Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad, in reply to DCBCauchi,
I have a friend who is into these kind of mock battle games, kind of like a real-world computer game shoot-em-up. Like paintball, but I don't think they use paintballs, at least judging from the marks he's shown me. He's invested a lot of time and money into it, as people do with their hobbies and interests. It would not surprise me if he or some of his mates had some explosives as part of that, used carefully under strictly controlled conditions by suitably qualified people.
Apparently, these kind of games are big with the rozzers. They have all kinds of dodgy sounding scenarios they play (e.g. 'room clearances').It's probably airsoft stuff, which uses replica guns that look a LOT more realistic than your average painball gun.
I know several people, including police, military and security guys, who have (informally) trained for those sort of scenarios at the armoury in Birkenhead.
My martial arts club trains there semi-regularly to run gun and weapon scenarios.
I would be EXTREMELY surpised if any explosives were used as part of that, and while I'm mostly comfortable around airsoft guys, military enthusiasts, gun enthusiats, etc, if anyone had, or expressed interest in, collecting explosives, I'd be worried to the point of getting Joe Law involved.
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Hard News: Everybody's News, in reply to Ross Mason,
Pfft, I'm really surprised NASA expects us to fall for that bad photochop.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to dyan campbell,
I was very surprised to read the "Disco Sucks" movement had any racist subtext
From the wiki on disco demolition night
Nile Rodgers, producer and guitarist for the popular disco-era group Chic said "It felt to us like Nazi book-burning. This is America, the home of jazz and rock and people were now afraid even to say the word 'disco'."
According to the book A Change Is Gonna Come, "The Anti-disco movement represented an unholy alliance of funkateers and feminists, progressives and puritans, rockers and reactionaries. The attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism and homophobia."
It's also a subject covered in some detail in (if memory serves) the book 'last night a dj saved my life'
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Hard News: Everybody's News, in reply to Marcus Turner,
One wonders then why you posted. If indeed there are people who
would happily lump 300 million people into the same basket and use the deaths of thousands to make a point we can only hope that they'll change their point of view before ever achieving a position of influence or power. I'd certainly like to help people to stop thinking in such dichotomous - and damaging - ways. Telling people how bad they are - particularly using violent language - isn't a productive way to begin, and it may not do much to enhance one's own self-image, either.True, true. But I guess we're all entitled to the ocassional pissy little rant on the internet (where do I get my loyalty card stamped?).
Although my self-image needs no enhancing, thank you.
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Hard News: Everybody's News, in reply to Marcus Turner,
Marcus: I'm not actually all that concerned about bringing someone who would happily lump 300 million people into the same basket and use the deaths of thousands to make a point about 'having it coming' round to my way of thinking.
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Hard News: Everybody's News, in reply to Andre Alessi,
That attitude shook me and, I suppose, made me aware of a genuine undercurrent of anti-Americanism I’d never noticed before in some parts of New Zealand culture.
I didn't, and don't, 'get' that attitude. How did the people in the towers - the secretaries, the barristas, the cleaners, the dish pigs, amongst all the other office drones - deserve that, any more than the goatherds, the wedding parties, and all the other working shmoes around the world who were just trying to get by before some thugs with weapons and a bad attitude turned up?
If you want to round up all the Rumsfelds, Kissingers, Roves, Blairs, et al and stick a gun in my hand, then I'll gladly face the moral dilemma of handing out a bit of extra judicial justice, but seriously? Stop fighting a proxy war and wind your fucking necks in, morons.
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There's a rather interesting roundup here of the reaction from various parts of the press to dissent published in The Guardian.
Rather self-aggandising, but interesting to see 10 years worth of 'why do you hate our freedom?' compressed like that.
ETA: Ah, snap.
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Flew out from the UK to Minorca in the Med. for my honeymoon on 3rd Sept.
No TV, no internet, no radio, no papers.
Vaguely heard on around the 14th Sept that something really bad had happened (can't remember how we heard). Drove into the nearest large town to try and find an english-language newspaper. Apart from the front pages, everything was exactly the same as it usually was, and remained that way for the next two weeks of our stay. People on the beach, in the cafes, in the bars, in the shops, just doing their thing. There was no real sense, either from the locals or the other tourists, that anything significant had happened at all. Life just went on with the merest riple to disturb the tranquility.
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to George Darroch,
It's a problem, in the way that file sharing is a problem - it deprives revenue from those who would collect it (the tax system, and the Government). However, as a public health problem, not so much.
A good point. However, like some aspects of piracy (as opposed to peer-to-peer file-sharing), it also provides a revenue stream for organised crime. And that's people who we really don't want to be giving money to.
I'd suggest that does present a public health problem, albeit an indirect one.
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Sacha,
You can see why I'm not holding my breath
Because you, like Bill Clinton, didn't inhale?