Comments on: Failure of Imagination

By: albatross

albatross — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:51:13 +0000

Clearly, someone at DHS got this idea from reading _Footfall_. (God, I wish Bob Ansen was around to see this.)

By: eric

eric — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:23:25 +0000

I know I wouldn’t invite Clancy. More of a mystery to me (well, not really, given that Pournelle would probably spontaneously combust) is why they didn’t invite Bruce Sterling. You know, the guy who imagined islamic terrorists using themselves as suicide bioweapons back in 1989.
I think that’s a tiny bit more bleeding edge than re-inventing the kamikaze for the Jet Age. Especially decades after Black September hijackers threatened the same thing with 707s, and some time after the designers of the World Trade Center did design studies to validate that it could survive a direct hit from a 707.
Or they could invite Neal Stephenson. There’s this writer named Carl Fredericks who’s coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas lately, and he’s actually a physicist. Or just invite Stan Schmidt — he’s got all kinds of ideas.
This groups was selected because they have the right political affiliation. THat’s pretty much it. Sterling spends too much time in Europe, Stephenson listens to too much thrash metal, and I could go on. Point being, if they want real out of box thinkers, neither Clancy nor this lot are what they want. (Except maybe Bear.)

By: the Wandering Author

the Wandering Author — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:11:33 +0000

DHS wouldn’t need much imagination, just someone with an ability to read. On 9/11, about 30 seconds after I understood what was happening (which, admittedly, took more than 30 seconds – it came in the midst of a family crisis) I thought of Tom Clancy, and assumed that his book was where they must have got the idea.
And, btw, I’m not going to hand out free info to terrorists, so I won’t explain here, but before 9/11 I had figured out a story idea for a terrorist scenario that would cause such havoc it would make 9/11 seem like a 4th of July picnic. Why didn’t I write the story? Well, I also have enough imagination to think of the chance a terrorist might read it…

By: Alice Marshall

Alice Marshall — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:05:37 +0000

Wow, great catch on Clancy’s absence.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 31 May 2007 10:50:36 +0000

One of the requirements for the club is an advanced technical degree. Not sure if this is a good idea, but it probably helps their cred with teh fed.

By: Roland Dobbins

Roland Dobbins — Thu, 31 May 2007 05:52:21 +0000

It’s you who suffer from a failure of imagination, in this instance – all materials don’t smell alike to dogs, they’ve quite keen sensory clusters in their noses. Different materials smell differently to different dogs. In theory, one could baseline a particular dog’s neural mapping of a particular smell or set of smells associated with, say, C4 vs. fertilizer, and key off that.
One could go even further and work on mapping optic-nerve impulses for specific shapes, though that would probably be much more difficult.