Re: near-anything boxes allowed to be in the hands of the public?

From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Mar 09 2000 - 13:50:21 MST


Charlie Stross wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 07, 2000 at 09:03:49PM -0800, Zero Powers wrote:
> > I'm less worried about the Christians because,
> > except in the case of abortion clinics, they rarely seem interested anymore
> > in resorting to violence to reach their ends. The Muslims on the other
> > hand...can you say Osama Bin Laden with a near-anything device? Yikes, and
> > double yikes!
>
> Oh, I'm sure there's a way round it. Just figure out how to convince
> him that it's unclean -- you can manufacture pork in it, for example.
> Then you'll have to threaten him at gunpoint to get him into the same
> room ...
>
> We may consider some belief structures to be irrational, but that
> is not the same as being inconsistent.

Here's some fun ideas for the scene of Osama bin Laden and an autoreplicator:

a) autoreplicate a Koran. An agent of satan could not possibly repeat the words
of God or of the Prophet and still exist (this stunt was used to get phones into
Saudi Arabia, where Abdul Aziz bin Saud heard the words of the Koran over the
phone and declared that a tool of the devil could not speak the words of god.)

b) if you want to get Osama out of the way, force him into the replicator, so
that you wind up with two Osama bin Ladens. Each will be conviced the other is a
demonspawn of Satan, and will try to kill him off.... give each a gun and they
will shoot each other...

c) use an autoreplicator to replicate an exact copy of Mecca, only put it in
Washington DC, so that Osama will have to pray to both places.....

--
TANSTAAFL!!!

Michael S. Lorrey Director, Grafton County Fish & Game Assoc. http://www.lorrey.com/gcfga/ Member, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Member, National Rifle Association http://www.nra.org "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - General John Stark



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