I think a lot of you miss the point behind tsadude's link to the powerpoint presentation on IEDs. The bad guys are quite creative in finding ways to disguise improvised explosive devices, and a bunch of you are still complaining about having to take off your shoes. While Richard Reid's shoe-bomb was very crude, it nonetheless was actually attempted. Credit the bad guys for conducting their versions of after-action reviews, summing up lessons-learned and coming up with better ways to improve IED attacks. The choice is simple: putting up with the inconvenience of having to remove your shoes or surviving the consequences of underestimating the bad guys.