Mom Arrested After Son Makes Dry Ice "Bombs" 571
formfeed writes "Police were called to a house in Omaha where a 14-year-old made some 'dry ice bombs' (dry ice in soda bottles). Since his mom knew about it, she is now facing felony charges for child endangment and possession of a destructive device. From the article: 'Assistant Douglas County Attorney Eric Wells said the boy admitted to making the bomb and that his mother knew he was doing so. The boy was set to appear Tuesday afternoon in juvenile court, accused of possessing a destructive device.'" She's lucky they didn't find the baking soda volcano in the basement.
Should we do something about it, or just mock it? (Score:2, Informative)
Contact Juvenile Division [douglascounty-ne.gov]
Contact Criminal Division [douglascounty-ne.gov]
Re:"destructive device" (Score:4, Informative)
Destructive devices are NFA items and are covered/controlled by the BATFE. The same BATFE that ruled that a shoe lace can make a machine gun [everydaynodaysoff.com] ...
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"destructive device" (Score:3, Informative)
Once you show a law can be used to convict even one innocent person, the law becomes unenforceable in court.
Really? So since innocent people have been exonerated after having been convicted of murder, murder laws are now unenforceable in court?
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Informative)
Lest one think of me as doing a projection of things...
"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent."
-John Dewey
“Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed customs. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”
-William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906.
"Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role."
-William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906.
“Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society. Social systems which endure are built on the average person who can be trained to occupy any position adequately if not brilliantly.”
-Stuart Chase, The Proper Study of Mankind, 1948.
"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."
-Justice H. Walter Croskey, 2008.
Both sides are very guilty of fostering their agendas and neither side of that crowd is going to be at all helpful towards the American Intellect; and it's been ongoing for a long, long time if you look at the comments from Harris and Dewey.
Talk Back (Score:5, Informative)
Criminal Division
1701 Farnam Street
Hall of Justice, Suite # 100
Omaha, NE 68183
(402) 444-7040
In situations like this, public outcry and shame against those who infringe on freedom is a useful tool. Shame is underutilized as a form of social change. We should change that and complain to anyone connected with this charge. Loudly. So rather than posting here impotently, Call the Douglas County Attorney's office and state that this charge is an assault freedom
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Informative)
And if the cops ask you to delete photos, play along, because recovering the deleted photographs is trivial compared to what can happen when arguing with a cop.
After the cop leaves, swap out the memory card for another. Make sure you set the card aside and don't take any more pictures on it, because taking new pictures could potentially overwrite some of the deleted data. When you get home, download and run PhotoRec [cgsecurity.org] (it's GPL/open source, available on multiple platforms, and runs almost without regard to what the underlying filesystem is [wikipedia.org]).
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Informative)
"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent."
-John Dewey
A quote deliberately removed from context and sensationalized by Ann Coulter, of all people.
Dewey also said this about education: "To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to reach this sort of adjustment save as constant regard is had to the individual's own powers, tastes, and interests."
Hardly reconcilable with Coulter's intended misinterpretation of that first quote now, isn't it?
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hyperbole or stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
Put an eye out? I think you greatly underestimate the destructive power of such bombs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxsyL_RSsUw [youtube.com]
While maybe it shouldn't be outlawed or heavily regulated, it actually is very dangerous, if you look at the other video some other slashdotter linked to ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTP4yp8y_NA [youtube.com] ), just see how close those stupid kids got to seriously injuring themselves or others.
Most firecrackers and fireworks have fuses. So if you're not too stupid you can set those off in a controlled manner.
Dry ice bombs like these don't.
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Informative)
I hate to say this, but: this. It isn't conservatives, it isn't liberals, it isn't even anything that would be today recognized as "progressive", because all political philosophies have shifted so far in the past hundred+ years as to be unrecognizable.
What it is is a hundred-year-old meme program still running in an environment that falsifies every underlying assumption the program is built on, and until we flush it out of our system, we're not going to have any radically different results.
I strongly recommend The Underground History of American Education [johntaylorgatto.com]. You do not have to agree with the author's prescription to understand and agree with the diagnosis, which I find well-researched.
Manhole Cover (Score:2, Informative)
A childhood friend of mine lived at the end of a culdasac at the top of a hill with a manhole cover in the center. We must have been about 14 and had been lighting fireworks off for several years.
We just discovered how awesome "Artillery Shells" are when you light them off but don't put them in the tube. One of us decided that we had to know what they sounded like when they exploded while in the manhole. So we proceeded to throw about 6-10 of them down there and they did sound really cool.
My friends mom came home. Thank [deity of choice] that we ran out of artillery shells and had put the manhole cover back. We were just throwing bottle rockets and black cats down the little pry hole at this point. She exploded, no pun intended, on us and had a police officer come over and tell us: "If even the smallest spark got down there you would ignite the explosive sewer gas and blow the whole block up!" We tried not to laugh and rolled our eyes.
Kids do stupid stuff
It can't be summed up any better than that.
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:3, Informative)
And private property or not, the OP is most likely going to need an FAA waiver to launch such a large rocket (over 3.3 lbs total liftoff mass or more than 125 grams of propellant mass).
The best advice is to join NAR or Tripoli, find a local club and launch with them. The club does all the FAA paperwork, and can help you get certified to whatever level you want.
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Informative)
Large Dangerous Rocket Ships [discovery.com]
Science Channel (USA) July 5th, 9 PM eastern time.
The (legendary) Rocket Manual For Amateurs [4shared.com] is online as a PDF.
What the heck, grab a PDF of the LONG out of print Golden Book of Chemistry [about.com] while you're at it.
Hey, kids! Set up your OWN chemistry lab bench and do real chemical experiments.
Like safely generating Chlorine gas.
Science Is FUN!
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:3, Informative)
I know many Christians personally as well, hundreds, possibly a thousand. My uncle is Treasurer for the Southern Baptist Convention in Mississippi. I was raised in a "good christian home" with brainwashing, violence and fear every single day.
From my personal experience, you and your church, as you have explained them, are exceptions to the rule.
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:3, Informative)
Arguing with a cop is ALWAYS a bad idea.
Arguing yes, but asserting your rights, absolutely not. Getting arrested isn't the end of the world.
Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:3, Informative)
Nah, you give too much credit to Coulter. She took it from "None Dare Call It Education" , written by crazy Bircher John Stormer. Who quotes it from Human Events, which is mostly right-wing propaganda.
Well, half of it-- the other half that she claims Dewey said, "You can't make socialists out of individualists", is actually Rosalie Gordon from "What's Happened To Our Schools", which was a rant back in the 1950s about the eeeevil of progressive education.
If the quote exists at all, it's in Dewey's "Lectures in the Philosophy of Education", but there's no electronic copy and I'm not trawling through the whole thing, given the dodgy reputations of the people claiming the quote. And given that one of Dewey's major focuses was getting a child involved in their own education instead of just sitting in a chair and being lectured at; that's part of why Christian conservatives hate him.