Interesting Links for 13-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Without a pack of lies to back them up, Christian claims of persecution fall flat on their face
  (tags: christianity uk religion )
• The Scottish Conservatives are neither Scottish nor Conservative
  (tags: scotland Conservatives )
• Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan - a transcript of the original Raiders Of The Lost Ark story conference
  (tags: georgelucas Steven_Spielberg movies )
• A Dad's Plea To Developers Of iPad Apps For Children
  (tags: children design ipad tablet software )
• An alternative to pharmaceutical patents
  (tags: patents drugs research )
• Train stations are no place for armed police
  (tags: police uk guns )
• Darth Vader bagpipe unicycle (are there four words that could inspire more terror?)
  (tags: funny video star_wars )

Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Armed police perhaps less of a deterent for people who are not only prepared to die for the cause but who are actually really keen to die.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

How to kill lots of people at say Paddington Station:

1. Build large bomb.
2. Put bomb in suitcase.
3. Get on train at say Saltash (unstaffed station with direct trains to London).
4. Get off train at Reading, leaving suitcase on train.
5. Bomb detonates by remote control or timed etc when the train arrives at Paddington.

That would kill dozens of people (at least), and would be pretty much impossible to prevent. Policemen with SMGs at Paddington would certainly not make any difference.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Just so - or any of a dozen or so other ways of having the same effect.

I think we are much more vulnerable to terrorism than we like to think.

[andrewducker]

And yet trains are not blowing up on a daily basis. Perhaps there is less of a threat than some people have indicated.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The other explanation would be that the security services are more effective than they are given credit for.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

You could certainly draw that conclusion from the data. 

Or perhaps the other methods of detecting and preventing the threat are working well.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I suspect that, as a set of people, we've become used to spotting 'unattended baggage' since, er, the early seventies. Which perhaps isn't the happiest thing in the world, but the sky doesn't appear to be falling.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I remember when I lived in London walking through a tube station with a coke can in my hand that I wanted to put in a bin and thinking to myself "How sad, after decades of bombings the IRA have succeeded in removing all the bins from the Tube.”

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yep, that was pretty much exactly my reaction.

(Tangentially, I learned far more about 'The Troubles' from a NI taxi driver on a Archway->Heathrow trip than I did from thirty years of Gummint propaganda in the media. )

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Aye – I spent most of the time I was living in the UK during the Troubles living in Aberdeen. That’s a long way away from any of the trouble. For Scotland Aberdeen didn’t appear to have much sectarianism. (Too cold I think.) Apart from a short stint living in London I wasn’t directly affected by them.

It wasn’t until I got to Uni and had a few friends and a girlfriend that the reality of the situation hit me. Both the tawdry pettiness and incompetitence of it and the genuine death and pain.

[naath.livejournal.com]

These days some (some) railway and tube stations in the SE have plastic-bag bins (that is, the bin is a clear plastic bag hung on a frame, so you can see into it). I bloody hate terrorists.

Trains have bins though. Obviously terrorists never bomb trains...

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I've seen the clear plastic bag bins.

Bins on trains are quite small - I now wonder if that is by design.

I remember seeing a chap with a bin bag walking about a tube station collecting rubbish and playing his part in foiling terrorism.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

And of course they want to ban taxis from Waverly station for "security" reasons. Luckily there are lots of places to put a taxi rank near the station that are easily accessible! (or not)

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. Complete safety is impossible, and attempting to make it so causes dramatic effects to civil liberties.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Also, the cash costs are not insignficant.

Safety is not free.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Not just civil liberties, but simple convenience. Let's be honest, when you're trudging through security at a big airport, is your first concern "My civil liberties are being infringed" or is it simply "This is such a pain"?

[andrewducker]

Oh, security at airports is definitely a convenience thing.

Detention without trial, on the other hand...

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Reading the third screenwriting lesson from the Indiana Jones story conference, I suddenly understand how Roman Polanski could get away with raping a child and all of Hollywood still stands behind him. Excuse me while I go and throw up.

[andrewducker]

Yes, the past is clear another, very unpleasant, country. I have no intention of visiting.

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm just not convinced it's the past.

[andrewducker]

Oh, it's not just the past. Plenty of godawful stuff still going on.