COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Boom!


21 comments:

  1. Story of my life as a young man.
    I stuck to property damage tho.
    (even built homemade rocket powered mini-torpedoes)

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  2. My youngest brother was into pipe bombs. Used to stumble across all kinds of weird stuff in the garage. All of his ingredients and what-not.

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  3. A 60-year-old Springfield man pleaded innocent to a firearms charge yesterday after arresting police said he illegally possessed a variety of weapons.

    However, a device that police believed to be a rocket launcher turned out to be a range finder, an optical device, officials said yesterday.

    Gerald Plouff, of 84 Randall St., was ordered held without right to bail pending a dangerousness hearing this morning. Plouff pleaded innocent yesterday to an illegal firearms charge as well as threat to commit a crime and assault with a dangerous weapon.


    Weapons Case

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  4. Meanwhile, my more financially oriented friends were doing this:
    Cave Of Weed » SlideShare

    (be sure to clik the little "full screen" button at the lower right to see the magnificence of this operation in full)

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  5. Think of the electric bill on that mo-fo!
    No wonder they got caught.

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  6. Bremerton officers arrested a 16-year-old girl Monday for allegedly taking her mother's purse at knifepoint in a Wheaton Way parking lot.

    Police were called to the 3400 block of Wheaton Way just after 8 p.m. A sergeant going to the scene spotted a car matching the description of the one the suspect was driving and followed it, according to reports.

    The sergeant said the car nearly caused a collision when turning onto Dibb Street. But he was able to catch up to it once it stopped on a nearby lawn.


    Teen Stole Mom's Purse

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  7. Obama wins big in Noth Carolina, splits Indiana right down the middle, or will after Gary IN reports in.

    Over but for the cryin'

    .

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  8. Wow Sam that's only a few miles from where I work.

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  9. Yeah, my back yard also. You must be on the naval base then.

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  10. For Bob:

    Separately on Monday, the Asian Development Bank released a special report on food prices and inflation in developing Asia in which it recommends investments in agricultural inputs like fertilizer to help farmers boost their crop yields. The ADB met in Madrid on Monday to discuss possible solutions for rising food prices that are making it increasingly difficult to feed the world's poor.

    Speaking at the event, ADB president, Haruhiko Kuroda, said: "The absence of such measures could seriously undermine the global fight against poverty and erode the gains of past decades."

    With the global demand for food set to skyrocket in the near-term, farmers are lavishing crops with fertilizers and other crop technologies in hopes of turning impressive harvests. Fertilizer companies, in turn, saw higher raw material costs more than offset in the first quarter by customers' insatiable demand for their products.


    Hungry for Fertilizer

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  11. Clinton by 1.78 - 92% reporting.

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  12. In Next-Gen Bullets and Bombs, Even the Casing Explodes

    The Pentagon has quietly been working on a new arsenal of advanced weaponry that replaces metal casings with "reactive materials," normally harmless matter that combines to release explosive amounts of energy on impact, tearing targets apart with violent fury.

    In development for more than 30 years, the research is beginning to bear fruit, and may soon spawn more powerful bombs, warheads that tear apart stone and concrete, mines that can be set to stun or kill, and grenades that can swat rockets or mortar rounds out of the sky like flies.

    "You can get effects that are more precisely tailored to a particular target," says John Pike, director of Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org. "And you're able to get a greater effect out of a smaller munition."

    Reactive materials are combinations of materials that are normally stable, but, when subjected to sudden shock -- such as striking a target -- release a large amount of energy. Depending on the composition and warhead design, the energy can be released as heat, a blast or a combination of the two. Unlike conventional explosives, RMs cannot be set off by fuses. Technically, they are classified as flammable solids, and they are less hazardous to transport and store than explosives.
    .
    .
    http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/reactive_revolutions

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  13. US hegemony in the region is only possible when Bush can maintain links with the “moderate” allies by keeping the status quo with the IRI. It is to keep the IRI in perpetual check. Therefore for the Bush administration, the deals have, beside lucrative reasons, several geopolitical consequences:

    - It increases Israel’s security– since Israel is in peace with Egypt and not in conflict with Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf countries, it is the biggest beneficial of the deals.

    - It establishes long military race between oil Arab countries from one side and the IRI from the other side.

    - It reinforces US hegemony by reducing the influence of the concurrent powers of China, Russia, and the EU in the region. In this perspective, Bush plans to coerce the “moderate” Arab countries to align themselves with the neo-conservative agenda of the present US hegemony.


    Middle East

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  14. Clinton by 16,609 - 95% reporting.

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  15. Gosh Sam, that's not nearly the decisive win she needed to invoke her "nuclear option" they were floating around the other day, where Hillary rams her proposal to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates through at the convention. Miss Katz, what say you now?

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  16. She’s so at odds with who she used to be, even in the Senate, that if she were to get elected, who would voters be electing?

    Obama is like her idealistic, somewhat naïve self before the world launched 1,000 attacks against her, turning her into the hard-bitten, driven politician who has launched 1,000 attacks against Obama.

    As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly, it’s as though she’s crushing the remnants of her own girlish innocence.


    Butterflies aren't free

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  17. When I was a kid(when this was still a free country) you could get a super firecracker called a Salute on the reservation. Big mother, blow your finger right off. Had a fuse that would burn underwater. Cannon fuse I think it's called. We had the best time blowing shit up. For underwater work, we'd put a small rock on one, with a rubber band, and drop her in, when the fish swam by. Make a hell of a blast, rock the boat house, send up a neat boil and geyser of water, like a depth charge!

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  18. Here you go Doug. Just remember to make the mortgage payments.

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  19. Bobal: When I was a kid(when this was still a free country) you could get a super firecracker called a Salute on the reservation.

    Yeah, Timothy McVeigh ruint everything dinnit he?

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  20. It had gone downhill long before McVeigh, alas.

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