On Sun, 13 Aug 2006, James W Mickens wrote:

> The idea is that it will make it more difficult for a terrorist with 
> average intelligence to cause unspeakably horrific damage.


Is it so unspeakably horrific? A plane can carry what? around 300 people? 
Assuming it blows up in a major metropolitan area, that will kill in the 
neighborhood of 3000 people, maybe? Of course this is bad, but is it so 
bad that you want hundreds of millions of tax dollars wasted to prevent an 
attack they have no realistic chance of stopping (not to mention the 
inconvenience caused to all travelers).

Rather than this brain-dead attempt at 'security', which will only stop 
terrorists 2 standard deviations below normal intellect, I'd prefer a 
significant portion of those resources be spent protecting me from the 
17,000 drunk driving deaths per year. Or the 225,000 deaths per year 
attributed to hospital negligence.

Hell, carbon monoxide poisoning kills 700 people per year, making it 17% 
more unspeakably horrific than terrorists on airplanes (who've been 
averaging ~600 deaths per year since 9/11/01). Would $100 million be 
enough to check the furnaces of all 100 million households in the US, and 
prevent these deaths? I'd guess so; we could probably get a bitchin' group 
discount.

Obviously, I'm not advocating the mobilization of an army of furnace 
repairmen. I just really wish the government would use the resources 
wasted on airport 'security' to solve problems where the money can 
actually make a difference.

~Nate


P.S. I'm raising the carbon monoxide terror alert to ORANGE. Everybody 
panic.