Are we sacrificing our intellectual competitiveness on the altar of mindless fear and compulsory conformity?
This week four high-school kids in the Hays, Texas school district, including the son of a sherriff's deputy, were arrested for making bombs and charged for possession of 'prohibited weapons' which carries a potential sentence of up to ten years in jail.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - ss
I guess that explains the burning mailman in the background of all his campaign commercials.
And the slogan
"Jon Tester. My kids WILL throw burning napalm on that nosy postman."
And the attack ad
"Conrad Burns says he hates it when the mailman is spying on you... but what's he going to do about it."
PS I eagerly await being asked about 'my meds' by one of the guys who was just bragging about firing homemade mortars at the bus garage when they were a kid.
27 - ss
On a more serious note, appearantly a recent convert to Islam is going on trial today for, I'll let the teaser on MyWay news tell the story
"A Muslim convert who talked about his desire to wage jihad against civilians was charged Friday in a plot to set off hand grenades at a shopping mall at the height of the Christmas rush"
I'll admit I just read the headline, grabbed the teaser and came back here to post it. (I was just about to shut the computer down)
So I'm not real familiar with the case, but...
If all this guy did was talk, is he guilty?
28 - Dave Nalle
Society at large - When I was a kid lots of people worked in factories, at machine shops, and on farms. Missing fingers on adult males, while not quite the norm, were common enough.
I've got a great story along these lines from one of my older students that really gives an idea of how much things have changed in a few generations, both for better and worse. All of his uncles worked in a dye works in Rhode Island before the depression. The youngest one had just gone to work there as a teenager, and while he was pushing cloth down into a vat of dye he caught his arm on a loose bolt on the side of the vat and ripped a gash from his wrist to elbow. His older brothers had him stick his whole forearm into the vat of boiling dye to cauterize the wound because he could keep working with the 2nd degree burns but if he went to the doctor to get it stitched as a new hire the company would fire him on the spot and it was the only job in town. To his dying day he had a foot long dark blue scar on his arm as a reminder.
My old English teacher who worked in the steel mills in Pittsburgh had a similar story about Hunky steel workers, many of whom had serious burn scarring from similar incidents, but it just went with the territory.
Dave
29 - Zedd
Dave:
It's against the law. I don't know... Cute crime???
What if these kids were of Arab descent? Would you think it was cute? Or what if they were from "the hood" and were bussed to your kid's school or rode your bus or train daily? Would you think it was cute then?
Personally, white boys with bombs give me a huge chill. We have a history of kooks with bombs and it’s just not cute to me. I don't know... The Oklahoma City bombing, various kooks in post offices all over the U.S. and off course the KKK (not cute).
My question is why did they WANT to make bombs? What’s wrong with them (sorry a cultural thing). I know why gangsters do what they do. Why do they want to make bombs?? Why do you not care?? Are you not the same as people who stupidly and gleefully listen to gangster rap without understanding the social and culturally eroding consequences of supporting that subculture?
30 - STM
When I was a kid at high school in the early 1970s, before the ban on fireworks here, we had what is probably the equivalent of Dave Nalle's M-80 - a huge explosive firework designed for nothing else but making a loud noise. They were known as "bungers" and were only sold once a year for the Queen's Birthday cracker night ... they started small (tom thumbs, which you'd let off in a string), pennys and tuppenys.
The tuppenys could blow off your fingers and destroy mailboxes. We stuck one in a small cupboard at school during a maths lesson with the cane-happy deputy prinicipal, the fuse laying over a burning half cigarette (Marlboro, because all the saltpetre in the ciggy kept it burning). Five minutes or so into the lesson, the tuppeny went off, and blew one of the hinges off the wood.
The teacher nearly had a heart attack and took swift revenge.
It was in the days when we still had corporal punishment at school. Everyone got caned (on the hand, and hard). Under threat of everyone getting six, a couple of nerds in the class dobbed in the three perpetrators (including me) to save themselves. They had to enlist a couple more sadistic teachers as who liked caning because there were too many kids for one bloke to handle without his cane-arm getting tired. Poor bastard.
Everyone else got one "cut" of the cane, we got six and then another six the following week. My mother came up to the school to give the deputy principal a rocket as the blood blisters from the first lot of cuts hadn't healed when I got the second batch.
The cane, by the way, was the preferred form of punishment at boys' high schools (yes, most of our schools were segregated by sex, which also meant we didn't get any), but just like the death penalty, the cane didn't act as any form of deterrent whatsoever. It just made us lie more.
Now they've gone totally soft and just give out detentions and suspensions. What kind of punishment is a suspension? "Guess what mum, I've just been given two weeks off school. Did dad fix that ding in my surfboard?"
And some of these kids running amok nowadays need a bloody good caning!
31 - Zedd
Shark
It's getting spooky. Those two minds couldn't exist in the same body. You couldn't have done that good of a job pretending to be an idiot just a few months ago.
All right, what planet are you from, what did you do with Shark and what do you want with us?
32 - Martin Alak
When I was a kid I wasn't even allowed to *want* having *firecrackers*, much less what you're talking about...
33 - Zedd
Alak:
I am so with you. I am lost.
Bombs??? We need to get to the bottom of this. I understand that teens undergo some changes which desensitize them to simple dangers but BOMBS?? What about their culture fosters this level of anger and hopelessness?
I mean consider it... A bomb is the most destructive element that human beings have devised. It obliterates and annihilates. Why do these children want one? More so, why do they want to be responsible for creating one?
Is my confusion because of culture or is their disturbance an indication of a cultural phenomenon?
34 - Clavos
zedd writes,
What about their culture fosters this level of anger and hopelessness?
I mean consider it... A bomb is the most destructive element that human beings have devised. It obliterates and annihilates. Why do these children want one? More so, why do they want to be responsible for creating one?
As I said in #6, I'm one of the childhood bomb makers, and I have to tell you, you're getting way too deep here.
There's no cultural significance, no sociological deeper meaning, no societal aberration involved; it's just fun, that's all. On my part, there absolutely was no "anger" or "hopelesness;" heck, I was a middle class kid living in the suburbs of Mexico City. I just liked blowing things up -- and I never hurt anybody doing it, nor did I want to.
Look at how many males upthread recounted their boyhood experiences. It's just something boys have done for a long time; probably several generations' worth.
Nothing more.
35 - STM
You naughty boy Clavos ... you should have been caned
36 - Clavos
Oh, I was, STM. Plenty of times. Just not for that -- that one I kept away from my Dad; didn't tell him until I was old enought to be sitting in a bar having a drink with him. He laughed...
37 - Dave Nalle
What if these kids were of Arab descent?
One of the kids I hung out with when we made the napalm was an Arab, and I was born in Lebanon. Back then no one batted an eye.
Would you think it was cute? Or what if they were from "the hood" and were bussed to your kid's school or rode your bus or train daily? Would you think it was cute then?
I don't believe I ever characterized it as cute. We're talking kids in the 12 to 16 age range here, not little tykes. And if the kids didn't bring explosives or incindiaries on the bus or to school, then where's the problem?
Personally, white boys with bombs give me a huge chill. We have a history of kooks with bombs and it's just not cute to me. I don't know... The Oklahoma City bombing, various kooks in post offices all over the U.S. and off course the KKK (not cute).
Ever seen the movie October Sky? Did it give you chills? Do you get chills when kids set of fireworks on the 4th of July? Do you run and hide?
My question is why did they WANT to make bombs?
And my question is why is that desire considered a problem today when it wasn't 30 years ago.
What's wrong with them (sorry a cultural thing).
What culture? My point is that there's nothing wrong with them.
I know why gangsters do what they do. Why do they want to make bombs?? Why do you not care?? Are you not the same as people who stupidly and gleefully listen to gangster rap without understanding the social and culturally eroding consequences of supporting that subculture?
No, I'm like the teen who listened to gangster rap and grew up and turned out normal, just like thousands of others.
Dave
38 - Dave Nalle
When I was a kid I wasn't even allowed to *want* having *firecrackers*, much less what you're talking about...
Alak, what age are you? What decade was it when you were 14-16? When I was a kid we took family trips across several states to get to South of the Border where fireworks were legal to sell, unlike in Maryland, and our parents indulged us with nary a raised eyebrow.
Dave
39 - STM
Clavos: Did American kids receive corporal punishment at school? I didn't think they did.
40 - Clavos
No, STM, not in the public schools, but the Catholic schools (and many private ones) did administer corporal punishment when I was a kid (the forties and fifties), but I don't think they do anymore, more's the pity.
And I wasn't actually caned; I was spanked by my Dad for particularly egregious transgressions, sometimes with his belt, but most often with his hand.
41 - Dave Nalle
Public schools in some parts of Texas were still using corporal punishment within the past few years. I think the Houston ISD was the last to ban it back in 2001. Interestingly, the school board of the rural community of Brownwood reinstated corporal punishment over the objections of their superintendent two years ago.
23 states don't have state laws outlawing corporal punishment, but it's still extremely rare because individual school districts have prohibited it even in those states.
Dave
42 - Clavos
School corporal punishment is a real hot button PC issue these days.
43 - STM
Some kids need to be caned. I was one of 'em.
Didn't make me behave though. Just made me more street smart when it came to lying my way out of strife. The one good thing about getting a good belting was that it was all over in seconds and you just went on with your school day.
My son was forever whingeing about the number of detentions he got at school (boarding school, mind you, so it wasn't like he had anything else to do). He was rather taken aback when I told him we used to get caned - hard - instead.
44 - STM
But, f.ck, it hurt ....
45 - Zedd
Dave again,
It seems nutso. Just a cultural bias I suppose.
About the Arab, I meant TODAY. Why would his being Arab mean anything back then? Silly!
The comment about gangster rap referes to the adult who promotes it not the child. Again, I am talking to you TODAY not you as a child.
Whats goin on Dave? You are not the same. Did you and Shark exchange brains or are you taking turns hitting the Gin and Juice?? I'm only kidding but this is weird.
46 - SHARK
Coupla points:
1) Dave's next "funny" article: "Children Playing With Anthrax: America's Future Chemists"
(For other examples of Nalleian satire, see "No One Died in Iraq Today" -- it's hilarious!)
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2) re:
Zedd: "My question is why did they WANT to make bombs?"
Nalle: "And my question is why is that desire considered a problem today when it wasn't 30 years ago."
Shameless Plug Warning:
Check out my Blogcritics essay Stress is Killing Me! for a [brilliant/humorous] view of contemporary violence -- and why it differs from the recent past.
excerpt: "The next body count that Katie Couric tearfully exploits might be attributed to a pimple-faced 14 year old who got picked on by an age-old hierarchy known as 'jocks.' (These days, assault weapons have replaced water balloons as a response to a common rite of passage.)"
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3) Nostalgia is the first symptom of an illness/human evolutionary phase called "Geezerhood."
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4) STOP it.
Now.
They're listening.
======
47 - SHARK
aside:
Wouldn't it be ironic if Nalle gets put under warrantless surveillance because the NSA gets data-mined hits on phrases like "bomb making", "anarchist cookbook", and "...I had already manufactured napalm, Molotov cocktails, and pipe bombs..." --?!
That would be explicit proof that there is a God.
48 - Dave Nalle
Shark, I've been under warrantless surveillance before. Having nothing to hide makes it less of a threat. Plus I have some confidence that any NSA officer who read the article would have the good sense which you and Zedd lack and understand what it's about.
Dave
49 - Victor Plenty
If we want to keep bombs away from teens, we'd better raise the driving age to 21. Every automobile is potentially an improvised incendiary explosive device with an integral mobile delivery platform.
Do we assume every person driving a car does it out of anger and hopelessness?
No, we do not. Not yet, anyway.
50 - a dutchman
Dave, your article is very apt and astute. My hat goes off. I wish you a good life, a fine audience and a better country.
Cheers.
51 - Snappy!
I think its safe to say that the the author was joking in wry humor. :)
Its scary enough that guns are not already outlawed, now kids are making bombs! Do we need *all* kids to bomb *all* schools before we say "Oh, gee I guess that's dangerous!?".
52 - Anthony Mills
Great article as a kid i too was greatly interested in chemistry, but due to getting into some trouble in about year ten had to stop messing around with chemicals.
Because of this move i got into computer as the freedom to mess around is still normally considered okay, but hell not everyone can work in IT we need chemists and engineers too.
53 - Dave Nalle
Do we assume every person driving a car does it out of anger and hopelessness?
If you've ever driven in Austin, that feeling is the inevitable outcome of any attempt to drive somewhere.
Dave
54 - Dave Nalle
I think its safe to say that the the author was joking in wry humor. :)
Sad to disabuse you, but although there's some wry humor mixed in, the article is basically serious.
Its scary enough that guns are not already outlawed, now kids are making bombs! Do we need *all* kids to bomb *all* schools before we say "Oh, gee I guess that's dangerous!?".
The scary thing is that you think that putlawing guns would help in any way, or that the tiny number of school bombings justifies putting all of our kids under threat of legal prosecution. Why not just lock them up when they turn 12 to protect society? Or perhaps we could castrate all the boys to reduce the testosterone which drives them.
Dave
55 - Clavos
Funny how people seem to miss the point altogether, even though a whole slew of us chimed in in the thread...
56 - Dave Nalle
Their viewpoint is so alien, and I'd say abnormal, that they can't even envision our worldview, as exemplified by the guy who was convinced the article had to be some sort of joke.
They're the extreme manifestation of the emasculation of our nation, people so out of touch that they don't recognize reality when they see it.
Dave
57 - Les Slater
Dave,
Me too. I think I'm a little older than Clavos and my experience seems sort of like his.
But it wasn't just guns and bombs (And Zedd, did you ever hear of Robert Williams?), but there was a whole lot more. People were just not as up tight.
I used to read Junior Scholastic in grade school. One feature was about a new discovery that might have some use in making us think more creatively in the future. It was about LSD. A couple months later they printed a retraction saying there might be some negative side effects, further study was needed.
Not that many years later Scientific American had articles on the subject. I even got instructions on how to produce it. And is was legal and available through pharmesutical companies. I sure some enterprizing kids learned some pretty serios chemistry in their home or school labs.
Les
58 - a dutchman
Dave,
Although I am abhorred, living at my side of the ocean, by the methods that US government uses, I understand the need to keep 300,000,000 citizens in control.
The method is old fashioned terror aimed at each individual, but it is wrapped in the cloak that used to be a safeguard against terror: the justice system.
O well.
have a nice day
59 - a dutchman
OMG, I do not hope that I forced you to deny my previous comment in public...
If that be the case, I withdraw that statement !
cheers
60 - Dave Nalle
Les, did you subscribe to Popular Mechanics? That and Model Rocketry magazine were my mainstays. Aside from blowing things up and making them go whoosh into the air I had a lot of fun with the amateur radio projects and solar experiments and some of the other cool stuff in Popular Mechanics.
I've been involved in some of our local science fairs, and what strikes me as interesting or troubling is how the kids are all being channelled into politically correct science fair projects. God forbid a kid should bring in a working still or a homemade rocket or a primitive steam engine or something involving experimentation on animals. Those things aren't forbidden, but you sure don't see them winning any prizes - those all go to the powerpoint displays on global warming, even though they express not a single original thought or a bit of creativity.
That's part and parcel of the same syndrome, I think.
Dave
61 - a dutchman
Forgive me adjusting to the new rules. I was born in the fifties and have been raised with a lot of USA films where honor, vile etc were logically attrributed among the good and the bad. It is all so different now.
I AM EVEN AFRAID TO MAKE A SARCASTIC COMMENT.
Not for me, but because of the risks for the nice people in this blog thread.
62 - Ken
When I was a kid, I recall him mentioning a couple of times, that if his father hadn't been the town marshal, he and his brother Frank would have undoubtedly been hanged by the townspeople before they ever reached 18. I never really reached that level, probably due to a better ability to keep secrets, which means I left my brother out of it. Rockets, bombs, we did it all without killing or injuring (seriously) ourselves or threatening anyone else in the process. Sure all we've got our share small scars from electrical, chemical and thermal burns, cuts, etc., but there's a good story behind each one.
I'm in higher education today, and my colleagues in Chemistry, Physics even Biology lament the quality of students they get as majors. Many of them have never done the simplest experiment in their high school classes. A lot of high schools are totally paranoid about letting students have access to any chemicals more interesting than tap water, and the majority of the experiments I did as a student are now simply demonstrated by the teacher, or even shown as a video. As a result, few kids ever aspire to careers in had sciences, and fewer still have any practical skills in experimentation. College faculty spend the better part of a term trying to bring the students up to speed in the most basic lab techniques: e.g., bending and cutting glass tubing, using a scalpel safety.
My daughter would object that it isn't so much the emasculation of our culture, but the infantilization. By the time they started high school, both she and my son had figured out that essentially any physical object could be a weapon if a person really wanted to use it that way. It always has been and always be the person that's really dangerous, not some inanimate object or substance. Unless other people can get that seemingly obvious and simple idea into their minds, we're going to end up banning everything and, when they realize that even that doesn't work, falling back on the thought police.
63 - Clavos
Ken,
Well said. And I'm not surprised at the quality (or lack thereof) of the students you and your colleagues encounter these days.
In addition to the reasons for that which you pointed out, too many kids spend their days (and nights) in front of either a TV set or a video game.
64 - Bliffle
Most of the young engineers I've seen in the past 20 years have had no hobbies and no handson experience. One young mechanical engineer was surprised when I referred to pistons in his auto engine "what's a piston. where can I read about it". Amazing. EEs from prestigious universities that can't solder a wire.
65 - Les Slater
Dave,
"Les, did you subscribe to Popular Mechanics?"
No, but I tried. They sent me Popular Electronics instead.
"That and Model Rocketry magazine were my mainstays."
I drove from Boston to Chicago in the last couple of days. Somewhere along the way on I-90 I saw a truck that was labled Estes Express Lines. I immediately started thinking of finding a rocket club somewhere.
Les
66 - Dave Nalle
Bliff, your experience with young engineers is frightening. If all they have is abstract knowledge, are they even capable of taking the broader view necessary to invent something or design something, or are they all just cogs in some corporate machine?
When the older generation starts to retire will we be left with no one who can innovate or create?
Dave
67 - Michael J. West
Wow, 66 (now 67) comments on a Nalle article, and not a single one is from MCH? I guess somebody should pick up the slack. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
"'By the time I was in high-school we were making thermite and white phosphoros bombs because we finally had access to a decent chemistry lab.' - Dave Nalle
A shame you didn't put your weapons-making expertise to use by serving in the military."
How was that? Reasonably authentic? Could you really feel the monotony?
68 - Dave Nalle
Not bad, Michael. But last I checked the military already had thermite and white phosphoros.
Plus there are many lessons to be learned in the school of juvenile bomb making, and one of them is that maybe you don't want to be part of using that nasty stuff on people.
Dave
69 - Clavos
MJW,
Who are you, and what have you done with emmy?
70 - Jet in Columbus
Nicely put Mike. Poor Dave's career must be spiraling down if he's losing his groupies!
71 - Michael J. West
Thank you, thank you. Impressions are my specialty.
But let me say that I'm in agreement here, too. As a teenager I didn't make explosives, but I did play with fire. At twelve I learned the great mysteries of crossing Zippo and WD-40. So I'm not in the least bit worried about kids playing with the stuff.
Actually, I may be wrong on this, but I seem to recall hearing a shrink say that making fire and explosives was how kids in puberty and immediate post-puberty channeled a lot of unused sexual energy. Which makes sense to me, as my interest in low-key pyromania decreased in inverse proportion to my involvement with girls.
72 - Victor Plenty
Interesting, Mr West. Then males who continue to make fires and explosions far past adolescence (even if only the virtual explosions and fires seen in video games) might thus experience a correspondingly reduced involvement with girls?
Maybe it's time to delete DOOM from my computer.
73 - Dave Nalle
So you're saying that the ultimate adolescent sexual expression would be to light girls on fire? Gives a new meaning to the phrase 'come on baby light my fire..."
Dave
74 - JR
Dave Nalle: When the older generation starts to retire will we be left with no one who can innovate or create?
Maybe that's how we avoid the Singularity.
If nothing else, no innovation means no new music format and I won't have to buy all my albums again.
75 - pleasexcusetheinterruption12
STM
Some kids need to be caned. I was one of 'em.
Didn't make me behave though.
So it doesn't serve any purpose but yet you think it's a good form of punishment? I guess Nietzsche was right about "punishment" after all..
And Dave, the correct term would be infantalization, not emasculation. If boys can play with barbie, girls can play with bombs too.
Although I have to say Dave, the more I think about this article the less insane it seems.