Ajay takes the cake again. Back in 2007, discussing the Piccadilly bomb plot, he made the important point that the difficult bit in arranging a fuel-air explosion is getting your timing right. You don’t want to let the fuel disperse too much, but if you fire it too early there will be too much fuel and not enough air for combustion. So, here we are, from this week’s trial.
But the would-be bombers had made a crucial error. The detonators consisted of two mobile phones wired to a light bulb surrounded by match heads. A phone call was supposed to trigger the homemade device igniting the vapours swirling inside the cars. But the mixture of petrol and gas was too thick – police sources say that if the car windows had been opened the bombs could have gone off – but as it was there was not enough oxygen to trigger the devices.
Get a blog, already.
Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with my existing business model (as followed by Socrates, Oscar Wilde and Sam: Johnson): saying a lot of stuff, and banking on other people detecting and publicising the small proportion of it that is actually witty and/or insightful.
Also recommended by Lord Peter Wimsey: “I produce the lunatic theories, and Charles does the hard work of actually disproving them. Eventually I get something right, and the world says ‘My God, what intuition that young man has!'”