Posted on 08/29/2012 10:04:36 PM PDT by neverdem
Nature assesses the aftermath of a series of nanotechnology-lab bombings in Mexico — and asks how the country became a target of eco-anarchists.
The shoe-box-sized package was addressed to Armando Herrera Corral. It stated that he was the recipient of an award and it was covered in official-looking stamps. Herrera, a computer scientist at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico City, shook the box a number of times, and something solid jiggled inside. What could it be? He was excited and a little nervous — so much so, that he walked down the hall to the office of a colleague, robotics researcher Alejandro Aceves López, and asked Aceves to open it for him.
Aceves sat down at his desk to tear the box open. So when the 20-centimetre-long pipe bomb inside exploded, on 8 August 2011, Aceves took the full force in his chest. Metal pierced one of his lungs. “He was in intensive care. He was really bad,” says Herrera's brother Gerardo, a theoretical physicist at the nearby Centre for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (Cinvestav). Armando Herrera Corral, who was standing nearby when the bomb went off, escaped with a burst eardrum and burns to his legs.
The next day, an eco-anarchist group calling itself Individuals Tending Towards Savagery (ITS) claimed responsibility for the bombing in a 5,500-word diatribe against nanotechnology that it published online. Police found a charred copy of a similar text in the detritus of the explosion. The bombers said that Herrera had been targeted for his role as director of the technology-transfer centre at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (commonly known as Monterrey Tec), “one of the major universities that has staked everything on the development of nanotechnology”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Hi, I think this might be a bomb, would you open it for me?
John Bigboote: John O’Connor, break the window!
John O’Connor: Why me, John Bigboote?
John Bigboote: It might be booby-trapped!
John O’Connor: Oh. Okay.
Sounds like they’re not too keen on Convergence.
From http://www.augustforecast.com/2012/08/29/findings-forecasts-08292012/
Huh, I didn’t know that Mexican universities were pushing research into nanotechnology. Interesting.
Nanothech is the new frontier.
Nanothech is the new frontier.
Dumb terrorists...if they had used nano-technology they could have made the bomb from a minature robotic helecopter....using anthrax, ricin or plutonim as the agent.
First time I've heard of a group using such an honest title. I wonder what their goal is ?
I didn't know Mexico had universities.
“I wonder what their goal is ?”
I would guess it’s “Savagery”. ;-)
Never mind that savages don’t often use pipe bombs.
At least one of ‘em is in serious need of perforation.
Yeah, I think the lesson for the day was “if anotherr professor wants you to open his “award”, don’t”. Funny how to the ITS , technology to make a pipe bomb: good. Technology to cure cancer: bad.
Well let’s not give anyone any ideas... but if we can imagine it then so have they by now.
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