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Explosives Camp
theodp writes "How about a summer camp where you get in trouble for not blowing things up? Students with a passion for all things explosive and proof of US citizenship pay a $450 fee to attend Summer Explosives Camp, 'We try to give them an absolute smorgasbord of explosives,' quipped a professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which offers a minor in explosives engineering. Here's the brochure (PDF), kids!"
Why is US citizenship required? Its especially funny as the professor conducting the camp is a Briton and not a US citizen. And its not like mines us explosives only in the US. People come to the US from all over the world for the best education available. Why would you think a foreigner who wants to be a mining engineer is not a valid candidate?
**Life is too short to be serious**
Why would a terrorist in possession of explosives need to be educated in how to use them to blast off the side of an open pit mine? You don't exactly need any special training to set off explosives in a suicide bomb attack (making explosives on the other hand would need special expertise).
It is extremely sad that science and chemistry are being destroyed in the name of "fighting terrorism". Explosives, chemistry and other "dangerous terrorist activities" are used extensively in many industries. Most people are completely oblivious to this fact, and don't have a clue about how 'heavy industries' work. Therefore they continually do stupid things like call for a ban of chemistry in school or a ban of explosive substances needed for mining and other industries. School chemistry is already so useless and watered down (mostly because of the threat of litigation if something goes wrong) that I fail to see how there will be enough chemists in the future within mining and manufacturing industries.
I can build a bomb without going to a silly camp. With enough determination, I could destroy anything I chose. When will people stop thinking "oh, if we just shut down all the 'dangerous' activities, we'll all be safe from terrorists"? It was communists, now it's terrorists - there's always a boogeyman.
We should not take chances with this. Lives are at stake.
It's this kind of reflex thinking that would encourage someone to get enrolled and attend classes wearing a turban muttering occasional Allahu Akbar under his breath. Just for laughs.
Lighten up. The country is filled with people who drive cars, own and carry guns, have arguments with their ex-wives, hold a grudge against the IRS, hate the President, or work at the post office. I'd be more worried about the sheer numbers of people in any of those groups before I'd worry about someone who wants to pursue what could be described as a slightly juvenile interest or hobby.
Did anybody else catch that safety was number 2?
1. How to prime and shoot dynamite.
2. Safety precautions when handling explosives.
3. Where explosives are used.
4. The curriculum and department of Mining Engineering at UMR.
5. What careers are available that are explosive related.
6. How underground blasts work.
7. How explosives are used in industry.
8. How to set up and shoot off a fireworks display.
Right, so it's OK for USA to teach its kids about explosives? Imagine the outcry if someone heard about a similar program taking place, say, in Iran. I can already see the headline we would be getting: "Iran training dozens of kids into becoming terrorists with an expertise in explosives."
This is the same sort of fuzzy logic we see with USA possessing nuclear weapons and yet demanding that Iran be prevented from ever having any.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
First of all, they're not kids. They're at least young adults: junior and senior high school students who are interested in enrolling at the university. These are kids who are interested in going to a school that concentrates on engineering, which happens to be one of those schools that has a focus on, or at least a general slant towards, (golly gee) stuff related to mining. Secondly, they do not walk away with a license to work with explosives, nor any of the hundred or so papers and certificates which one must have to acquire or brew said materials. Thirdly, it's not like they plop a stick of dynamite, or a brick of c-4 into a ten year old's hands and say "have fun". Most of the high powered events are demonstrations, and the "kids" get to figure stuff like "how much ANFO do have to put into this hole to do the job", and see if they were right or wrong.
Finally, teaching these kids about the stuff that class presents has to be statistically about one-hundred-thousandth the danger level of not sufficiently teaching them about more mundane stuff, like driving, for instance.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Blowing things up really isn't all that fun. I was a demo guy in the Army and for the most part it was a pain in the ass. I do like the feeling when the wave of energy passes through your body but we always hunkered down and never actually witnessed an explosion because of the danger factor. And in Iraq it was a lot of hard work to pile up shell after shell of UXOs or captured IED components in 130 degree heat.
You can have the demo camp. I want a $450 camp where you just lay on a beach and get drunk with beautiful women. Where's that brochure?
At the bottom of the
There's one huge problem you seem to have completely left out of your post. YOU CAN'T BUY EXPLOSIVES WITHOUT PROPER LICENSING/PERMITS/ETC. And as someone said, this course doesn't give you a license to posses/obtain explosives. (I don't believe you can even hold said license until you're 18 anyway.)
But you know what, let's pretend that explosives are widely available. You have two cases:
Case 1:
Kids have explosives. Kids do not go to this course and thus have no training. They play with explosives and blow themselves up.
Case 2:
Kids have explosives. Kids go to this course and thus DO have training. They know how to safely use them and thus don't end up killing themselves.
Attempting to restrict information is never a good idea if that same information is already available in any form. For example, all of this information is already in a book or on the Internet somewhere. Restricting it just leaves an aura of curiosity around it.
I don't understand your argument of "The safety training these kids get will be unlikely to stick". Why would the safety training not stick? I find it interesting that a lot of people are willing to believe that kids immediately think that being safe is bad or "uncool". The belief that kids won't be safe simply because it involves safety is completely unfounded and more likely a result of your own fear than anything else.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
That's because safety information has more punch when you're able to show what happens when you do NOT heed them. So after step one, the intro to step two is most likely "See, kids, and this happens when you forget to..."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I know this is way too much thinkofthechildren, but as a kid, I nearly blew my hands of several times, and I dont want my kids to do what I did.
Can't really think any of friends at kids didn't nearly blow of fingers or eyes. You end up getting yourself injured with stuff like explosives when you have no idea what you are doing. Blowing things up teaches you how things blow up and how to set the fuse. I'd rather teach my kids the knowledge that I learned while doing bad stuff than have them getting same scars and keep them in one piece.
Getting the information how to do things is pretty easy from books and net, learning how to do it safely has to be learned from the hard way, hopefully by somebody else, or to be teached. I'd rather by teaching my kids how to handle napalm than taking them to hospital after "ooops, it does burn, thow some water on it".
Quite right. Kids are good at following instructions, as long as those instructions make sense. Going completely over the top on the safety stuff leads to (deserved) disrespect towards those instructions and then, in some cases, may lead to the stupider kids doing stupid shit. But in the general case, kids are very very interested in their own safety around dangerous shit.
My country, shop classes in upper secondary and high schools teach kids basic tasks like how to operate very real, very serious tools from bandsaws to circular saws and lathes, welding (arc and two-gas), metalworking (the typical item made is an oversized spoon for throwing water in a sauna) and various techniques of soldering electronics components. Yet the number of accidents is very low, generally due to the quality of teaching is high across the board but most of all because kids 1) learn rather quickly and 2) with the exception of the dumb ones, have a very good instinct for self-presevation especially around tools that are designed so that they can be operated safely. I assume things are very similar in the US, at least in some of the more progressive states.
There's nothing I see as being particularly dangerous in a "miner jr." camp compared to a circular saw that'll cheerfully take off both of your hands at the wrist if you fuck up well enough. At least proper explosives are close as can get to inert until triggered, preferably from a healthy distance and then some. Hell, a mining explosives camp sounds like just the thing for children of mining families; not many places to train when you're young for the kind of thing your parents did.
But on the other hand, it is illegal without a licence, and for a very good reason, and to give this knowlegde to unlicenced kids?
I think this is a terrible attitude, and it's sad.
You need a license to buy explosives, not to learn about them. One of the precepts of our entire society is that information isn't sectioned off into little 'need-to-know' chunks, controlled by cabals or trade organizations.
You can't practice medicine without a license either, but nobody goes around trying to lock up all the first-aid manuals or anatomy textbooks. We don't let random individuals set up shop as Professional Engineers and start greenlighting bridges, but anyone who wants to can go and read about finite element analysis; there's no secrets there.
Turning society into a series of closed, medieval-Masonic-ish 'knowledge cults' isn't going to help us in the long run. And frankly, if that sort of secrecy is what's required to "protect" society from terrorists, I seriously question the value of what you're preserving.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I have to admit that the various safety lessons I had concerning firearms did not really stick until my best friend shot me through the hand when I was 16. Granted, it was an air rifle but it still did go completely through my hand and operating my motorcycle clutch on the way back to camp was not a trivial exercise. After that, I was nervous even when paintball guns were not pointed in a safe direction.
Now when I teach firearms safety, I have the student teach me back and I question the reasoning for each rule just to verify as much as possible that they understand and to force them to do extra consideration. The mindset when working with dangerous technology needs to include the foresight into what could go wrong. Understanding the context of each safety rule is very helpful.
How do you deport someone in the program if one of the requirements is U.S. citizenship? Where do you deport them TO?
I know you can have joint citizenship, but can you be subject to immediate revocation of your American citizenship AND immediate deportation without a hearing? More to the point, can you do that to a minor?
I don't mean to call your statement into question (okay, I guess I do, but I don't mean it as a personal attack) -- this just doesn't seem to add up somehow.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.