Toothless terror
Posted: Thursday, August 17, 2006 5:49 PM by Will Femia
Andrew Sullivan points out that according to British law, authorities can hold someone for 28 days without filing charges and so far they have not charged anyone with anything in relation to last week's terror plot. Ultimately his point is that he has more faith in the judicial system than the "trust me, they're terrorists" administration.
On the implausiblity of the explosives plot — This is the most detail I've read of how a bomb of the kind described by accounts of the plot would be made.
"I bet it will turn out to be a hoax." This guy was on Tucker's show the other day. His argument boils down to "they were wrong before, they're probably wrong now." As Tucker and many bloggers have pointed out, this is not a particularly sound basis for a national defense.
Olbermann: The nexus of terror and politics
In spite of the above, I'm inclined to wait for the due outcome of each case on its own merits. The conclusion I do feel compelled to draw, however, is that terrorism is losing its teeth, both politically and as a global extra-governmental tactic. People are becoming increasingly cynical about terrorists and terrorism and that cynicism may ultimately be the most effective tool in fighting terror.
Shorter Ann Althouse: Forcing a kid to spend 9 hours a day memorizing the Koran in a language he doesn't understand at an American madrassa is illegal and abusive and ought to be reported as such.
(And in case I'm sounding too confident in my conclusions, links like the above are the sort being pointed to by some bloggers to make the point that Islamic extremism (and therefore the threat of terrorism) is more common and closer than even the media hype would have us believe.)
Authorities Warning Women Not to Wear Gel Bras As Worries of Possible Female Bombers Increase — The report mentions baby bottles with false bottoms and containing peroxide found at a recycling center in the U.K. Can you imagine if the terrorists end up being convicted because they put the evidence in the recycling instead of destroying it? They don't have a problem littering the ocean with the charred remains of a plane and its contents, but polluting the Earth with empty baby bottles is just wrong.
Speaking of things not being allowed on planes, how about a tiny gun that shoots tiny bullets? Check the "gallery steel" for a look at how tiny it is.
Speaking of potentially dangerous portable things, "A portable hacking device equipped with hundreds of exploits and an automated exploitation system will go on sale in the United States in October."
Sort of spoiler: The Harry Potter fans at MuggleNet have posted a photo of Tonks in costume from the shooting of the new movie.
Yet another collection of AOL searchers — These are mostly obscene. They mostly follow the pattern of searching for normal stuff and then suddenly searching for something completely raunchy. Or searching for sex terms and then searching for something completely normal. Part of me thinks we should all have a good laugh over this and part of me says no way, there's a lot of sickos out there.
Related: What Are Web Surfers Seeking? Well, It's Just What You'd Think
What If 9/11 Never Happened?
16 Common Myths About Atheists
I'm not sure who J.D. is but this is indeed an amazing jump.
Jason Kottke gives color photos from a 1939 to 1943 collection a Photoshop treatment. Not the falsifying kind of treatment but the sharpen image, improve contrast kind of treatment.
CBS.com to stream hit shows for free — Now you can admit to watching Numb3rs without necessarily admitting that you were home watching TV on Friday night.
"Science has just published a short comparative study of international acceptance of evolution. Thirty-four countries were polled, and guess what? We score 33rd - edging out Turkey for last place."
Death to the Caps Lock key — All good points here. It's a huge key, it's in the way so that it gets hit accidentally. And who the heck uses it?
How to Do Nothing at Work, and Get Away With It — I'd settle for doing nothing on vacation.
101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006
The Top 20 Fitness Mistakes Beginners Make
Lightning hits a yacht — another good one for our casually collected lightning photo series.
Mormons: the correct answer
"There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts." Um... that's a good thing, right?
Ahmadenijad Blog Contains A Little Surprise For Israeli Readers Using Windows and Internet Explorer (Not a happy surprise.)
Sneeze ring — I like the idea of making a cell phone less annoying by making the ring be something more natural and less jarring than those annoying beeps, but I'm not sure I like the idea of choosing a symptom of illness. Here in the cube farm people leave their desks and let their cell phones ring through to voicemail. I'd hate to listen to sneeze after sneeze.
This is probably one of those test crash flights, right?
I'm having a hard time caring about the whole "makaka" story (though I'd probably care more if that guy was representing me in Congress) but it has at least led to my clicking this list of ethnic slurs.
Commuter Click: "Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well"
10 Ways to Make Your Digital Photos Last Forever — Short version: delete nothing and take advantage of cheap storage by saving everything... twice.
"Here's a list of specific foods that raise your metabolism and help burn body fat." I wonder how cumulative these are. If you eat all this stuff, do you turn your body into a furnace? P.S. Don't take medical (or nutritional) advice from a random Web page.
