True or not true, the story is quite dated. So is the attack in LAX. Both were random acts by unbalanced crazy people rather than carefully planned terrorist attacks. They could have happened anywhere. In fact, attacks like these do happen in many places:like places of business where crazed disgruntled employees or jealous ex-lovers go berserk.

It does not seem to me that these things occur anymore frequently at ticket counters or on airplanes than anywhere else.

If we really want to put armed law enforcement people where the "action is":

- How about many, many, many more of them on the streets of poor neighborhoods in, say, Oakland, Richmond, etc. etc. If we had a ratio of law enforcement personnel to civilians in those regions similar to what we have in airports and on airplanes that might make sense. Maybe this would slow the toll of driveby shootings which take the lives of many hundreds of young people every year.

or

- How about law enforcement people in parking lots of many, many bars to prevent drunks from getting behind the wheel. We lose thousands every year to drunk drivers. A reasonable allocation of law enforcemnet personnel would absolutely save more lives in a few months than the total saved - or taken - in airports or aiplanes by crime since the beginning of commercial aviation. Even more simply, how about a law mandating that to start an car engine you not only have to turn a key, but also blow into a tube. Alcohol level up ... engine no start.

Do we really want to get serious about allocation of resources to prevent death by crime or negligence? Or do we want to continue to run primarily on emotion? Do we really want mostly to provide expensive, non-functional window dressing so the flying public will merely feel safe when no great measure of safety can actually be added?

I had to laugh tonight at the report that a British newspaper "penetrated" the security provided at the Olympics - security provided at a cost of 1.5 billion dollars. Of course they could penetrate it and leave bomb parts in packages all over! There is no way to stop nearly everyone who might want to do do harm. No way to do it. Yet merrily we go along with great pretense and silly "security" procedures which we take oh, so seriously. C'mon!

At the moment our return on the dollar for "airline security" is a screaming joke while tens of thousands of deaths - some at least preventable at a fraction of the cost - continue where no one cares or cares to think.

Just how stupid are we when we insist so passionately that terrorism in general and airplanes and airports specifically are due such singular attention? Terrorism is not a big cause of death in the U.S. compared to many other identifiable preventable and neglected causes.


Best wishes,

Teacher49