(no subject)

[xiphias]

If the TSA was going to ban an entire phase of matter from the cabins of their planes, couldn't they have started with plasmas? I mean, not allowing passengers to bring plasmas onto a plane would be a reasonable security measure in my opinion.

Comments

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't put it past the universe to include some substance that was "safe" in the form of plasma...

Kiralee

[holzman.livejournal.com]

New movie coming out: Shakes on a Plane, with Samuel L. Jackson.

[goljerp]

I wonder how strict they really are being about banning all liquids. I mean, are they banning peanut butter? That's a liquid. What about glass? Also a liquid. And some of the things they're including, like lipstick and lip balm -- I'm not convinced that they're liquid.

Oh, and when my dad flew to Florida right after this thing started, they made him throw out his talcum powder. 'cause that's made from a liquid, or something.

Now, I could see legitimate reasons for banning fine powders (I mean, they can be much more combustible than the equivalent mass of a solid material), but what a lame explanation.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Glass is NOT a liquid, not in any reasonable definition of the term. It's a solid with a diffuse crystaline structure.

[goljerp]

Oy, and I used to be a chemist!

I guess it isn't a liquid. But it's a mighty odd solid. It's as much a liquid as baby powder is, though!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Also, banning glass would be reasonable. I mean, c'mon, if a bunch of terrorists can take over planes with pocketknives, they ought to be able to take over planes with broken beer bottles, too.

[redknight.livejournal.com]

"So Ovchinnikov let himself be persuaded to use his submarine - which is very large and very fast - to evacuate some of these poor Refus to TROKK.

"But, naturally, he was paranoid about the idea of letting a whole bunch of unknown quantities onto his ship. These nuke-sub commanders are real security freaks, for obvious reasons. So they set up a very strict system. All the REfus who were going to get on the ship had to pass through metal detectors, had to be inspected. Then they were under armed guard all the way across to Alaska.

"Well, the Stern Orthos have this guy named Raven-"

"I'm familar with him."

"Well, Raven got onto that nuclear submarine."

"Oh, my G-d."

"He got over to the Siberian coast somehow - probably surfed across in his fucking kayak."

"Surfed?"

"That's how the Aleuts get between island."

"Raven's an Aleut?"

"Yeah. An Aleut whale killer. You know what an Aleut is?"

"Yeah. My Dad knew one in Japan," Hiro Says. A bunch of Dad's old prison-camp tales are beginning to stir in Hiro's memory, working their way up out of deep, deep storage.

"The Aleuts just paddle out in their kayaks and catch a wave. They can outrun a steamship, you know."

"Didn't know that."

"Anyway, Raven went to one of these Refu camps and passed himself off as a Siberian tribesman. You can't tell some of those Siberians apart from our Indians. The Orthos apparently had some confederates in these camps who bumped Raven up to the head of the line, so he got to be on the submarine."

"But you said there was a metal detector."

"Didn't help. He uses glasses knives. Chips them of plate glass. It's the sharpest blade in the universe, you know."

"Didn't know that either."

"Yeah. The edge is only a single molecule wide. Doctors use them for eye surgery - they can cut your cornea and not leave a scar. There's Indians who make a living doing that, you know. Chipping out eye scalpels."

"Well, you learn something new every day. That kind of a knife would be sharp enough to go through bullet-proof fabric, I guess," Hiro says.

Chuck Wrightson shrugs. "I lost track of the number of people Raven snuffed who were wearing bulletproof fabirc."

Hiro says, "I though he must be carrying some kind of high-tech laser knife or something."

"Think again. Glass knife. He had one on board the submarine. Either smuggled it on board with him, or else found a chunk of glass on the submarine and chipped it out himself."

"And?"

Chuck gets his thousand-yard stare again, takes another slug of beer. "On a sub, you know, there's no place for things to drain to. The survivors claimed that the blood was knee-deep all through the submarine. Raven just killed everyone. Everyone except the Orthos, a skeleton crew, and some other Refus who were able to barricade themselves in little compartments around the ship. The survivors
say," Chuck says, taking another swing, "that it was quite a night."

"And he forced them to steer the submarine into the hands of the Orthos."

"To their anchorage off Kodiak," Chuck says. "The Orthos were all ready. They had put together a crew of ex-Navy men, guys who had worked on nuke subs in the past- X-rays, they call them - and they came and took the sub over. As for us, we had no idea that any of this had happened. Until one of the warheads showed up on g-ddamn front yard."

-- from Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson

[redknight.livejournal.com]

I'm not much of a physicist, how portable is plasma?

Can I get a convenient purse/briefcase/backpack sized plasma bottle?

[goljerp]

how portable is plasma?

Not terribly, I think. I mean, it's gas which has had enough energy pumped into it that electrons aren't really bound to individual atoms. I guess small amounts could be contained with cleverly placed electromagnetic equipment... after all, a plasma tv manages it, right? But I don't think it's very convenient. (I am not a physicist, and when I was a chemist I never worked with plasma.)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

At least they didn't ban solids!

[ron_newman]

Don't many flat-panel TV screens contain plasma? I don't know if this includes any laptops yet.

[redknight.livejournal.com]

I remember some older luggable PCs (Toshiba, Compaq Portable III) had Plasma screens, but I think they're too power hungry (at least with current tech) for laptop use.