There was a fire in Spokane
No big deal in and of itself, except that there was also a fire at a Saudi oil terminal;
local insurgents blew up Mexican oil and gas pipelines - correctly, to maximise damage and repair period; a contactor pierced a major oil pipeline in Vancouver, and there was a steam plant fire in a UK refinery.
Oh, and of course an Iraq pipeline was blown up.
Now, with GoogleNews it is easier to hear of such incidents, and because news aggregation was harder in the past there is a perception of more rare events occuring, both because reporting is more thorough and because we (ok, me) are more attuned to notice certain rare events.
But, there's a lot of these little and medium sized things going on.
'course that'd require very patient, clever terrorists. Let us hope they are not.
Though I have to say, the wired blocks of cheese thing sounds intriguing, one of those things that are either fiendishly clever or incredibly stupid, and we may never know which.
Oh, if the cheese/clay things are aQ dry runs, the implication is not only that there are active cells inside the US preparing attacks, but that they have associated who can be sacrificed on dry-runs, and they have access to plastic explosives (the dry runs only make sense if they are practising using plastic high explosive, not improvised explosives).
Bummer.
PS: now gas tanks explode in Houston... - good thing I'm not paranoid - PPS: 'cause the initial reports that it was natural gas were wrong, oxy-acetylene tanks
But, now there is this: Russian gas pipeline explodes - that's a lot in a short time
What is the more likely explanation for the wired blocks of cheese?
1. Al Qaeda is making dry runs smuggling bombs through security by making dummy bombs that very much resemble bombs (rather than not looking anything like bombs) and seeing if they get caught?
2. Smartasses are trying to cause trouble for people they know (and do, or don't, like) by sneaking dummy bombs into their luggage?
Were these cases of amateurish efforts by sophisticated weapons makers or just pranks?
Heimatsicherheitsdienst -- oops, 'Department of Homeland Sekurity' -- presents these findings as their successes (without accompanying culprits?). Even they are damning the results with the faintest of praise.
This is where more info would be useful: was the cell phone charger a plug-in spare, or a capacitor buffered "instant recharge" thing? Was the "processed cheese" velveeta, available in any supermarket in the US, or some local unique delicacy?
Were the ice pack filled with clay, filled with fine porcelain or kids modeling clay?
I usually carry a cell phone instant charger, and depending on where I'm coming from, I may occasionally carry large blocks of cheese. The two could end up nestled against each other in my bag, in principle, but there would be a definite, if not necessarily obvious-to-the-uninitiated explanation.
If any "friends" of mine played a prank like that on me, some combination of lawyers and violence would follow - not even slightly funny.
So, a useless report, of course.
Wired blocks of cheese being smuggled onto airplanes? I think the culprit is obvious. Which brings up the logical question:
What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?
Nah, it were Wallace wot did it, obviously.
I must admit though, I am now quite worried about the time we took a Stilton on a plane.
It was of course the day the plane was held on the runway for a couple of hours, and the Stilton was in our carry-on.
Lovely.