<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I am so embarrassed for Boston.<\/p>\n
I keep alternating between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch someone. I want to laugh when I think about all this fuss over some litebrite aliens. I want to punch someone when some old man make a statement about how this is all very serious, or when I hear news organizations reporting on this without any sense of how ludicrous it is. Then I want to laugh again when I think about all the other cities that didn’t freak–Boston is my second-favourite American city, but this just makes them look silly.<\/p>\n
I mean, if your Attorney General can stand up and say “It had a very sinister appearance. It had a battery behind it, and wires.” in front of reported with a straight face, we’ve clearly entered the comedy zone. It’s enough to make a person lose their faith (except, of course, that it’s illegal to do that here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n Guys who got paid to put up signs might be going to jail because the signs look like a cartoon character, and apparently that is a clear sign of their terrorist intent. Too bad they didn’t just put up a sign with a corporate logo on it–no one would have freaked out over that. I guess the lesson for the terrorists is that if you want to put up bombs, don’t put a LED pixel cartoon character on them, instead put up an LED pixel Nike swoosh or something. Sigh.<\/p>\n Oh, and another thing: I am really tired of hearing this referred to as a “hoax”. That language implies that the intent was for people to think these were bombs, and it was a planned hoax. Anyone who looks at a Lite Brite space invader and thinks “it’s clearly a bomb” is nuts. The intent was clearly to make people curious, and lead to interest in the show.<\/p>\n I did have a moment of happiness though, while discussing this with a clerk at Newbury Comics. He made a comment along the lines of “well, man, you can’t expect those over-30s types to get it. It’s a generation gap thing.” I was happy, of course, because he clearly was putting me on the same side of 30 as him, when I’m actually over that hill by a few years now.<\/p>\n Some links:<\/p>\n LED ad campaign ignites terrorism scare in Boston<\/a> The only sane viewpoint I’ve seen in the major press: Many young Bostonians think city overreacted<\/a> (Of course the article goes on to quote more insane defense of the over reaction.)<\/p>\n Oh, and here’s Schneier on the topic, full of links and his usual sense: Non-Terrorist Embarrassment in Boston<\/a><\/p>\n Of course, other cities didn’t have this problem: Devices Found In Seattle Did Not Cause Concern<\/a><\/p>\n I did kind of like the way the two guys just refused to take their court appearance seriously<\/a>. I suspect that’s the only sane reaction to being arrested in these circumstances. You can see some video linked at Reason<\/a>.<\/p>\n Also funny: new services that think this is a terribly serious story, but can’t even show photos of the object<\/a>.<\/p>\n I guess I’m going to have to buy one of these t-shirts:<\/p>\n After all, I do want to express my amusement and contempt, and I don’t have the thousands of dollars it would take to get one of the signs on eBay<\/a>.<\/p>\n Making Light had a nice page of links & comments on this too, but either they are down, or else the ISPs in Boston are blocking them at the moment. If I can see them again later, I’ll put the link in here. (Update: I can see the Making Light post on this<\/a> now.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am so embarrassed for Boston. I keep alternating between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch someone. I want to laugh when I think about all this fuss over some litebrite aliens. I want to punch someone when some old man make a statement about how this is all very serious, or when I hear news organizations reporting on… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-head-explodes","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-cR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBoston Moonimite installer arrested<\/a>
\nArrest Made In Boston’s Hoax Device Incident<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n