There are many active reactors of older design in which a China Syndrome scenario (release of tons of radioactive steam) is still possible - although those built since the lessons of Three Mile Island may be less vulnerable. But in the TMI incident, the core was less than an hour away from a containment breach when they finally got it under control. In the event, half the core melted. Besides that, no one knows for sure exactly what would have happened if the concentration of radioactive hydrogen inside the containment blew up. Every deterioration in the conditions in the country's worst accident was either caused by faulty machinery, faulty instrumentation, or unfortunate guesses on the part of the control room personnel. Nothing has changed the human factors, and an attack on a control room (which could probably be accomplished by a light single) could quickly lead to an out-of-control reactor.

I think fission power is a bad idea from a risk/benefit point of view. Do we really need the power that badly? In the case of the Palo Verde construction, the interest paid on the construction financing would buy a solar water heater for every residence and business in the service area, obviating the need for additional generating capacity altogether.

Instead of building more time bombs (which is what anything capable of causing widespread devastation is, no matter how improbable such an event might be), why don't we require all beverage containers to be reused, thus saving gigaWatt-hours of electricity by not smelting a million tons of aluminum every year?

And how presumptuous of you for suggesting that I don't understand the technology. Shame on you.

Come out to Scottsdale some time, and I'll show you how I live in fear doing loops, rolls, spins, hammerheads, and split-s maneuvers in an Aerobat. And maybe an Immelman or two. I'll supply the airsick bags.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out to work on my Lomcevak.

Been there, done most of that. Found that I didn't need to prove anything to anyone so much after a while - including that I wasn't afraid. Also learned pretty much what kind of guy needs brag about how fearless they are and to issue adolescent challenges. So Keep your airsick bags.

<yawn>

But do have a good time.

Hey! You're the one who raised the whole fear thing. I've never been out to prove anything to anyone except myself, and that has infinitely more to do with proficiency than fear.

But if you'd rather not subject yourself to the humiliation, I understand completely.

TW800.

How tiredly typical. <yawn> Now daydreams of humiliating me? Not trying to prove anything to anyone? <Double yawn.> If it were only precision you were after, I don't think you would be bragging in the terms you have chosen. Understand completely? I think not.

And no, you are the one who raised the whole "fear thing". And all those who think there is a degree of threat out there that we have to cower endlessly behind the illusion of being able to become "secure" while flushing huge amounts of our resources down the toilet and compromising our freedom and dignity in pursuit of that illusion.

Sure, let's ban laptops or batteries in the cabin. But wait, they can be set to go off in the hold via any number of timing devices - so let's ban them entirely.

But wait, it is possible to ingest a volume of explosive easily comparable to what could be placed inside a laptop. This was a standard way for cocaine to be carried by mules from Columbia. No reason it couldn't be done that way ... or surgically implanted. So let's just ban baggage, fluoroscope everyone, sedate every passenger and manacle them naked to their seats. Then we'll be safe from the phantoms that scare us.

There is no absolute security. Only those frightened to live with insecurity need to confront it again and again and again ... Courage? I'll take the little blind, deaf and speechless girl I quoted - and all the other severely compromised people who have the courage to live and thrive connected in every moment with the fragility of life. Certainly over the macho bluster of the insecure. No doubt YMMV.

That's a part of it, but for Al Qaeda and much of the "jihadist threat," the real issue appears to be the presence of infidels in the Arabian Peninsula, in the near term, and, in the long term, Western opposition to the creation of a global caliphate.

The Israeli-Palestinian issue is a convenient add-on for them, but it's only lately come up - Bin Laden's major issue is getting non-Muslims out of Saudi Arabia.

You keep talking about others' fear as if you were capable of fathoming the depth of peoples' psyches. Well, you aren't, so get over yourself.

I don't file a flight plan out of fear - I do it because it's obviously a prudent thing to do. The kind of thing you'd rather have and not need than need and not have. Like wearing seat belts and not driving impaired. I insure my home and vehicles and health for the same reason. Fear does not play a role.

I don't think al-Qaeda is a boogeyman contrived by the government to control us. They are real guys - lots of them - who revel in the killing of Americans. I think the Manila plot was real, that their plan to bring down U.S. flag airplanes probably hasn't been abandoned, and that they will persist until we adopt a decent and humane policy with respect to the strife in the middle east.

I hope that this very real threat can be contained through reasonable precautions regarding what can and cannot get on airplanes. Right now, there is wide disagreement on what constitutes "reasonable" - but I think in time screening will become less invasave. Checking secondary batteries seems like a small step in the direction of procedures that work and can have an effect.

Speaking of "real issue" or "major issue" or "convenient add-on" issue when referring to OBL tends to mislead. OBL has a "'my people' have been persecuted and exploited and continue to be persecuted and exploited" complex; keeping that complex in mind makes it so much easier to understand OBL's twisted mind.

Airport screening won't become less invasive in our lifetime in the US; and before my lifetime is over, it'll get more invasive -- the trend has been toward more invasive screening the last couple of decades.

No doubt the British thought George Washington was twisted

Keep calling Osama twisted & less than human and pretty soon he'll will be running the whole show. As it is he (or his successors) are being very effective in using the tools at their disposal.

Only if you call March 1997 "lately" are you correct. When Peter Arnett interviewed bin Laden in that month, Israel was Number One on the hit parade. When Arnett asked him why he had declared jihad on the United States, he began his reply with "We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous, and criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Prophet's Night Travel Land (Palestine)."

Laughable in an Aerobat.

Indeed. I flew Aerobats when Aerobats were new.

About five years ago I was privileged to watch an airshow performance in Salinas flown by a top woman pilot in...an Aerobat! What made it interesting to the pilots in the audience was what she could coax out of that tired airframe.

Watching a five minute inverted pass down the runway was painful. Almost as painful as watching Hoover in his Shrike. Masterful pilot, amazing energy control, old, tired airframe. It was electrifying when the act, and the bird, was new.

You're kidding, of course. Almost everything is laughable in a 'Bat, thanks to 33 feet of roll damping and not enough power. Still a blast to fly, though.