More fun with explosives…

Nice column by Paul Krugman on the issue of cover-ups and Porter Goss’ performance in his first few months at the CIA.

Meanwhile, our president is informing everyone that the missing explosives disappeared a while ago (which is somehow supposed to be better?) and reminding everyone that we’ve already destroyed over 243,000 munitions.

If someone is coming at you with an axe, the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of axes in the world that they’re not carrying is not really germane to the problem.

But the President’s unofficial flaks are trying to move attention elsewhere. (NB this article’s focus is on Bush’s campaigning, not the charges against him) I suggest that we don’t let him change the subject quite so quickly. Just what has this led to as far as force protection? How many of the roadside bombs that have been killing American soldiers in the past few months have come directly out of this stockpile? How many more are to come? As pointed out recently, that’s a whole lot of explosives.

Published in: on October 26, 2004 at 11:55  Comments Off on More fun with explosives…  
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You lost /what/?

About 380 tons of high-density chemical explosives, mostly HMX and RDX, have gone missing from a munitions dump in Iraq.

I’ll just say that a fist-sized lump of either of these is enough to make a fairly impressive crater, one in which you could easily park your car.

So, anyone want to play “guess where the explosives are now, and what kinds of uses they’ll find?”

Edit: Some side computations, just for amusement. The legal max GVW of a semi in California is 40 tons, which translates to about 30 tons of cargo space, so this is maybe 12 semis’ worth. In a Trauzl block test, RDX is about 186% the explosive power of TNT, (it’s the active ingredient in most plastic explosives) so if you set this all off at once it would be about 0.7kT equivalent explosive force. This should be enough to level unreinforced buildings at a distance of about 0.9km, and which should be audible (~1Pa overpressure) at a distance of about 550 miles. (Using Sublette’s formula that the radius (in km) as a function of blast overpressure is about Y1/3(P/P0)-0.7, where Y is the equivalent blast power in kT, P is the overpressure of interest and P0 is 3psi) So if that blast were to go off in New York City, you would hear a quiet little “thump” (well, 60dB, but down at 90Hz, far in the bass where human hearing isn’t very good. Elephants would hear it from about 10 times farther away) in Lansing, MI. Or from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, your choice. That’s really a lot of high explosives.

Published in: on October 24, 2004 at 20:30  Comments (20)  
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The endorsements keep coming in…

President Bush has two new endorsements for his campaign: From Russia and Iran.

No word yet from North Korea.

Published in: on October 21, 2004 at 09:31  Comments (8)  
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Faith and madness

Robert Suskind has an article in the past week’s New York Times Magazine about the role of faith in Bush’s presidency. It’s not quite what you would expect, and I recommend reading this – not so much for the information as for the piecing together of things and for the rather fascinating quotes from various administration and party officials.

For some reason, this article has disturbed me more than almost anything I’ve seen in the news in the past several months. The conjecture and the analysis ring too true, and the possible consequences are far more alarming than most possibilities of war.

What concerns me

Published in: on October 19, 2004 at 23:01  Comments (10)  
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Allow me to be a cynical bastard…

The New York Times has an article about how European countries are working to train Europeanized imams for their mosques.
Two better solutions

Published in: on October 17, 2004 at 23:28  Comments Off on Allow me to be a cynical bastard…  
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From a film review:

Of “Team America: World Police,” from the New York Times:
“Team America: World Police” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has graphic violence, explicit sex and shocking language. And puppets!

Well, you clearly can’t beat a combination like that.

Published in: on October 15, 2004 at 18:29  Comments (2)  
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No debate for me…

I missed the debate tonight. Blame it on work, blame it on already having seen the first two (as well as the veep debate) and noticing that they were already repeating themselves pretty thoroughly by the second.

It makes sense; Kerry knew damned well that he won the first, so he kept doing what he was doing. Bush knew that he lost the first, so he corrected and tried to do as well as possible in the second, and in fact improved.

But one week of study can’t really make up for being, as they say in Yiddish (forgive my horrible attempt at transliteration) nicht ein grosse chuchen, nicht ein kleiner narr — neither a great sage nor a small fool. So the second debate was pretty much as expected. From what I’ve heard, the third debate was much of the same.

Oh well. If it wasn’t clear from this post, my mind is pretty much made up, and it has been for a couple of years.

Published in: on October 13, 2004 at 23:41  Comments (6)  
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Protected: Random notes

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Published in: on October 13, 2004 at 23:35  Enter your password to view comments.  

Alright, worth a try…

Nicked from various of my friends. I admit, I’m curious. 🙂

1. Think of a word you would use to describe me.
2. Go to Google Image Search and search for that word.
3. Select the picture you see as most fitting, and post it as a reply.
4. Post this meme in your journal

Published in: on October 13, 2004 at 14:12  Comments (15)  

The situation in Israel

The NY Times has an interesting summary of the fighting in Israel after four years. Interesting for the statistics it provides, including the sidebar with a partial breakdown of casualties and the numbers on suicide bombings.

It’s bloody depressing. What’s more depressing is that there’s no obvious way out of this.

Published in: on October 3, 2004 at 11:18  Comments Off on The situation in Israel  
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