Rapid Fire 9/​12/​06

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1. Robot Economist says:

   September 12, 2006 at 6:24 pm

   I’ve seen some stuff on the ceramic alu­minum and it has poten­tial. By square inch, the stuff is light and fairly strong for its mass. When I first heard about it, the con­cept reminded me of the com­bi­na­tion plate and chain­mail used by knights until the 15th Century.
   My only con­cern is that ceramic armor can be nor­to­ri­ously inflex­i­ble. It would def­i­nitely make a good hel­met coat­ing, but I won­der whether it would be pop­u­lar with the troops. I’m also slightly dubi­ous about its util­ity for blast pro­tec­tion. If it ends up being too stiff, it might to more harm than good to troops who face fre­quent IED threats.
   Three other bits:
   Does any­one else think it is fishy that tech secu­rity mag­nate Bruce Schneier is advo­cat­ing expan­sion of gov­ern­ment spend­ing on soft­ware secu­rity? Securitizing the soft­ware indus­try would just sti­fle one of the U.S. last high-​​performing sec­tors.
   I thought it was hilar­i­ous that Evergreen has mod­ded up a 747 to ship 787 parts. The Taiwanese rep­u­ta­tion for craftly busi­ness inno­va­tion is still alive and well I see.
   Finally, the ammo­nium nitrate story really under­plays a few key facts: The U.S. farm indus­try has been block­ing FBI attempts to mon­i­tor fer­til­izer sales more thor­oughly for year. Also, fer­til­izer is only good for mak­ing truck bombs and prepa­ra­tion takes a good deal of sophis­ti­ca­tion and resources. They make work well in Turkey or Iraq, where there is plenty of farm­ing and ungoverned spaces to do the prep work, but TATP, HMTD, and PETN have been more pop­u­lar out­side of Iraq since Oaklahoma City.

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2. Earl says:

   September 12, 2006 at 11:06 pm

   Better pho­tos of the 747 LCF here at the Boeing media cen­ter:
   http://​boe​ing​me​dia​.com/​i​m​a​g​e​G​a​l​l​e​r​y​.​c​f​m​?​e​x​e​c=y

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