Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
“Came here from Saudi Arabia, and simultaneously lowered the mean IQ of both countries.”
I like it.
I’ve been thinking of going on the internet and researching lawn fertilizer, but I’m afraid it will put me on a watch list.
It is hard to phrase this without reverting to sailor 101 talk-but golly, why is our oh so enlightened government still issuing student visas to Saudi Arabia? To what purpose? Will the educated and thoughtful civil servants and public officials who think this is a good idea please step forward and explain the benefits that our citizens gain from this practice?
This is insane. Par for the course though.
Wait-are the Saudis the ones paying $100,000 for two years at a community college? Never mind.
Hookers and booze are expensive these days. They are a very important part of a Saudi’s education.
QM-I had to go on WESTPAC before I could live like a Saudi college student. It was educational, I must admit.
Um, because 9,999 out of 10,000 Saudis who visit this country aren’t going to do anything criminal?
Huh. Interesting. And here I was thinking that Saudis were only interested in learning how to fly airliners.
Go figure…..
I seem to recall that picric acid is highly unstable.
If they had let him make some, most likely he would have won a Darwin Award.
I wish they’d let him make some and then arrested him. Did he actually do anything that could keep him behind bars for a length of time?
I wanted to make some homemade smoke bombs for the kids this summer using stump remover. That’s potassium nitrate. Unfortunately this town is too small and I didnt’ want to order it or have to worry I might get on a terrorist watchlist. I could hypothetically use it to make picric acid.
Picric acid is perfectly stable, as long as you are careful to look out for it, and don’t let it get in contact with the metallic interior of the bomb, or shell. Bill Tuttle claims to have a Luddite Wife, whereas The Donovan has a Lyddite Wife, who is perfectly stable unless you get crossways with her.
Years ago I read that Castro lamented that half the people he working on improvised explosives were killed by their creations.
Picric acid used to be used in our torpedos for awhile. It will sit for awhile, but as it ages it can become unstable. There is a concern about this as a number of shells from WW1 used picric acid and have been found among memorabilia still live. My grandfather brought a 75mm shell home from his service with the 42nd Division in France, but he had it deactivated. A number of people didn’t realize what they had. My grandfather, however, had used explosives occasionally on the Ranch near 4 corners and respected them deeply as a result.
I got his uniform, but my youngest brother got the trunk and the rest of the memorabilia. Getting grandpa to open that trunk and tell us about his treasures was a high point of our annual visits “back home” to Nashville.
The story has to be a lie. We all know that no Saudi nationals ever do anything like that. It’s those darned Irish again.
No. Obviously it was really one of us gun-toting, militia-supporting, PTSD-prone, retired military proto-terrorists.
And we’re ALREADY ON Napolitano’s watch lists.
Just sayin’.
Yeah, but a lot have Irish in their blood.
Hmmm….actually, the Irish are only like that because of the interbreeding with the Norse invaders.
Even with only half our genes we’ve managed to improve the Irish. Thanks for the compliment, Joe.
Oh, wait… You didn’t really mean it that way, did you?
– Max
I will leave it to the gentle reader to make that determination.
Them ay-rabs dunnah much like the Bush boys do they? First the old man, now Dubya. Must be they don’t like Republicans winners I guess.
College is a BIG industry here in the US. Can’t stop the full pay students, can we?
So what if a couple of them want to blow us up. It is a matter of cost vs benefit.
“how to construct an improvised explosive device using several chemicals as ingredients.”
Oh, c’mon, they’ll have to do better than that! I betcha everyone commenting here has constructed improvised explosive devices using several chemicals as ingredients.
Is the FBI, like, all-girl, these days?
Having spent many weeks in Lubbock I was willing to entertain the idea that this was, in fact, merely a suicide attempt and he wanted to do the job properly. Didn’t want to mess it up and, perhaps, linger near death in some hospital in Lubbock for months or years.
Then I remembered what it was like in Saudi Arabia. Nope, even Lubbock is an improvement.
Thing is, he’s in college. Why not just take a couple of Chemistry electives? And, you know, study?
– Max
He was studying. Just not his Chemistry text.
[...] user at a site called Neptunus Lex, a collaborative effort, has posted information on explosives used during the First World War. “Picric acid used to be used in our torpedos for awhile. It will sit for awhile, but as it ages [...]