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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!"
Need I say more, cousin Osama. You buy the plane ticket, I'll get the passports.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Can I go?
The application deadline is on April Fool's day? Isnt that a blast?
**Life is too short to be serious**
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**
Dad will be so proud.
Yea, and not only was the deadline April Fool's Day, but even if this somehow managed to not be a joke the course dates were June 3 - 9 and June 17 - 23. There'd be Explosives Camp alumni by now!
If you were going to blow shit up, Osama style, you would certainly NOT need to go to a childs' educational camp to do it. More power to people making science more interesting for kids.
can't wait to see the end-of-camp group shots - powder smudged faces, bandages, tattered clothing hanging from severed limbs...ah, the memories!
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Obviouthly it's a technical thchool and not anything near the ivy leagueths... The brothure acthually stateth that the deadline for applicanth is April 1th.
Yes. The 1th.
Not the 1st. Becauth they're not that type of inthituthun. Dammit, Jim, they're miners, not phythithiths!
According to the EU Commission at least http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/04/ec_frattin i_web_terror_dunce_cap/
I bet if they really wanted to make some money drop the following requirements:
:)
"This camp is limited to 20 Junior and Senior high school students who are interested in enrolling at UMR and are at least 16 by the first day of camp."
I am sure there are quite a few people out there with lots of "disposable income" that would pay lots to do this. I know I had to take a look - maybe something worth a week or two of vacation time, especially seeing the 450 dollar price tag (not sure what my upper limit would be, depends on what stuff I get to play with). Alas, being 30+ pretty much puts me out of that class. There are "body guard" classes that take advantage of the same thing - it's neat to drive a car in that manner even if you live in an area that allows controlled live firearm courses.
Really, I know what I can and can not do and is why I do not play with real explosives, I like really big "booms" yet legally can not purchase them nor do I really know how to safely set them off. One would think there is *someplace* I can pay someone to let me make them, or at least blow some stuff up. I suppose there is too much liability, but I would have thought that with this type of thing even more so than allowing an older group to do so. I have no real excuse if I do something incredibly stupid, yet a 17 year old can get away with many things I can not - the 30+ year olds shouldn't have shown the 17 year olds how sparklers can explode if done wrong.
To note, I'm happy they have such and am not against it - almost anything the expands our abilities I am for. The previous is just a wish list for "older" people. In fact, I guess the older the more likely they would want too and be able to afford too set off some *big* explosives
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Suppose somebody named McVeigh, or Cho attends.
Anybody could be a terrorist.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
and how could we compare student grades across different schools?
oh, nevermine...
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
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.
Come on now... this is a serious matter. And that is why I am introducing the "No Child Left in a Mine" bill to congress this summer...
In fact the people who go to the camp would have a greater appreciation of the dangers of explosives and be safer than those idiots on YouTube with the anarchists cookbook.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Screw the Boy Scouts! No one needs to know how to tie a frickin' knot, nor do we need to know how to build a stupid soap box car.
Lets create the Urban Scouts, where children will learn how to pick locks, phone phreak, hack computers, and social engineer.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
So we should deprive kids of safety and proper handling knowledge just in case they decide to turn on us right? Unlicensed? How do you think you get licensed, magic? They get licensed by receiving the proper training and various checks... which is exactly what this is... atleast in introductory fashion.
If those 'kids' got a little 'inspiration' they could find far more dangerous information in a public library. I've got an old chemistry book from 1902, copies or similar books are no doubt common. That book reads like a Betty Crocker cookbook. I'd much rather interested kids receive real training and experience than try some of the stuff they could cook up on their own.
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
Mining explosives is a very specialised subject. The object is to produce shock waves with no blast and no fire (think about it.) You want to break up rock or minerals with the absolute minimum of side effects, using the absolute minimum amount of energy necessary and raising as little dust as possible, not only because of health and safety risks but because any other approach adds cost. If you want to be a mining engineer, you learn explosives at mining school not summer camp. And you learn it, mostly, from mining engineers who are still alive, which gives you some confidence in the training. No, I am not a mining engineer, but I have talked to enough of them, in South Africa and elsewhere, and most of us would not want to earn our living that way.
Pining for the fjords
It seems they don't want the competition.
Well, it's bad for business. I'm amazed that the far-right fundie Christian crazies don't actually align with the far-right fundie Muslim crazies. After all, they want pretty near the same thing and the fundie Muslim crazies can do a better job of the abortion clinic bombings, and cheaper. Why not just outsource?
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.
I kinda doubt that the CIA can't find better training than this. Mind you, I'm not from the US, but I thought each army has their own engineers branch which offers more in-depth knowledge about demolitions and military use of explosives than a summer camp. Including how to safely get rid of the explosives if, say, the convoy you were expected didn't pass that way. I'd think CIA would have no problems getting a trainer from the army or navy and organizing their own training.
If nothing else, reading TFA, it doesn't seem like it would make that useful training for 007-like or terrorist use of explosives. Stuff like how to safely blow up a side of quarry, or better yet, how to make a spud gun, are useful for mining or respectively entertainment, but don't translate well into how to do that much else with explosives.
Or, rather, not much that you couldn't already google. I mean, you can look up ANFO on Wikipedia, and that's the main explosive used by the mining industry. If you can buy the ammonium nitrate and wanted to make a car bomb with that, you don't really need courses in how to drill the holes and calculate the dosage to blast a rock face in a quarry.
Also, about CIA use, again, I may be wrong about America, but it seems to me that:
1. People aren't that interchangeable between mining jobs and covert ops type jobs. Just knowing how to drill a hole and prime a stick of dynamite doesn't also make you want to go abroad and blow up some Arabs. Between making a decent risk-free living at home and going and risking your life abroad for better pay, most people would choose the first.
2. And it doesn't mean you even could, probably. About 95% of the people have this interlock in the brains against being _too_ mean to other people. About 3% are sociopaths, and don't. And there are a few more in between. So, really, statistically chances are higher that you'd be in the "nice guy" category, not in the "sociopath" cathegory.
The army has had millenia of figuring out how to (A) drill people into executing some stuff mechanically against cardboard targets or with blanks, until it becomes reflex by the time they have to do it against live targets. (B) Instill an "us vs them" theme and some groupthink notions of duty, honour, patriotism, etc, to help get people pull the trigger even if they don't really want to. (C) Getting people in a situation in which, one way or the other, it's your ass if you don't cap that other guy. Now that really helps get people to pull the trigger. (D) Creating a whole organization and hierarchy for dissipating responsibility, so noone from the guy who mines pitchblende to the general who orders the strike to the pilot who drops the atom bomb on Hiroshima feels particularly responsible for it all.
And it still gets a lot of people waking up in cold sweat for the rest of their lives, a.k.a., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Heck, even some of the war atrocities are, ironically, traceable to the fact that man wasn't designed to kill man. People either get to (A) break down not understanding why the other guys shoot at him, what's wrong with them? Are they savage animals? and/or (B) get caught in that grouphink trap, thinking everyone else around is brave and fearless and all patriotic, and do dumb things to hide the fact that personally they're scared shitless.
Anyway, a lot of those only work in a group, and only work in a situation where it's short term "it's either them or me" and no easy way out. It doesn't quite apply to a lone killers.
Briefly, it might be a lot easier easier to first select with someone without scruples and give them explosives training, than to convert a peaceful mining engineer into a commando trooper.
3. The last person you'd want in the army or some secret service is some "Explosions are cool, Beavis!" type who makes spud guns or blows stuff up when they're bored, and wears a "I [heart] explosives" t-shirt. You'd probably want someone a lot more mentally stable than that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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?
Agreed. It's completely silly.
Yes, knowledge is dangerous. But ignorance is *MUCH* more dangerous.
Humans in the world today overwhelmingly suffer and die as a result of *lack* of knowledge. (or to some degree, lack of *application* of knowledge)
I live a *much* safer life because I live in a country where there are experts on explosives, poisons, dangerous creatures, radioactive substances, cancerous agents and firearms.
Any idiot can figure out how to make a fertilizer-bomb. If anything amazes me with the London-incident it is the amateurishness of it all. Pathethic, frankly. Not even a -single- fatality ? *8* people plan a "terrorist"-attack, and they, combined, don't even manage to kill a *single* human being ? Pathethic is to weak a word for performances such as these.
Britain/Europe is working on making publishing information on how to make bombs illegal. Burn the books, Burn the books!
t icle2023030.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/ar
Suicide bombers are normally not trained in the manufacture of explosive devices and in many cases all that is required of them is devotion (fanaticism) to press a button or throw a switch to set the explosive off. I would even go as far to say that they don't really have any idea what the explosive will do to their body assuming you can find all the body parts.
It is usually a skilled technician or chemist who is the one who actually oraganises the manufacture of the explosive for the suicide bomber and it would be rare for them to actually use the product themselves. Of course they would most likely take the attitude that their part in the jihad is too important for them to actually kill themselves.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
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".
Heh, UMR. The school with a 3-1 male/female ratio...Only reason I'm thinking about going is for the explosives class (and a free ride) but other than that I'm looking out of state. Also, they just changed their name to the Missouri Institute of Science and Technology, or MUST for short. Gooooo MUSTy Miners! (Who mine with a slide rule o.O)
But the car bombs help, if only a little.
which is totally what she said
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.
Sure, you need a permit to buy explosives, but you can still make explosives yourself. Homemade bombs can be quite effective. Who's to stop someone from blowing up a gas canister? People with farming backgrounds could be able to get hold of ammonium nitrate, and mixed with fuel oil, that can be enormously devastating. Just ask Terry Nichols. But hey, I guess as long as these kids SWEAR (Cross their heart and hope to die!) not to use their newfound knowledge about explosives maliciously, it's ok.
...where else can you get yourself put on a terrorist watch list for $450?
--
Lots of people got it for free.
The Glasgow (for want of a better word) "bombers" suffered more lack of knowledge than stupidity: They were doctors, who managed to get British accreditation. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/07/02/britain-b ombings.html Fair to assume they're capable of intelligence. In this case, they were operating (no pun indented) outside their field. I think we've seen the last 'A-Team Propane Tank' attack. Presumably those that go in their footsteps won't make the same mistake. If they'd been able to source and use dynamite, then yeah the "Explosive School" probably isn't a great idea. That's the worry.
Agree wholeheartedly with Bruce's narrative on Security Theater. While it seems crazy that we're not allowed to carry more than 100 mL of water per bottle on a plane, yet "Explosive School" doesn't raise an eyebrow, the bad news is we're an open society. If they're determined and smart, they can get the information they need from elsewhere, but maybe the FBI is smarter than we give them credit.
PS. Whoever modded my original post a "Troll": Read your moderator guidelines. If you've got a contrary opinion, post it.
As some else has already said, the knowledge is available now. At least, allow this (quite old anyway) kids to know which precautions the must take. If any of them is intent on doing harm, they won't go here anyway (how much knowledge do you need to blow up a gas canister?).
At the bottom of the
Anonymous Coward,
As a father whose daughter asked to go last year and was accepted, SAFETY was the first and foremost emphasis. Not only did my daughter have a "blast" (pun intended) it built up her confidence and now she has chosen engineering as her major. She will be attending UM-Rolla next year as a freshman. The course was not only very well done with lectures and practicum, it was done on an campus that refuses to be politically correct. Would be terrorists were weeded out. Some child threatened to blow up a building from the middle east and he was deported 12 hours later. I think they know a lot about safety.
Importing talent also helps to hide the devastation of our own talent produced by our own education system. My daughter, 16, just enrolled in a high school embedded in a junior college, where over the next two years she will "complete" her high school "studies", while at the same time earning an AA degree. It sounds good until you realize that it's an admission by the system that the last two years of high school are *completely worthless*.
./ will post "I for one welcome our new, educated, Masters".
True story: I know of two California students, one just got an A in 11th grade chemistry, the other just did 11th grade AP chemistry. Both of them learned "compost is good for agriculture". Neither of them heard, or at least remembered, any mention of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, or *any* actual _chemicals_. When I did 11th grade chemistry it was all about the periodic table, valence and stoichiometry.
CA has created the perfect curriculum. It is guaranteed that no group will perform better than any other group. The content has been removed, but hey, who _really_ cares. First things first.
In a few decades chemistry will be replaced by subjects more suitable, such as advanced groveling, servile-mode Mandarin, etc. Someone on
--
phunctor
"bah!"
You sound almost disappointed that no one died. I could think of several adjectives to describe this attempted mass murder, but I don't think I'd use 'pathetic'.
Well, you can for $1295 in Oregon, and the price includes transportation, meals and all the high-order explosives!
(This post does not represent any endorsement of said program)
My blog
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."
This is the most popular type of explosive used when making car bombs. They've known it for years. McVeigh used this. It's been on prime time news.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the GP was being a wee bit sarcastic.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
*allison hannigan voice* And this one time at explosives camp...
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Still. It's good that religious nuts don't believe in experimentation.
Deleted
So, um, you wouldn't allow kids to take drivers education because they're unlicensed? Yeah, that works.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
Your sig couldn't be more appropriate with your message :-).
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
and worked for Professor Worsey in his lab. It was a great experience--got to blow stuff up, got some machine shop experience, got to work in the mine.
In reference to another thread, I seem to recall that Worsey is a US citizen. It was quite a multi-cultural experience, there was another prof from England, a brief visit from a South African, a Pole and a Russian.
If you meet Worsey (and aren't in mixed company), ask him about sheep and wellies...
Okay, I'm not feeling motivated to sign my kids up, but can I set up a scholarship for the neighbor's kids?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
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.
> So after step one, the intro to step two is most likely "See, kids, and this happens when you forget to..."
Also known as the "We're gonna need another Timmy" method.
To be fair, the building from the middle east was in the country illegally anyway.
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.
Is the safety briefing done by J. Walter Weatherman? "And THAT'S why you never hold a live blasting cap"
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Heh. I remember my shop teacher teaching safety. He picked up a wooden dowel, compared it's thickness to that of his thumb, started the bandsaw, and swung the dowel into the blade in a sorta careless fashion. He then turned off the bandsaw, held up the bisected dowel, and said, "This is why safety is important."
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
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.
And then you shoot them in the hand to make sure it really sticks
She'll be the second female at UMR!
I have to say it sounds kinda odd that that could happen, because during the swearing-in ceremony the new citizens disclaim all rights to their country of origin, and supposedly the USA therefore does not recognize dual citizenship. I'd definitely prefer the Canadian way of doing it.
Ah, yes, Milgram. I'm aware of it, and the objections to it are many. It could make a thread all by itself.
Let's just say, though, that:
1. That people can obey authority, isn't exactly new in and by itself. We have an army, don't we? Claiming that you can just turn people into an equivalent of Eichmann, though, is a whole other thing, and so much bullshit it could fertilize a few acres.
On one hand we have (A) people who were coaxed at every step, weren't face to face with the victim, in some versions were assured by 2 additional teachers that it's not dangerous, etc, and even so a lot were disoriented and even shocked after the experiment, vs (B) Eichmann who continued to send people to the concentration camps even after he was ordered not to. And knowing full well what happens there. I'm sorry, but other than as trolling, I can't see how anyone can put an equals sign between the two.
2. None of the participants were face to face with the victim, and essentially we don't know what they even thought or understood there. Did they really think "I'm killing someone" or maybe, "this has to be a joke?" I know I'd think the latter in such an incredible a setup. Being asked to administer someone unseen a 450 V shock, ranks up there with "press this button to have an invisible unicorn kick and invisible gnome."
The debriefing was superficial to the extreme, and even so, apart from a couple of people who claimed life-changing revelations, most seemed to not even have fully understood what they have done. The "omg, I had a revelation about myself" gang were actually extremely few, although quoted all over the place. The number of those who weren't even sure what the experiment did, if anything at all, outweighed them by far.
3. Even if you take his number at face value, obedience was by and large proportional to the number of figures of authority reassuring the subject that they're, not, in fact, doing anything dangerous. Even whether the experiment happened in an university (where you'd assume no mass killings would take place in broad daylight), or not, played a huge role and modified the percentage quite a bit.
When additional "professors" were involved, compliance varied between almost none, when the additional "professors" said it's dangerous to go any higher, to almost complete, when they said it's perfectly safe.
I don't know about you, but I can hardly put an equals sign between (A) someone doing something, even as bizarre as in the Milgram experiment, while reassured (directly or indirectly) by experts that it's safe, and (B) Eichmann and the like, who knew full well what they're doing. Unless you make an experiment that says, in a nutshell, "push this button to kill someone", I don't see how that equivalence can be argued in any form or shape. Here the reassurance from figures of authority was that you're _not_ actually doing anything dangerous. It's just not the same thing.
At most, what the Milgram experiment measures, is to what extent people would trust an expert against their common sense. But I suppose that wouldn't be as good for trolling for attention as, basically, "hey, looky, we can make people act like a famous (at the moment) war criminal". I mean, the former is just why you take medicine even if it makes you feel worse, while the later makes headlines.
4. Since that "it's not nearly as hard as you think" seems to be aimed at my claim that it's hard to turn a normal human into a premeditated murderer, I don't see anything suggesting premeditation in Milgram's experiment either. Even if you want to trust his conclusions to the letter, it's at best some people who were pressured to continue all the time, and at some point went with the flow because the authority figure next to them kept nagging them to continue. That's a freakin' huge difference between that, and, say, telling someone "the day after tomorrow you go and blow up a school." Most people gave up as soon as the authority figure wasn't in the same room (or wasn't perceived as enough of an authority figure, for that matter.)
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