Terror
lborkowski | September 7, 2011American Public Media's Marketplace program is taking a look at "the economic legacy of 9/11" this week, and this morning's story focused on security spending in the private sector. Marketplace's Jeff Horwich highlighted an unexpected example: security for grain elevators.
For you city-folk, grain elevators are America's rural skyscrapers. Farmers dump their corn, wheat, soybeans. Trucks haul it out to feed the country. Even though elevators are mostly in the middle of nowhere, Bob Zelenka of the Minnesota Grain and Feed Association says you never know.
Bob Zelenka: It's on the edge of town…
cevans | April 15, 2010
A large part of my affection for science comes from the thrill of terror I get when a particularly insane piece of science news hits the presses. When an article begins with a sentence like, "there is something strange in the cosmic neighborhood," or "all the black holes found so far in our universe may be doorways into alternate realities," my pulse quickens and a dormant paranoia is roused from deep within my breast: a sensation of joyful panic. I used to call this the "fourth-grade nightmare fantasy." This might be because as a long-time science fiction adept, I tend to read science news…
awild | January 27, 2010Mark this on your calendar: February 27 is the 27th annual Insect Fear Film Festival. Hosted by the entomology graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the festival showcases two (usually terrible) arthropod movies. This year's delectable offerings are The Black Scorpion (1957) and Ice Crawlers (2003).
If bad movies aren't your thing, the festival also has an insect art competition, live insect displays, face painting, and other buggy entertainment. As way of a preview, Jo-anne posted her pics of last years event here. I've put the full announcement below:…
sciencepunk | March 24, 2009
There's an old adage for bomb technicians - if you see them running, try to keep up. But preliminary research carried out by the Florida Institute of Technology suggests that bolting for the exit when confronted by a suicide bomber is a poor choice of strategy.
Assistant Professor Daniel Kirk and Fulbright Scholar Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani developed physics-based computer models to predict the magnitude and number of casualties occurring in suicide bomber attacks. They found that the precise location of individuals in the room had a large impact on the injuries they received.
Simulations…
sciencepunk | March 17, 2009
The British Transport Police seem set to continue the fight against terror with their curious strategy of scaring the living shit out of everyone themselves. I guess if the BTP can whip the British public into a state of paranoid terror, then the terrorists won't have to, and we'll have won. Right? While we're at it, let's remove all those civil liberties like trial by jury and due process, so pesky terrorists can't take them from us. Rule Brittania!
Here's the latest in a series of hysteria-inducing "anti-terror" posters that have come out of the UK in recent years. It appeared on…