I seem to have ignited the interest of a heretofore passive segment of NRO’s readership: pyromaniacs.

John—Your post at the Corner, regarding burning model airplanes, reminded me of an experience from about 60 years ago. A neighbor gave me a completed model of a Piper Cub, with a wingspan of 52 inches. After having it for a few years, I decided to rid myself of caring for it. So I took it to the top of Lover’s Leap, an 800 foot cliff in my hometown, lit it up, tossed it, and watched it glide to oblivion. It was mainly ash when it hit the ground.

I have sparked responses from some naval buffs, too:

Planes, I dunno—now a model of the Bismarck, floating in all its krauty goodness, afire and belching black smoke, with soldering iron holes where the armor piercing 16″ shells from Rodney and Prince of Wales among others went in, and convincingly scaled miss salvo splashes provided by rocks, complete with added whistle effects—now that’s good pyrotechnic times.

And you don’t even need a model plane or boat:

My father looks fondly to the old days. A teenager could pick up sulfur and saltpeter at a NYC five-and-ten, then mix them with shavings from a charcoal briquette. Fwoosh!
Myself, I recall escalating from the use of a magnifying glass on leaves and bugs to stamping out a gasoline fire next to the house, all in the space of three hours on a school afternoon.

How proud your parents must have been! There were a couple of straightforward IED operations:

We used to blow them up with firecrackers.

But then back to the central Mars-Venus point:

Last week I was at my parents’ house watching Jay Leno with my dad. Leno suggested that NBC would weather the writers’ strike by showing a new show aimed at men: “EXPLOSIONS!” He played a teaser for it—nothing but stuff getting blowed up. My dad and I looked at each other and said—”I’d watch it.” And I would—more so than anything those inane writers could ever come up with.

And from me, just to raise the tone a little, here’s Bertrand Russell in his autobiography, talking about the outbreak of WW1:

I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten percent of them prefer truth to popularity.