Brings a whole new meaning...
... to 'Hot Pants'
iPod Nano in airport trouser conflagration horror
An Atlanta airport worker claims his iPod Nano burst into flames while stashed in his personal region. The trouser-based blaze was apparently so severe the hapless victim was immolated up to chest level, though reportedly he sustained only superficial injuries. Danny Williams is quoted in local news reports as saying that …
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Monday 8th October 2007 11:13 GMT Graham Dawson
Williams was clearly at risk of being shot repeatedly in the head as a suspected suicide bomber.
Strictly speaking he would have been at far less risk from TSA than from our own genighted police force. American cops train with their guns more regularly than our own armed police and they're around them all the time. Our lot tend to be nervous trigger-happy bastards at the best of time because they aren't really used to carrying their weapons on a regular basis.
And, as has been demonstrated several times, where in the US they use those guns as a last resort even in highly volatile situations (by and large, of course - all generalisations are ultimately wrong), over here they'll casually shoot people in the back of the head for carrying bits of wood.
Of course it might just be that Steve Jobs is secretly trying to bring down the governments of the world and institute a new world order where everyone worshiops him as a god. T Think about it, all you have to do is convince the best and brigest to voluntarily strap explosive devies to themselves on a 24 hour basis and then, when they're all wired up, set them all off at the same time. Suddenly the world is deprived of thousands of its most important citizens. He's a genius!
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Monday 8th October 2007 11:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
A tricky situation
were there any under 21s present? If so removing his trousers could have landed him in prison and on the sex offenders register. Much better to make a show of it and burn to death gruesomely. As terrorism was mentioned, I can't see why the USA needs a department of homeland security as the rest of the world is too incapacitated by laughter at it's puritanical stupidity. However if anyone should manage to stop rolling about for long enough and think of invading it couldn't be simpler than sending an army of topless women. One can already see mothers pulling their brave soldier sons from the front line for fear of them becoming corrupted.
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Monday 8th October 2007 13:18 GMT Richard
@Ron
Li-Ion and Li-Po are both well known for the possibility of a failure mode known as "Venting with Flame"
It happens if a Li-Ion cell is overcharged (so the batteries have a protection circuit), and can happen in a short-circuit situation if the fuse fails to fail.
Even very small (200mAh) Li-Po cells create fair amounts of flame - if you bypass the protection circuit (or build a battery without one)
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Monday 8th October 2007 14:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Poor showing
What, no "Disco Inferno" jokes????
Shame on you all.
Maybe the guy just had a burning desire to help Apple Marketing? Maybe he's actually a closet pyro.. you know.. a fire starter.. twisted firestater... Is this the RIAA "virtual response" to burning CDs?
Ok, leaving now.. taxi's just arrived.. bit full today of other El Reg users..
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Monday 8th October 2007 14:59 GMT Dam
Now the funniest part is...
The RIAssA is gonna sue him for every mp3 on his ipod because he's an anti-american that prolly listenned to anti-american songs, or pirated anti-american american songs.
This post is now a Patriot Post and is henceforth invincible.
Bow to the might of the RIAssA
PS: Is the Paris Hilton angle related to the "glossy" bits ?
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Monday 8th October 2007 18:32 GMT asdf
@Chris W
Being an American myself, I believe Chris W does have a kernel of truth to what he is saying. How come network TV can show Steven Segal horribly breaking some "bad" guy's arm in a movie but god help them if they ever show a woman's naked breast? I guess that happens when your country acts as a preserve for all the religious crazies Europe has kicked out.
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Tuesday 9th October 2007 05:47 GMT Rune Moberg
Very offensive
OK, let us sum this baby up.
The perp was potentially involved in the following violations:
o Smoking in a public place
o Burning copyrighted material
o Burning the flag (in case "glossy paper" was actually a drawing of the flag)
o Sexually assaulting minors
o Terrorism
o Any number of traffic violations (should not be driving a car with your pants on fire)
o Listening to gay music with references to "fire" in it
o Not listening to gay music with references to "rain" in it
Last week I bought a huge 15.4" MacBook Pro with a similarly big chunk of LiIon strapped to it. Should I be concerned about Steve Jobs' agenda? I have installed 64-bit Vista on it just to be on the safe(r) side. I am not sure whether to put my laptop inside the car with me, or in the trunk, which for all I know could be closer to the gas tank. Any car geeks care to comment?
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Tuesday 9th October 2007 09:51 GMT Gordon
Say what??
"Our lot tend to be nervous trigger-happy bastards at the best of time because they aren't really used to carrying their weapons on a regular basis"
Don't judge every force by the Met's standards. Only one force in the entire country would be daft enough to have men armed with guns, given minimal training, and left to run around out of communication in plain clothes.
British cops are highly professional and usually assigned to ARV teams to carry guns pretty much whenever on duty.
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Tuesday 9th October 2007 10:53 GMT Rusticus
@Graham Dawson
"Our lot tend to be nervous trigger-happy bastards at the best of time because they aren't really used to carrying their weapons on a regular basis"
I see Gordon's already beaten me to it on this one, but I'm going to agree with him. Sure, what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes shouldn't have happened; and that's not the only time things have gone wrong in firearms incidents. But do you ever hear about the countless incidents where very highly trained British firearms officers manage to resolve matters *without* anyone being hurt - even in the face of extreme provocation? Of course you don't. But then, unless something goes tragically wrong as in the Menezes case, or there's scope for howling media indignation, there's no story, so the press aren't interested in reporting it. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't scrutinise what the police do: it's a free country (in theory) so you should do precisely that, and raise objections when they do things wrong. But generalised condemnation like this suggests a strong bias.
It's also difficult to compare British firearms officers to American police, not because one or the other is 'better', but because the basis of policing in these countries is fundamentally different.
This topic is closed for new posts.
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