Explosives Camp 419
theodp writes "How about a summer camp where you get in trouble for not blowing things up? Students with a passion for all things explosive and proof of US citizenship pay a $450 fee to attend Summer Explosives Camp, 'We try to give them an absolute smorgasbord of explosives,' quipped a professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which offers a minor in explosives engineering. Here's the brochure (PDF), kids!"
Why US citizenship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:uhm, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
Iranian terrorists (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody could be a terrorist.
Re:Wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Not that I'm advocating banning such camps, just pointing out not all terrorists have access to proper training.)
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
It is extremely sad that science and chemistry are being destroyed in the name of "fighting terrorism". Explosives, chemistry and other "dangerous terrorist activities" are used extensively in many industries. Most people are completely oblivious to this fact, and don't have a clue about how 'heavy industries' work. Therefore they continually do stupid things like call for a ban of chemistry in school or a ban of explosive substances needed for mining and other industries. School chemistry is already so useless and watered down (mostly because of the threat of litigation if something goes wrong) that I fail to see how there will be enough chemists in the future within mining and manufacturing industries.
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's this kind of reflex thinking that would encourage someone to get enrolled and attend classes wearing a turban muttering occasional Allahu Akbar under his breath. Just for laughs.
Lighten up. The country is filled with people who drive cars, own and carry guns, have arguments with their ex-wives, hold a grudge against the IRS, hate the President, or work at the post office. I'd be more worried about the sheer numbers of people in any of those groups before I'd worry about someone who wants to pursue what could be described as a slightly juvenile interest or hobby.
Re:Why US citizenship? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you attend a state school, without actually having lived in that state, you pay an arm and a leg to go there, just like the international students do. If you grew up in a state without a good public university system, you're pretty much screwed. Students in Virginia get a much better deal than those in Wyoming.
Many colleges in the US are also privately owned and operated, which means that everybody pays the same high rate.
Next year, I'll be studying in the UK instead of at my state school in the US. Even with the dollar tanking, it's still cheaper to pay the "full" UK tuition than my (relatively inexpensive) out-of-state tuition here.
Safety isn't first (Score:5, Insightful)
1. How to prime and shoot dynamite.
2. Safety precautions when handling explosives.
3. Where explosives are used.
4. The curriculum and department of Mining Engineering at UMR.
5. What careers are available that are explosive related.
6. How underground blasts work.
7. How explosives are used in industry.
8. How to set up and shoot off a fireworks display.
What's good for the goose... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so it's OK for USA to teach its kids about explosives? Imagine the outcry if someone heard about a similar program taking place, say, in Iran. I can already see the headline we would be getting: "Iran training dozens of kids into becoming terrorists with an expertise in explosives."
This is the same sort of fuzzy logic we see with USA possessing nuclear weapons and yet demanding that Iran be prevented from ever having any.
Re:What's good for the goose... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh really... [religioustolerance.org] In particular, note the column "Bombing, Arson, Attempted Bombing or Arson".
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, teaching these kids about the stuff that class presents has to be statistically about one-hundred-thousandth the danger level of not sufficiently teaching them about more mundane stuff, like driving, for instance.
Not so fun (Score:5, Insightful)
You can have the demo camp. I want a $450 camp where you just lay on a beach and get drunk with beautiful women. Where's that brochure?
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
While high energy devices and explosives are used in everyday life, and anyone wanting badly enough can build a bomb from gasoline or a number of common items, there is some danger in proliferating knowledge of destructive explosions to people not old enough to drive.
So what's to fear?
- Big storms, flooding, tropical diseases, drought, famine from global warming?
- Fake products? Toxins and harmful elements of legal products?
- Terrorists? Punks? Nutcases?
- Bird flu?
- Identity thieves? Criminals?
- Big Brother and loss of civil liberties?
- Techno screwups that might label you a very bad x, y, or z? A malfunctioning automobile/airplane?
- Technological or political upheaval?
- Overpopulation?
The list is getting longer, caused by the power that bad things have for accumulating and travelling close to you. But you, insulated and told of so many wonderful advancements, are most likely told little about making a real difference. The writing is on the wall, so to speak, when one opens a Slashdot page and sees the occasional heads-up.
Now, one might wonder would it make any sense to have an environmental studies summer camp. I doubt it. Kids are passionate about fun factor. Blowing up things are fun. Mature people think "environment" but have to do the pollution thing called a job, and have no time to do more than sort the recycling.
So the solution is build technology to address the problems. People need something like a network of gizmos that can detect hazards and sound a general alarm. Are locusts invading? Is someone carrying a dense metal object nearby? What's in the toothpaste? Did the cook pee in the soup? Has your computer smuggled out your private data? Are you developing a deadly disease? Has a deadly bacteria spread all over your salad?
Is it time for government intervention? There are so many people with similar problems that it would be cost effective to do something broad and sweeping rather than regional approaches. Or do we wait until events demonstrate that a reaction is unavoidable?
Would it be worthwhile to start on an open-source technology that detects hazards, let alone fix the problems? The world has grown complex enough that a person can't really defend himself without some technological assistance. Generations ago, life expectancy was low due to the large numbers of misunderstood or missed hazards. Now it's the same paradigm all over again. The solution used to be educate until the ability to cope is absorbed into common sense. This technique may soon be limited in effectiveness.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is usually a skilled technician or chemist who is the one who actually oraganises the manufacture of the explosive for the suicide bomber and it would be rare for them to actually use the product themselves. Of course they would most likely take the attitude that their part in the jihad is too important for them to actually kill themselves.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
But you know what, let's pretend that explosives are widely available. You have two cases:
Case 1:
Kids have explosives. Kids do not go to this course and thus have no training. They play with explosives and blow themselves up.
Case 2:
Kids have explosives. Kids go to this course and thus DO have training. They know how to safely use them and thus don't end up killing themselves.
Attempting to restrict information is never a good idea if that same information is already available in any form. For example, all of this information is already in a book or on the Internet somewhere. Restricting it just leaves an aura of curiosity around it.
I don't understand your argument of "The safety training these kids get will be unlikely to stick". Why would the safety training not stick? I find it interesting that a lot of people are willing to believe that kids immediately think that being safe is bad or "uncool". The belief that kids won't be safe simply because it involves safety is completely unfounded and more likely a result of your own fear than anything else.
Re:What's good for the goose... (Score:2, Insightful)
http://http//www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/index.h
China does not need your "permission" to have nuclear weapons.
They seem to have managed to avoid using them over the past 50 years somehow despite your dire warning. Still, only one country has launched nuclear strikes against another. Hint: It wasn't China.
Most reassuring, especially for the rogue undercover militia governments of Panama, Nicaragua, Grenada and Iraq.
I'm sure it's possible to be patriotic without being culturally blind or xenophobic.
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's good for the goose... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same sort of fuzzy logic we see with USA possessing nuclear weapons and yet demanding that Iran be prevented from ever having any."
Uh, I seriously doubt that they are deomonstrating how to create a 'human bomb' and are more along the lines of how explosives work. Experts in the field are always needed. Think demolishion, mining, or construction. Iran has these types of training schools already. They have construction and mining as well you know.
And as for the argument 'the US has them and no one else can' really doesn't work. What the hell is the US supposed to say: "We have nukes, so lets give them to every nation in the World." I don't think so. Kumbaya politics never worked and never will. (unless you live in Star Trek world) People want to 'play nice' with other nations, yet they still have their gun of choice under their pillow, or house alarm, or large dog(s) because they can't even trust someone from their neighborhood breaking into their home.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't really think any of friends at kids didn't nearly blow of fingers or eyes. You end up getting yourself injured with stuff like explosives when you have no idea what you are doing. Blowing things up teaches you how things blow up and how to set the fuse. I'd rather teach my kids the knowledge that I learned while doing bad stuff than have them getting same scars and keep them in one piece.
Getting the information how to do things is pretty easy from books and net, learning how to do it safely has to be learned from the hard way, hopefully by somebody else, or to be teached. I'd rather by teaching my kids how to handle napalm than taking them to hospital after "ooops, it does burn, thow some water on it".
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
My country, shop classes in upper secondary and high schools teach kids basic tasks like how to operate very real, very serious tools from bandsaws to circular saws and lathes, welding (arc and two-gas), metalworking (the typical item made is an oversized spoon for throwing water in a sauna) and various techniques of soldering electronics components. Yet the number of accidents is very low, generally due to the quality of teaching is high across the board but most of all because kids 1) learn rather quickly and 2) with the exception of the dumb ones, have a very good instinct for self-presevation especially around tools that are designed so that they can be operated safely. I assume things are very similar in the US, at least in some of the more progressive states.
There's nothing I see as being particularly dangerous in a "miner jr." camp compared to a circular saw that'll cheerfully take off both of your hands at the wrist if you fuck up well enough. At least proper explosives are close as can get to inert until triggered, preferably from a healthy distance and then some. Hell, a mining explosives camp sounds like just the thing for children of mining families; not many places to train when you're young for the kind of thing your parents did.
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:3, Insightful)
--
Lots of people got it for free.
Re:Bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:oh noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the most popular type of explosive used when making car bombs. They've known it for years. McVeigh used this. It's been on prime time news.
There's more to it than what he said. The details are available in various manuals; both chemical and terrorist.
I've heard that some farmers mix some up themselves to assist with stump removal and such.
Great, so engineers are Masons now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a terrible attitude, and it's sad.
You need a license to buy explosives, not to learn about them. One of the precepts of our entire society is that information isn't sectioned off into little 'need-to-know' chunks, controlled by cabals or trade organizations.
You can't practice medicine without a license either, but nobody goes around trying to lock up all the first-aid manuals or anatomy textbooks. We don't let random individuals set up shop as Professional Engineers and start greenlighting bridges, but anyone who wants to can go and read about finite element analysis [colorado.edu]; there's no secrets there.
Turning society into a series of closed, medieval-Masonic-ish 'knowledge cults' isn't going to help us in the long run. And frankly, if that sort of secrecy is what's required to "protect" society from terrorists, I seriously question the value of what you're preserving.
He forgot the tags. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the GP was being a wee bit sarcastic.
Re:What's good for the goose... (Score:1, Insightful)
Capt James McCarthy wrote:
>
> And as for the argument 'the US has them and no one else can' really doesn't work.
> What the hell is the US supposed to say: "We have nukes, so lets give them to every
> nation in the World." I don't think so. Kumbaya politics never worked and never will.
It's funny that this is the exact argument the NRA uses to advocate for gun ownership. You probably heard it in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre [wikipedia.org]: "An armed society makes for a polite society." "If everyone had a gun there'd be less crime." So, by that logic, if every country had nukes, there'd be less war.
In fact, there's a military doctrine called mutually assured destruction [wikipedia.org] that could be a further, related argument for every country having nukes.
Anyway, it's not like the US has proven itself to be the best custodian of nuclear weapons. America is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against another country. More recently, going against a long-standing policy, the Bush administration has expressed its willingness to use nukes even against non-nuclear states. And, as far as other countries possessing nukes, it seems that if you're an ally of the US the US doesn't have a problem with you acquiring nukes. Witness American support for Israel, India, and even Pakistan, despite their (clandestine and dangerous) development of nuclear weapons (not to mention Britain and France). Finally under Bush, America's backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty [wikipedia.org], and the Bush administration has even outed an agent [wikipedia.org] working in counterproliferation. The hypocrisy and irresponsibility is more than obvious.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I kinda doubt it (Score:3, Insightful)
To sum up, Jane Goodall observed what can most readily be described as a war between groups of chimpanzees at Gombe. IIRC, a particular group of chimps crossed the threshhold into "too large," and so broke up into two tribes, one of which went to a different area (this is normal chimpanzee behavior). The new area, however, was less fruitful than the old area. The new tribe returned to the old land, and attacked the original tribe. Over four years ('74-'77, I believe), the violence continued: notably, well past when the "objective" had been achieved. The tribe went ahead to try and exterminate their rivals, even after they posed no real threat.
Goodall's work has been criticized since the event by other researchers who haven't observed the same level of aggression. But the chief criticism has been that the environment she created (setting up feeding stations to attract chimpanzees) created a situation where the new territory was inferior to the original by a larger degree than would be found in nature. The argument goes that this caused an unnatural pressure on the new tribe, which then exhibited behavior that is not found in other studies.
From my (amateur, at best) point of view, however, that argument rings a bit hollow. It may well be the cause of this particular conflict, but regardless, it shows that the potential for the conflict is there. Were those conditions to arise in nature (say, because one group introduced farming or ranching), then we would expect to see the same result (war), which is borne out by human history (insofar, at least, as human history can be paralleled to other primate behaviors).
Regarding your point a couple posts back about the appearance of shaman-led armies with the introduction of ranged weapons, I might propose an alternative explanation. With hand weapons, war is a very individual affair, and much less amenable to central direction. With the introduction of ranged weapons, the ease of central control as well as the advantages of it (massed fire) may well have led to the rise of central leaders.
I can't back that up, mind you, but it's an alternative theory I'd like to see explored before coming to a conclusion based on that piece of evidence.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now when I teach firearms safety, I have the student teach me back and I question the reasoning for each rule just to verify as much as possible that they understand and to force them to do extra consideration. The mindset when working with dangerous technology needs to include the foresight into what could go wrong. Understanding the context of each safety rule is very helpful.
That thing that buzzed over your head was my point (Score:1, Insightful)
Do Christians en masse dance in the street and hand out candy when 3,000 civilians are MURDERED? Yes or no?
Got the balls to answer any of those questions?
The post I was replying to was trying to claim Christians are violent. As if the reactions to "Piss Christ" were anything near the reactions to fake reports of flushing one single Koran. (Hey, Islamofascists - I use the Koran for toilet paper! HA HA!)
And the site that post implicitly claimed as authoritative had a column that tracked picketing events in a table of "violence and harassment". So, claims from that site are dubious at best.
And I'll freely admit that http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ [thereligionofpeace.com] is hardly an unbiased site. But even if only 10% of their claims are correct, that's one helluva stinging indictment of Islam. And we all know that they're correct on a helluva lot more than 10% of their claims.
Guess how many major world religions actively set out to claim non-members are sub-human and deserving of death? (And, FWIW, that a woman is worth only half of a man as a basic part of their theology...) Guess how many major world religions actively set out to breed suicide bombers?
I'm sorry, but your attempt at moral relativism has failed utterly. To put it simply and irrefutably, "turn the other cheek" != "72 virgins".
Dance all you want. You can't refute that.
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you can have joint citizenship, but can you be subject to immediate revocation of your American citizenship AND immediate deportation without a hearing? More to the point, can you do that to a minor?
I don't mean to call your statement into question (okay, I guess I do, but I don't mean it as a personal attack) -- this just doesn't seem to add up somehow.
Re:Kaboom (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I kinda doubt it (Score:3, Insightful)
Religion was just the excuse.
In the Soviet Union, where Atheism was the "state religion" - people were indoctrinated and trained in their military to kill others. Kill the rich? Kill the religious fanatics? Kill the oligarchs?
Religion is just a convenient tool for manipulation - and in its absence, humans will always find another tool.
Despite the use of "designed" being flawed; I think humans were well-designed for killing other humans. It really is quite natural for us. And I disagree that we're the only animals to do so. It's actually a very common phenomenon in the animal kingdom.
Ah, yes, Milgram (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's just say, though, that:
1. That people can obey authority, isn't exactly new in and by itself. We have an army, don't we? Claiming that you can just turn people into an equivalent of Eichmann, though, is a whole other thing, and so much bullshit it could fertilize a few acres.
On one hand we have (A) people who were coaxed at every step, weren't face to face with the victim, in some versions were assured by 2 additional teachers that it's not dangerous, etc, and even so a lot were disoriented and even shocked after the experiment, vs (B) Eichmann who continued to send people to the concentration camps even after he was ordered not to. And knowing full well what happens there. I'm sorry, but other than as trolling, I can't see how anyone can put an equals sign between the two.
2. None of the participants were face to face with the victim, and essentially we don't know what they even thought or understood there. Did they really think "I'm killing someone" or maybe, "this has to be a joke?" I know I'd think the latter in such an incredible a setup. Being asked to administer someone unseen a 450 V shock, ranks up there with "press this button to have an invisible unicorn kick and invisible gnome."
The debriefing was superficial to the extreme, and even so, apart from a couple of people who claimed life-changing revelations, most seemed to not even have fully understood what they have done. The "omg, I had a revelation about myself" gang were actually extremely few, although quoted all over the place. The number of those who weren't even sure what the experiment did, if anything at all, outweighed them by far.
3. Even if you take his number at face value, obedience was by and large proportional to the number of figures of authority reassuring the subject that they're, not, in fact, doing anything dangerous. Even whether the experiment happened in an university (where you'd assume no mass killings would take place in broad daylight), or not, played a huge role and modified the percentage quite a bit.
When additional "professors" were involved, compliance varied between almost none, when the additional "professors" said it's dangerous to go any higher, to almost complete, when they said it's perfectly safe.
I don't know about you, but I can hardly put an equals sign between (A) someone doing something, even as bizarre as in the Milgram experiment, while reassured (directly or indirectly) by experts that it's safe, and (B) Eichmann and the like, who knew full well what they're doing. Unless you make an experiment that says, in a nutshell, "push this button to kill someone", I don't see how that equivalence can be argued in any form or shape. Here the reassurance from figures of authority was that you're _not_ actually doing anything dangerous. It's just not the same thing.
At most, what the Milgram experiment measures, is to what extent people would trust an expert against their common sense. But I suppose that wouldn't be as good for trolling for attention as, basically, "hey, looky, we can make people act like a famous (at the moment) war criminal". I mean, the former is just why you take medicine even if it makes you feel worse, while the later makes headlines.
4. Since that "it's not nearly as hard as you think" seems to be aimed at my claim that it's hard to turn a normal human into a premeditated murderer, I don't see anything suggesting premeditation in Milgram's experiment either. Even if you want to trust his conclusions to the letter, it's at best some people who were pressured to continue all the time, and at some point went with the flow because the authority figure next to them kept nagging them to continue. That's a freakin' huge difference between that, and, say, telling someone "the day after tomorrow you go and blow up a school." Most people gave up as soon as the authority figure wasn't in the same room (or wasn't perceived as enough of an authority figure, for that matter.)
Re:That thing that buzzed over your head was my po (Score:1, Insightful)
Sounds like you were so quick to try and discredit that site that you didn't bother to read anything else on the page. Nowhere did it say picketing was a violent act. Just look at the table, read the other columns. Bombings, arson, murder, assault, death threats, bomb threats, etc. These are the violent acts. The number of arrests, number of picketing events, and number of blockades was to give more information as to the level of protest each of those years. I just don't understand why you would discredit something, without first figuring out what it is that you're trying to discredit. If there's more information out there, why would you want to keep it away instead of learning from it?
As far as there being more islamic acts of violence than christians in the US, you are comparing apples to oranges. People in that area are generally very religious. Their society is very religious. They believe they are fighting for their god, when they go down the street and blow up a building. There is a lot of tension in that small area, due to opposing religions who all believe that they are fighting for their god... When they grow up seeing each other blowing each other up for having different religious beliefs, they are more likely to accept that as being normal. On the other hand, here in America, Christians aren't being gunned down by Jews who are being car-bombed by Muslims. Fortunately, we are lucky not to have that kind of violence. People will go to much more extremes when defending what they truly believe is right. Especially if they fear it will destroy what they believe in. Firmly held beliefs tend to trump rational thought or compromise.
What scares me are these Christians who are looking at all of this violence in the Middle-East and getting the idea that we need to do something to the same effect. People are forgetting that this nation was founded so that we could be free to believe in whatever we wanted, and instead trying to turn this into a Christian state. While I agree that religion is very important for people individually, I will never agree that the state should push any one religion. You cannot have a free nation with independent thought, if everyone believes the same thing or gets their beliefs from the same source. You must have diversity, people trying different things, to move forward. How will we do anything new and unique, if everybody is doing the same thing? There are at least a few Christians out there who are using their religion to try and directly influence politics and the way people vote. Personally, I think it's wrong to take advantage of people by having their religious leaders to tell them to vote and for whom. Religion should not be used for controlling the masses. Those days are gone, or so I'd like to believe.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=206177304