Can they hide enough explosives to bring down an airliner?

Good question. I remember the aircraft that took a direct hit from an air-to-air missile and still flew back to base. It was a heatseeker that locked onto the engine flame and flew right up the tailpipe before exploding. Blew the back of the plane to shreds, but the engine kept running (good old P&W J75) and the single hydraulic system remained unpunctured.
Then there was the Boeing 737 that lost the entire roof of the cabin, from the cockpit right back to the galley. It landed safely.
My point is that Boeing airliners are extremely rugged and can shrug off a pound of high explosive. Can terrorists hide enough explosives in shoes or underwear or body cavities to actually damage an airliner? I doubt it.
Think about that as you do the electronic strip search or endure the TSA groping.
The real reason terrorists have not succeeded in hijacking an airliner since 9/11 is passengers. Now, post 9/11, passengers know that allowing anyone to take control of the plane means that they are all dead. And so, some misbehaving persons have been treated quite roughly by passengers. One case involved a fire axe applied to the perp's head, another involved so much duct tape that the perp suffocated.

Stenting for fun and profit

Back on the 4th of November my plain old primary care physician, Dr Silva in Littleton took my EKG in the course of a routine office visit. His sharp eye noticed something unusual in the EKG. He followed up with a stress test and a gamma camera scan. I had not complained of anything, this was a straight check of standard tests. The stress test and the gamma camera pictures convinced Dr. Silva to refer me to cardiologists. Some days later I was scheduled for an angiogram down state at Dartmouth Hitchcock down in Hanover.
I double checked the appointment time a day or two in advance and was told that my 8AM appointment has slipped to 10AM. We showed up on time and learned that emergencies had slowed things down. It was 4 PM before they got me into the Cath Lab for the angiogram. Results were confusing. The angiogram showed six places that might need s stent. The angiogram was not unpleasant, they started off with a big Valium and followed it up with a lot of happy juice fed in thru an IV. Didn't hurt a bit, and I was VERY mellow thru out a two hour procedure.
There was some discussion as to the proper treatment, either a coronary bypass operation or a LOT of stents. They didn't feel it was fair to ask my opinion while I was still zonked out on happy juice. So I got admitted for over night. Next morning the cardiac surgeon (nice guy) pitched the cardiac bypass (open heart surgery) and the the stent guy pitched stents. I picked stents, 'cause the coronary bypass surgery involved sawing my breast bone in half and pulling up my ribs to access the heart. Whereas stents go in in a matter of hours and you can walk out of the hospital in a day. An hour or two later Dr. Kagan told me he had access to the OR that afternoon and could stent me if I was ready. I was ready, he slipped three stents into my heart that afternoon. They popped me back in a room on the heart surgery wing after the stenting and all looked OK.
Except my blood pressure cycled from 210/106 (scary high) to 140/70 (not too bad) over a period of hours. They were reluctant to let me out of the hospital with the 205/106 reading lest I keel over with a heart attack on the way to the elevator, which would reflect poorly on Dartmouth Hitchcock.
After two days of pills and blood pressure tests they found a blood pressure medication that worked and managed to release me this afternoon with a raft of new prescriptions.
I have to complement the Dartmouth Hitchcock people. They worked very hard to get me well, and they managed to make my stay pleasant. Nurse and doctors were patient oriented and did a good job. Much better than Mass General which was my last hospital stay some 30 odd years ago.

The loudest noise at 60 MPH is the ticking of the clock

So went the Rolls Royce car ads years ago, back when Rolls actively marketed cars in the US. They used to do TV ads for Rolls. Haven't seen one for 30 years.
Actually, Rolls Royce sold off the car operation and makes its money on jet engines. And they are in trouble now. Aviation Week has a writeup on the catastrophic engine failure on the Quantas A380. Apparently the intermediate speed turbine failed, and flung turbine buckets out thru the engine casing, punching holes in the wing, a fuel tank and damaging hydraulic lines. Engine failure doesn't get worse than this.
Even worse, the Quantas engine failure looks to be related to the engine failure on Boeing's 787 program. Rolls-Royce may be in for an expensive recall and redesign.
Other problems showed up. The crew attempted to shut down the blown engine by closing a fuel valve. The digital engine control would not let them, it was programmed to keep the valve open in flight, lest the engine shut down for lack of fuel. Microprocessors can be really stupid sometimes.
Jet engine design is always a compromise between stoutness and lightness. The engine has to contain enormous forces and extreme temperatures. This calls for stout. To save on fuel, the engine wants to be as light as possible. Lightness reduces stoutness. It could be that the Rolls designers went too far in the lightness direction. This might be hard to fix, short of a complete redo.
What's worse for Rolls, is the A380 and the 787 can accept American engines and the airplane customer can order the planes with Rolls engines or American engines. Guess which engine maker is not going to be specified on future airliner orders?

Glen Beck needs a sense of humor

Watching Glen this evening. He was getting all bent out of shape about the press coverage that Prince William's and Kate Middleton's engagement were getting. He did a small rant about the media covering trivia.
Well Glen, in principle you are right. But, the Brits do such marvelous weddings and coronations. I enjoy the h**l out of them, every one. They are good fun and nobody gets hurt. What's not to like?

The internet is NOT secure, Anyone knows that.

Anyone except the TV newsies that is. Big story running today about internet traffic being diverted thru servers in China. Oh the horror.
Note to newsies, the public internet is PUBLIC, and anyone in the world can see the traffic. It's the World Wide Web. Putting anything on the web is same as posting it on the bulletin board down at your town supermarket. If you don't want to share it with the world. don't put it on the web. This goes for email, Facebook, Google, and just plain web cruising. If you don't want the whole world, including your employer, the IRS, and every noisy neighbor in the world to know, don't but it on the net.

What goes around, comes around

Obama comes home from Korea with a bit of egg on his face. He wanted to sign a Korea America free trade pact, but he wanted a few last minute changes and the Koreans balked.
Chickens are coming home to roost. George Bush negotiated the Korea free trade agreement back in 2007. But in 2007 the US Senate, of which Obama was a member, refused to ratify the agreement. Unions objected and the democrats caved to them.
Now, three years later, Obama wants to ratify Bush's old agreement, but with a couple of last minute changes that the Koreans didn't like. So, Obama comes home with bupkis.
What's worse, the original agreement, which the Koreans would have signed, is quite favorable to US automakers. It liberalized the Korean auto emissions standards to allow US built cars, that met US emissions standards, to be sold in Korea. The "minor change" Obama wanted, was a retention of a 2% US tariff on Korean cars. The Koreans are selling lots of cars with the 2% tariff, and/or building their cars in Kentucky, and the 2% tariff makes little difference in the number of Hyundai's sold here in competition with Government Motors.
For this insignificant tariff, Obama gave up a real opening of the Korean auto market to us. There are plenty of Koreans with money who would love to own a real Detroit car, say Corvette, or Cadillac, or Ford Explorer, just like they see in the movies. Right now such cars cannot be imported to Korean because of emissions laws. The Koreans were willing to essentially waive their emissions standards and allow Detroit iron in. And Obama didn't understand how important this is.
Stupidity can be embarrassing.

No pain spending reductions

Newt Gengrich on NBC this morning said the he and Clinton had balanced the US budget for years without inflicting enormous pain upon the voters. Today, the Democrats (progressive tax and spenders, all of 'em) protest that Federal spending reductions just can't be done because of the pain involved.
I think Newt is onto something here. Just reducing health care spending from 19% of GNP to 9.5% of GNP (a feat every other country in the world has managed) would free up a river of money that would solve the deficit problem.
Could it be that the Democrats are attempting to keep their tax and spend policies in place by predicting intense pain if they are not continued?