home! (by alaric)

The cats aren't meant to get into my office, since I have desks laden with delicate electronic circuits with long cables that dangle down, but somehow Minnie snuck in there - because this morning, as I was sitting at my desk, she appeared beside me and meowed while looking up expectantly. I patted my lap, and she jumped up, made herself comfortable, and lay down to purr.

That's not something you normally get while working in an office, is it?

Despite the well-known stress-relief properties of a purring cat on your lap... If I ever set up an office, I'll make sure I get non-cat-allergic employees and have an office cat or two!

But, alas, not where I'm trying to do electronic circuit development.