Just found out that Ron Ashton, guitarist for Iggy and the Stooges, was found dead yesterday. For me, Ron's shining moment was not on guitar, but on bass. On the Raw Power album, his churning bottom riffs—scraped directly from the sludgy floors of a thousand rock club bathrooms—pounded out the foundation for one of the most vivacious, out-of-control rock albums of all time.
Rest in peace, Ron!
1/05/2009
Attention TSA scholars: Saltpetre + Sulphur + Charcoal = BANG!
This woman is crazy risking a trip to Guantanamo to prove a point, but for what it's worth, the people working at TSA are proved unbelievably stupid yet again:"Last Thursday, December 5, I brought five ounces (140 grams) of old-fashioned black gunpowder to San Francisco airport...I had thought, though, that I might elicit a short conversation about the gunpowder. Mind you, I had packed the stuff safely. It was in three separate jars: one of charcoal, one of sulphur, and one of saltpetre (potassium nitrate). Each jar was labeled: Charcoal, Sulphur, Saltpetre."
She goes on to relate the whole story of packing the offending powders with the labels clearly showing through the TSA-approved Ziplock safety container and getting past the checkpoint with a bogus, home-made boarding pass.
I know you don't have to have a degree in chemistry to get a job at the TSA, but c'mon. Gunpowder is an ancient recipe. Eighth graders in beginning science learn how it's made. And anyway, shouldn't a TSA screener's curiosity have been piqued a little over why someone wanted to bring charcoal, sulphur, and saltpetre (not carry-ons you see everyday, surely) into the passenger cabin for any purpose? This isn't 1863 and United doesn't fly stagecoaches.
Your security theatre at work. Read the whole story here.
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