[QUOTE=vibrotronica]
Here’s a question that just occurred to me. Members of the Boston police department cruises around the city all night, right? At night, it’s pretty freaking obvious what the signs are. Did no officers see the brightly lit signs, think “Oh my god! It’s a terrorist bomb!” and set off the alarm in the two weeks they were up? No, they didn’t, because it’s really fucking obvious they aren’t bombs. Did no one see the first of the “devices” after they were removed in the daylight and say “Oh, it’s those lighted signs I’ve been seeing. How silly.”? How could the police not notice a dozen brightly-lit LED signs hanging in high traffic areas over a two-week period?
[/QUOTE]
Because maybe they weren’t brightly lit? If these things had genuinely been up and lighted for three weeks, I’d have seen them myself, because I walk by two of the locations daily – once in the morning when it’s light out, and once in the evening when it’s dark. These things were out in the open air and powered by D-cells. If the batteries ran down the first night, or the things shorted out almost instantly from moisture, I wouldn’t be surprised.
[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
But it didn’t look like “this.” It only looks like “this” when it’s seen up close, from a frontal view, and with the lights on. As I said before, the lights were almost certainly not on, and when seen from below, you saw first of all a bunch of D-cells and some wires connected to a dark-colored panel. The first such device found was located 12 to 15 feet up, in a rather dimly lit space.
[/QUOTE]
It still looks nothing like a bomb. This, this, and this. Absolutely nothing like those boards.
[QUOTE=lowbrass]
That’s like saying a carburetor, a gear shift knob, and a windshield wiper blade is a car.
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Actually, no, it’s not. My experience with bombs is what I’ve seen on TV and in movies. What was shown, in a dark space and kind of far away, looks to me as much like a bomb as anything I’ve seen. And since the bomb squad was fooled enough to take this seriously, it just may have looked like a bomb.
Unless you’re claiming that the Boston bomb squad knows far less about bombs than the average layman.
[QUOTE=tdn]
So what is it about Boston specifically that sets it apart from every other city in the nation. Is law enforcement here that much dumber than in your city? Or did this happen here by pure blind luck? Is your own city immune from stupidity?
[/QUOTE]
I think this is a question Boston is going to need to ask itself: what IS the difference. I’d be willing to call it plain luck if the city wasn’t continuing to try to blow it out of proportion.
As far as calling it a panic, I guess I’m just going with what all the screaming media headlines have been calling it. If there was no panic among the general populace, that’s great, and I guess it only underscores how much of this is the city trying to cover it’s own ass.
[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
Whether other cities saw these things or not is immaterial.
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If you want to argue that it was a somehow predictable and inevitable outcome and hence assign blame and liability on that premise, it’s pretty DAMN material that this only happened in one city after several weeks of them being up.
They had a duty to follow up on the report. But once they realized that this wasn’t a hoax, but rather a confusion, they had a choice: laugh it off, or go ballistic. They went ballistic. That makes them assholes.
I’m only one person, but didn’t see any panic. It’s not like there was mass looting in the streets. If I didn’t know about the “hoax”, it would have seemed like any other day.
The question is, under the same circumstances, would your city have fared any better? Can you say for certain that Boston is unique in this?
[QUOTE=treis]
It still looks nothing like a bomb. This, this, and this. Absolutely nothing like those boards.
[/QUOTE]
What on earth are you talking about? This doesn’t look like a bomb either, and yet it was. Suppose you’re at the subway station, you look up, and you see a dark squarish object with a couple of D-cells and wires at the bottom. You’ve never seen it before, it doesn’t look like it belongs there, and it’s affixed in such a way to threaten a major highway and a couple of rail lines. What the hell are you supposed to conclude, except that it’s a bomb? Or at a minimum, that it should be treated as such until proven otherwise? If somebody had seen that and not reported it to the police, I’d think something was wrong with them.
[QUOTE=tdn]
Actually, no, it’s not. My experience with bombs is what I’ve seen on TV and in movies.
[/quote]
Oh, in that case I defer to your superior knowledge. :rolleyes:
My experience with Bugs Bunny cartoons is that bombs are spherical black things with big fuses sticking out of the top.
I love the logic being presented in this thread. The Boston authorities didn’t overreact to something that didn’t look like a bomb, because if it didn’t look like a bomb they wouldn’t have overreacted. Can you say “circular reasoning”?
[QUOTE=Apos]
If you want to argue that it was a somehow predictable and inevitable outcome and hence assign blame and liability on that premise, it’s pretty DAMN material that this only happened in one city after several weeks of them being up.
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How is it material? Nobody had seen them because… nobody had seen them. You want me to think that the vandals behaved in an A-okay, non-assholish fashion, and yet that the police are assholes for not having seen what they had no reason to look for?
[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
What on earth are you talking about? This doesn’t look like a bomb either, and yet it was. Suppose you’re at the subway station, you look up, and you see a dark squarish object with a couple of D-cells and wires at the bottom. You’ve never seen it before, it doesn’t look like it belongs there, and it’s affixed in such a way to threaten a major highway and a couple of rail lines. What the hell are you supposed to conclude, except that it’s a bomb? Or at a minimum, that it should be treated as such until proven otherwise? If somebody had seen that and not reported it to the police, I’d think something was wrong with them.
[/QUOTE]
You’re right, that can look like a bomb. And I have absolutely no problem with the authorities checking my shoes before I get on a plane. But I do have a problem with the authorities arresting me on charges of perpetrating a bomb hoax because I was getting on a plane whith my shoes on.
[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac] This doesn’t look like a bomb either, and yet it was.
[/QUOTE]
That is exactly the point! If the police went all 9/11 everytime they saw an unexplained shoe in public, would it justify the same level of hysteria? Should they expend $500,000 in resources for every sneaker by the side of the road? That seems to be what you are saying, since, BY GOLLY, it looked like a shoe, and sometimes shoes are bombs, and ohmygodohmygodohmygodOHMYGOD, IT’S A BOMB!!!
[QUOTE=lowbrass]
I love the logic being presented in this thread. The Boston authorities didn’t overreact to something that didn’t look like a bomb, because if it didn’t look like a bomb they wouldn’t have overreacted. Can you say “circular reasoning”?
[/QUOTE]
It did look like a bomb. It had what looked like a triggering device, and the bomb itself can be shaped like damn near anything. Plus, there’s a process of elimination at work – you see something bomblike up on a highway support, and what else might it be? There was certainly nothing about it that smelled of advertising to the ordinary person.
Fear Itself, are you saying to me that having seen such a thing, you wouldn’t have reported it? Are you saying that the police didn’t have a duty to investigate? Are you saying that the police were imprudent in shutting down a subway line and ultimately the highway?
Obviously the PTB in Boston went a little crazy with this. I know that Seattle cops aren’t any smarter than Boston cops, so I’m blaming it on the higher ups and their inability to think.
[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
Nobody had seen them because… nobody had seen them.
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Of course people saw them. That’s the whole point of a marketing campaign. They may have been placed in unexpected locations, but they certainly were in plain sight for thousands of people for weeks.
[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
How is it material? Nobody had seen them because… nobody had seen them.
[/quote]
But plenty of people HAD seen them, and commented on them, and dismissed them.
I don’t think the police were assholes for responding to a complaint, or the person for complaining. If you see something odd, check it out. But once you determine that maybe these aren’t necessarily bombs and you’re missing something, maybe don’t start screaming about “hoaxes” and sharpening the long knives.
