Here's where we should be sending terrorist wannabes

Maybe we could rechannel some of this drive to blow things up. I refer to the New York Times report on an exciting new option: "Explosives Summer Camp."

Students with a passion for all things explosive and proof of United States citizenship pay a $450 fee that covers food, lodging and incidentals like dynamite. In the course of a week, the 22 students at this session set off a wall of fire, blasted water out of a pond, blew up a tree stump and obliterated a watermelon. They set off explosive charges in the school’s mine and finished off the week by creating their own fireworks show for their parents.

“We try to give them an absolute smorgasbord of explosives,” said Paul Worsey, a professor in the department of mining engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, the only university in the country that offers an academic minor in explosives engineering. More than six billion pounds of explosives are used each year in this country by civilian commercial industry for things like mining and demolition.

And look parents, there really aren't enough explosives experts out there - not outside of Iraq, that is:

Dr. Worsey said he created the camp, now in its fourth year, to try to boost the ranks of the aging population of mining and explosives engineers.

Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said the number of graduates of engineering schools with training in explosives cannot keep up with the demand in the mining industry, the leading employer of explosives engineers, and the current population of engineers in the field is aging toward retirement.

So all you little explosives freaks out there, terrorism is not your only career option.

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