yankeeclipper Posted January 9, 2010 Share Posted January 9, 2010 I'd prefer on the whole to just stay in Ireland. And perhaps change your name to O'Strich? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saguaro_squeezer Posted January 9, 2010 Share Posted January 9, 2010 Well, I guess we could require everyone that fits whatever profile we deem dangerous at the time to learn Maccann Duet. That should keep them occupied for a bit And don't let them open the ends, either Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irene S. Posted January 9, 2010 Share Posted January 9, 2010 Well, I guess we could require everyone that fits whatever profile we deem dangerous at the time to learn Maccann Duet. That should keep them occupied for a bit And don't let them open the ends, either  I'm trying to puzzle this out ... and can't quite decide whether it indicates that Maccann Duet players are dangerous/undesirable .... also don't like the sound of implications of the suggestions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirge Posted January 9, 2010 Share Posted January 9, 2010 Well, I guess we could require everyone that fits whatever profile we deem dangerous at the time to learn Maccann Duet. That should keep them occupied for a bit And don't let them open the ends, either  I'm trying to puzzle this out ... and can't quite decide whether it indicates that Maccann Duet players are dangerous/undesirable .... also don't like the sound of implications of the suggestions.  I think he's suggesting we open the dark mysteries of the Maccan to the great unwashed. Honestly Rod! Have you no decency? No sense of shame? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irene S. Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 Â Â I think he's suggesting we open the dark mysteries of the Maccan to the great unwashed. Honestly Rod! Have you no decency? No sense of shame? Â Interestingly enough I was "talking" to another musician the other day, and explaining how I had been led into these bad ways, and he likened the Maccann to an instrument of the Dark Side .... anybody fancy training to be a Sith Lord??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fergus_fiddler Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I´m glad I´m in the EU & we don´t have to stand this paranoia YET... If I'm not mistaken, the UK (which is ostensibly in the EU) has the world's highest per capita system of public surveillance cameras. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.  I live in a country that still has terrorism from more than 40 years ago, and still don't look under my car every morning to see if anyone has attached a bomb... and that was scaring frequent some years ago. I think that tragedy seems to be less tragical to people when it happens everyday. I mean, people gets accustomend to that.  So maybe this issue makes me LESS paranoid about.  Cheers,  Fer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirge Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 .... anybody fancy training to be a Sith Lord??? Â a who? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irene S. Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 .... anybody fancy training to be a Sith Lord??? Â a who? Wrong set of science fiction Dirge!!! Â Try this for illumination (or not, as the case may be) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirge Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 .... anybody fancy training to be a Sith Lord???  a who? Wrong set of science fiction Dirge!!!  Try this for illumination (or not, as the case may be) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sith  That looks all right. Where do I sign? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Timson Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I think that tragedy seems to be less tragical to people when it happens everyday. I mean, people gets accustomend to that. Â Spot on. Whenever the conversation gets paranoid about terrorism I just remind myself that 3000 people die every year on UK roads and somehow nobody gets upset, stops driving or demands that the government imposes rigorous body searches on anyone before they board a car ... Â There is a superb article here on New Scientist all about official and individual over-reaction to perceived risk. It's well worth reading. Â Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fidjit Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 Will it come to this at the check in? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kautilya Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 (edited) .... anybody fancy training to be a Sith Lord???  a who? Wrong set of science fiction Dirge!!!  Try this for illumination (or not, as the case may be) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sith Pleathe! We Thith are nithe people. I rethent the way thome of u are taking the pith, for thothe of uth who thtrive to thpeak clearly about our intthrumentth to thecurity who want to unthcrew them to thee if they only make a thound.  The latht time through Westminster Airport (to thow that my boxth wath not a threat) they made me play thith piethe below. They gave me a laminated tetht card with the dotth -- after athking if I had packed my own box or if "Red" Rahm had done it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EgNXka2zW0 )  The thhame of it! - playing in front of a queue of fathelethth, thmirking thecurity thtaff -- you can thee them on camera in my holiday video below. Tho many of them!  One good thing tho, my holiday companion Guy Fawkth, (he playth a MacCann Duel with a lever action of 56 noteth per thec, and a Crabb thmooth action repeater built out of TITanium )-- they let HIM through after me without checking hith box (he utheth a double bathth cathe to carry it ath a violin cathe ith too thmall), coz they had heard mine and had learnt wot a conthertina ith. He wath happy.  In my holiday video, the bald woman wath a helpful Virgin hothteth who meetth VIPth (Vengeful Inthtrumental Playerth) when they make their way into Westminthter by Underground. Ath u may know, thith ith now owned by the GGTHYTTH (Google Global Thurveillance You Tube Thythtem), whoth originth date back to 1984 it theems. :(  yourth thintherely :ph34r: Trutht u like my traditional Thith head gear  Pleathe forgive any poor noteth in my fingering. I wath tho angry by thith time I wath on a very thort futhe: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=4840424 Edited January 10, 2010 by Kautilya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saguaro_squeezer Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 Sorry, I might have been a bit obscure. By 'them', I imply those persons that we're currently calling terrorists .... Â It would seem that most underwear bombs are allegedly simple devices ... the Maccann Duet is allegedly not. Learning to play it should keep them busy for hours. Â My experience with music from that region makes me think that it's a bit more chromatic than english traditional music. Learning their tunes should keep them busy for hours. Â It's hard to hide a Maccan Duet in your underwear or most other esterior parts of your body. Should meke them easier to spot without full body scanners. Â Now Irene, you're right, it's conceivable that once you learn the Maccann you are more intellectually competent. If so, then my hope would be that you'd see how silly ANY type of blind fundmentalism is. Â But it brings the thread back to a Concertina focus ... which was my original intent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yankeeclipper Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 (edited) Whenever the conversation gets paranoid about terrorism I just remind myself that 3000 people die every year on UK roads and somehow nobody gets upset, stops driving or demands that the government imposes rigorous body searches on anyone before they board a car ... There is a superb article here on New Scientist all about official and individual over-reaction to perceived risk.  Take a couple of memorable overreactions. In the year after the terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, so many people avoided airline travel in the US by driving that there were about 1500 additional deaths on the roads, or six times the number of air passengers that died on 9/11. New Scientist  The New Scientist article plays an interesting game with numbers, counting 9/11's 246 air passenger fatalities, but blithely ignoring 2,651 deaths on the ground. The oh-so-cool minimizers also ignore the many attempts to bomb passenger aircraft and civilian targets which have been unsuccessful due to security efforts in the US, UK, France, Germany and elsewhere. In some ways, the "don't be so paranoid" folks remind me of Americans in 1914-1916 and 1938-1941, dismissing war in Europe as a faraway issue that didn't concern them. Of NevilleChamberlain at Munich. And of EU hesitation in Kosovo in 1999, leading on to massacre at Srebrenica and a grim new definition of 'Dutch Courage.'  It's easy to dismiss or minimize a conflict when you think you aren't a target. Odds are, most of the victims of global terrorism in London, Madrid, Mumbai, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Bali and Jakarta felt equally safe and disinterested. But so long as terrorists continue to strike at planes, trains, ships, buses, shops and markets, mosques and churches around the world, I'm more than willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience from security efforts. Edited January 10, 2010 by yankeeclipper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirge Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 Â It's easy to dismiss or minimize a conflict when you think you aren't a target. Odds are, most of the victims of global terrorism in London, Madrid, Mumbai, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Bali and Jakarta felt equally safe and disinterested. But so long as terrorists continue to strike at planes, trains, ships, buses, shops and markets, mosques and churches around the world, I'm more than willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience from security efforts. Â Â No, you don't get the last word on this. I see you live in Minnesota; my American geography is a bit shakey but I think that's in the middle of the US isn't it? Interesting that you feel that this makes you qualified to tell others off for not taking it seriously because they do not think they are threatened. Do you travel internationally these days? Is it a concern of yours that an aeroplane will drop on your head? Â As I said before, I do an annual globe circumnavigation, plus a few side trips. I can assure you that the current juvenile 'security' checks keep you standing in queues (and treated like cattle; particularly annoying when you don't actually believe it does any good) for quite some time. While fulminating about the whole business, with nothing better to do as you shuffle slowly forward, you tend to remember the glass bottles and other suitable 'weapons' you saw in duty free after the security checks, or work out how to get implements or explosives onto aeroplanes. When you actually think about it, it becomes clear that an intelligent determined looney would have no problem. Â Fortunately they need to be gullible and stupid to fall for the line, and it appears their Mentors are not much better so the attempts are amateurish. I suspect the cost of the ticket keeps quite a lot of them at bay, so how strange that we don't get more busses and trains blown up. (I wonder why that is? After all their security is so LAX.) Even more fortunately they usually seem to mention their perfidious plans to a sensible friend who tips off the police. That's what seems to be stopping them so far, normal people's decency, not wasting millions of man-hours in airports. Â As I also said before, what better way to encourage these sods than to let them see how terrified you are of them? Severely inconveniencing the whole world with daft window dressing measures to please the voters at home ('Something is being done!') hands them a bloodless victory. They don't even need to kill the odd half-wit to achieve it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hjcjones Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I don't know about Madrid, Mumbai or the other places Yankeeclipper mentions, but London and the rest of the UK have been living with the threat of terrorism for decades. I've spent the whole of my adult life at risk of being caught up in a terrorist attack. The office where I worked in London was across the road from the Old Bailey Central Criminal Court, and was fitted with bomb blast curtains. I have friends in Mountain Rescue teams who were sent to look for bodies after Lockerbie. I was on my way into Manchester when I heard on the news that the city's main shopping centre had been blown up. We've learned to live with sensible (and less sensible precautions), but the prevailing attitude is that if you let terrorists disrupt your way of life, then they've won. Stay alert, but carry on as usual. Â Security precautions are of course necessary, but there is a danger that they become more than an inconvenience and start to make the journey impossible. It's not just musicians who carry valuable and fragile items which they don't want to trust to the hold. Part of the problem is that the authorities won't explain why they've introduced restrictions. Is the 100ml limit on liquids based on science, or is it a random amount? I wear contact lenses, and lens solutions come in 125 ml bottles, so the lower limit is an inconvenience. Is there a good reason why it's 100 ml rather than 125 ml? I've no idea. Â It's also worth noting that long before terrorism was a consideration the US authorities were always very suspicious of tourism. They don't appear to have grasped the idea that people like to visit a place, look round, and then go home. I first visited the US in 1976, when for the first time the US had vigorously promoted itself abroad as a tourist destination for its Bicentennial. That message didn't seem to have reached the Immigration Service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yankeeclipper Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 (edited) I see you live in Minnesota; my American geography is a bit shakey but I think that's in the middle of the US isn't it? Interesting that you feel that this makes you qualified to tell others off for not taking it seriously because they do not think they are threatened. Do you travel internationally these days? Is it a concern of yours that an aeroplane will drop on your head? Yes, I live in Minnesota, where Zacharias Moussaoui - the only convicted 9/11 participant - tried to get pilot training. Yes, I travel internationally. Yes, I am concerned that an aeroplane will drop on someone's head, even yours. John Donne said it well: "each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind." Edited January 10, 2010 by yankeeclipper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Levine Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 "each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind." If you truly believe this then you should call for an end to US state-sponsored terrorism. That is at the heart of this debate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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