I don’t want to live in the world we’re creating for these kids. What the fuck is life going to be like when they enter the workforce and inherit control?
Hopefully they rebel and fix things up. But I suspect they’ll be so beaten down by the nanny state they won’t even think of trying.
I realize that the intrusion of reason in these situations is brutally rude; but has any actual explosive device sounded like a mechanical alarm clock since the days when the old gods roamed the earth, and parts of the crust had not yet cooled?
I imagine that mechanical(probably sealed mercury tilt switch, among other) anti-tamper mechanisms held out for a good while, because accellerometers good enough for the job have only recently become available and still require more code-fu; but mechanical detonation timers? I thought that the Casio F-91W was how The Agents of Global Terror rolled these days…
There is always the 3rd option, where they get their hands on the levers and say “I’ll do unto you like you did unto me” and you experience the most draconian nursing home in human history.
You’re in big trouble mister. Bomb threat!
With the fall of the Berlin wall, America is desperate for an enemy- any enemy at all. The sandpeople on their banthas are a poor second choice, they just don’t have the sharpshooting talent of your average stormtrooper.(which is saying a lot.)
So we look for enemies at home. Plane travellers with children, people in wheelchairs are the most suspect. Assume every walker contains multi-use elements that could be a weapon. Unaccompanied males, alone in the park, are probably paedophiles out to photograph your children.
And of course, your children themselves. If an adult can imagine some sort of terrorist misbehaviour, then some kid somewhere is probably planning some adolescent dumbed-down version of it, and deserves to have the book thrown at them.
Aren’t you feeling safe yet?
From the primary source:
[quote=“statesville Record & Landmark”]He [the police chief] said the whole situation could have been avoided if any of those who knew of the planned prank had alerted an official ahead of time.
[Read the article]
[/quote]The police chief has no idea what a “prank” is, apparently.
Better, because the dumbass, apathetic, and me-first Gen-X attitudes that are responsible for this kind of stupidity will be safely relegated to retirement. Either that, or so many people will have been to prison that the stigma evaporates.
This is where the difference between “you pretended it was a bomb and I was scared” and “I was scared because I thought you had a bomb” really matters. Someone who tries to prank a school setting with what appears to be a bomb is making a huge, stupid mistake that, intentionally or not, is likely to cause a lot of distress and a police response. I’m not saying someone needs to go to jail for that, but it’s a serious matter. That’s different though than someone pranking a school which, because of another person’s over-reaction, results in someone thinking there’s a bomb. It’s the same situation as the MIT student who had an electronically enhanced sweatshirt arrested at Boston Logan Airport; it’s not a fake bomb if it wasn’t intended to be a fake bomb.
dad sounds like he has a sense of humor, heres hoping they get a lawyer that feels the same and sanity prevails
Apologists for the change in policy will tell you that Americans didn’t face the ever-present threat of terrorist bombings back then. Those people are morons.
You all accept passports as normal and no great imposition on your freedom to travel. Most of you think it’s crazy to drink water from a stream; some of you don’t think it’s crazy to drink commericially bottled water. History shows that most humans accept whatever they are conditioned to accept.
Our children’s future will look like our parents’ jail… because that’s what the schools are like now. Windows don’t open, doors are chained shut, metal detectors on entrance, no guns or pocketknives allowed… unless you are highly privileged and send your kids to charter or private school, of course; those kids are being taught that they are better than the rest and thus deserve better conditions than others.
This is the world we vote for in every election, unless you are one of the minority voting for real change.
I graduated high school in '90. You just described my high school. There actually were chains on all the doors except the door nearest the administration office.
Jebus, what would happen to these kids if they did something that was actually destructive, like set lockers on fire? (As people did when I was in HS, back in the 80s)
What changed? Well, we now have many more federal laws that criminalize non-criminal behavior.
A couple of weeks ago Cory recommended The Subprimes. There’s a scene in the book exactly like this. More and more I’m starting to think that book is more prophetic than the author intended.
What bombs that aren’t in cartoons make ticking time bomb sounds?
