quote:Maawad had ordered $3,000 in aviation materials, including DVDs titled "Ups and Downs of Takeoffs and Landings," "Airplane Talk," "Mental Math for Pilots" and "Mastering GPS Flying," FBI agent Thad Gulczynski testified.
Now if they really want to know what people are reading, you'd think that stuff on how to impersonate a commercial pilot would have raised a red flag...instead the guy got busted for not paying for his research materials.
The guy is definitely not slick or (probably) well connected but you never know...
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Hmph. I've already been told I CAN'T blow up a scale replica of the Houses of Parliament during our fireworks display on November 5th - the 400th anniversary this year, you know; my wife is concerned lest it draw government opprobrium. I keep tellig her it's my own little in-joke about the upcoming release of V For Vendetta, but she hasn't read the source material. And the film's release has been delayed anyway. Bastard tube bombers. . .
posted
Okay, here's something I don't understand. You've got Guy Fawkes, a religious radical who wanted to overthrow the government and only just barely failed. Somehow, he became so reviled that even after four centuries, his defeat is an international holiday on which people burn him in effigy.
On the other hand, you've got Oliver Cromwell, a religious radical who wanted to overthrow the government. He actually succeeded, before eventually dying and leaving his kid to be overthrown, with the old government coming back into power. And yet, he gets a statue and a fair amount of admiration.
What's up with that? If Fawkes had actually blown the Parliament up, would he today be considered a pretty okay guy, or what?
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
Besides "Cromwell" sounds sooo cool (and close enough to my own last name that national admiration and statures are a natural result).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Well, we can be thankful for stupid (would be) terrorists.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Yes but Cromwell overthrew the government the old fashioned, boring way. I mean, soldiers, seiges, it's all been done before and it's all been done since. Yes, the New Model Army was fairly cool, but frankly it just doesn't have the street cred that trying to blow up Westminster does.
Also the whole blowing up thing gives us an excuse to start lots of fires and blow stuff up. And deep down, we're all pyromaniacs.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
And wasn't the statue a much later thing, once his acts during and after the Civil War were put into historcal perspective? It certainly wasn't put up right after his death, or I suspect it'd have suffered a similar fate to his corpse (exhumed then hung, drawn and quartered I believe). Put next to all Cromwell did towards shaping our modern political system, Fawkes' achievements (or lack of them, since he never actually got to carry out his plot) pale into insignificance. Why he gets to be burned in effigy rather than, say, Napoleon or William Wallace or Bonnie Prince Charlie or Wat Tyler or that guy tried to overthrow Elizabeth I - whatsisface, got played by Christopher Eccleston in the Cate Blanchett movie - why not any of them, I don't know.
quote:Originally posted by Wraith: Yes but Cromwell overthrew the government the old fashioned, boring way.
Well, yeah, I meant the guy in the linked article, there.
quote: Also the whole blowing up thing gives us an excuse to start lots of fires and blow stuff up. And deep down, we're all pyromaniacs.
Tell me about it. My birthday is the fourth of July- I cant tell you of how many of my presents were fireworks.
I should have been on COBRA's payroll for all the G.I.Joes I sent to a fiery, unmarked grave.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
No, three! Three words: Saltpetre, sugar, and a matchbox - four! Four are the words I'm going to say; Saltpetre, sugar, matchbox and a miniature balsa-wood villa that would otherwise collect dust on the attic. And some GI Joes and a video cam- I'll come in again.
Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
One installation I was particularly proud of was the Darth Maul I did in 1999. Life-size figure dressed in black, child's mask bought in a toy-store, arm outstretched, holding a light-sabre comprising two red gerbs (flares, basically, that you stick in the ground and they spout fire) fastened end-to-end. One of them failed to ignite, but it was still a good effect and the kids loved it.
Oh, yes, and the figure was also doused in petrol and stuffed with thunderflashes, maroons and flash-powder. We had to relocate the display in order to put it a sufficiently-safe distance from the crowd. 8)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
