Interesting read

[Nihilist]

http://www.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/uni/uni.txt

[Bert]

I think of Ted whenever I have to physicaly go into a US post office to mail a package over 16oz. Probably not the change to modern industrial society he had intended...

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/serial-killers/unabomer/

[nbk2000]

I actually had the idea of making a design challenge based on that fact.

Design a device that, including packaging, weighs 16 ounces or less, with little or no metal content, preferably X-ray 'safe', and as lethal as possible (barring biological agents).

[Bert]

Piece of cake, assuming you only wish to destroy anything within about a 3' radius of the package on opening. Yes, I have thought about the futility of most "security" measures to do anything but make elected officials appear to be looking out for us.

Obviously, considering the mass of mail and the degree of training and technology involved in the screening process it would be even easier to make an infernal device that passed freely through the system.

Ted should have been thinking of jiu-jitsu ways to use the features of industrial society against itself, but in the end he seems to have been more of an alienated, crazed nihilist than a revolutionary. Pitty he didn't spend some of the time from 16 to 20 something getting laid.

[Jacks Complete]

I'm not up on US postal law, but isn't the law simply that you have to show ID to post anything over 16oz.? Do they actually Xray to look inside, or is it just to kill anthrax?

I think some kind of radially arranged directed dart idea might be best, with a poison unaffected by the X-ray sterilisation. Blow it up and the darts fly a good distance, and poison what they penetrate.

The Ju-Jitsu way would be to have something that started spewing radioactive smoke 30 seconds after X-ray, when it is with all the other stuff in the sorting office, next to the expensive machines. Then it bursts into flame.

[Bert]

We don't have to actually show ID, they just want us to have our mugs recorded on the security cameras and they want to know where/when packages entered the mail.

THIS is where the money for Homeland security is actually going... http://www.local6.com/news/9539613/detail.html

[nbk2000]

Anything created by man, can be subverted or destroyed by another man. :)

For instance, I had the thought of a time-release adhesive that would be used to hold a false front on a package, leaving only the postage uncovered.

The package goes in the system at one coast and, at some point halfway across the country, the label with the false destination address and real postal marks showing it's true origin, falls off. The real destination address and false postal marks are revealed, and the package is re-routed via automated barcodes you've printed on it, to its true target.

When investigators try to find its origin, there's nothing to connect it back to you. :p

And only mail going to federal buildings, like the Senate or Congress, is gamma-ray sterilized. Us peons have to take our chances with the anthrax.

[Bert]

This may be of interest.
http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2006/07/meditations-on-tool-use.html

[Defendu]

Might is Right (http://might-is-right.blogspot.com)

Book Description
"One would think that in our liberal, enlightened times a book dating from the Victorian Age would be viewed as a quaint curiosity. Not so Dr. Ragnar Redbeard's notorious Might Is Right or the Survivial of the Fittest. It is hated and denounced as much today as when it first made the rounds of the Victorian Age's elite and influential, which explains why the book is often featured on banned-book lists. Perhaps a 1905 ad for Might Is Right will give offer some insight: This is a pitiless and appalling book by an author of extraordinary virility and rugged primeval force, whose sense perceptions borders on the supernatural.

Ten years ago private typewritten copies of this startling work sold in London and Berlin for $150. Since then the most powerful living minds have absorbed its teachings with satisfaction, but in guarded silence. Unquestionably it is the most pregnant and remarkable publication that has appeared in Christendom for 15 centuries. From its pages [Theodore] Roosevelt’s celebrated philosophy of ‘Strenuousness,’ ‘Race Suicide’ and ‘the Big Stick’ has been distilled and—diluted.

Prince Bismarck, Paul Kruger and President McKinley read it in manuscript before they died; and it has given nerve and decisiveness to the world-shaking aggressive activity of men like Cecil Rhodes, Von Buelow, Chamberlain, Elihu Root, Kaiser William, Abdul Hamid and Von Phleve. It has also had its effect on General Castro, Admiral Togo, Senator Tillman, Grand Duke Sergius, Lord Kitchener, General Trepoff, and their ablest adversaries. Indeed it has influenced public opinion throughout the whole world by changing the thoughts and opinions of national leaders and editors in the most wonderful way. It positively alters the course of mens lives. It has affected the destinies of nations, races, religions. It has annihilated many popular Ideals hitherto believed sacred and impregnable. Nevertheless it is written as interestingly as any romance.

Dr. Russell Wallace and Count Tolstoi criticize it in frank despair: and Bernard Shaw has written a drama ("Man & Superman") with Redbeard’s thought as his theme: — and its power over the more intelligent followers of Marx, Lasalle, Jaures, Hearst, Bebel, Bernstein, is beyond calculation.

In fact this book is a veritable religious and political earthquake, marking the complete collapse of a false and depressing philosophy that has held sway for nearly 2,000 years. The thought in this book is positively startling. It thrills across the empires and republics like the wakening trump of a Warrior Archangel. It out Darwins Darwin; it out Spencers Spencer; and, compared to some of its splendid chapters the writings of Machiavelli are as the babble of a babe.

‘Nothing is true’ it declares, ‘nothing is permanent; all things are open to you; the world is to the Strong; struggle is forever; they may take who have the power; they can keep who CAN.’ The author proclaims himself a Messiah of Evolution; — a re-incarnate Odin, whose mission it is to journey from nation to nation, and city to city, teaching and preaching the ancient, true, heroic and masculine Evangel of valor and gold. You cannot buy ‘Might Is Right’ in more than half a dozen book stores of the world; nevertheless it has been translated into four modern languages; and over 120,000 copies have been sold in this country and in Europe. Orders are received from the most distant nations of the earth."

(Quoted text refers to Dil Pickle Press edition, edited by Darrell W. Conder)