Letters to the Editor
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@ bfree4me, to Elaborate
"Word to the wise, if you are bored in an airport, bring an etch a sketch, read a good book, bring a drawing pad, soduko for pity sake, but leave the playdough and circuitboard playsets at home."
Etch a sketch, yes. Fine.
Good book, fine unless it's a Koran. (DON'T bring one of those!)
Drawing pad--a bit dicey--may be fine, but if you're drawing planes or hallways or the inside of the airport, you could be planning your future attacks. I'd scratch that one for good measure.
Sudoku--fine, as long as it's in the original book or newspaper. If you cut or tear out a single puzzle, you could be working out terrist codes which tell you exactly when to jump up and scream "Allah Akbar!"
Play-doh, actually, can be OK, but only in the hands/mouth of an infant.
Maybe the TSA should be distributing this kind of information to people who visit airports. It would make us all safer.
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Time to take life seriosly and become responsible for your actions
I think that the lady has achieved her goal - she fully deserved both maximum jail time and fine. You should understand that a locked door will not save airplane from exploding in air. You need to understand that the best way to bring a bomb to airplane is to make it highly visible. I applaud police action. It looks like the author and future protectors of this lady do not understand that she is just of age when people are fully capable of bringing bombs to a crowded area. Just look at what young Muslims do around the world, both men and women. The lady is of age that permits many actions in the society, she has all benefits, except drinking in public places. She is capable to bring a new life into the world. Respectively, she must be fully responsible for her own actions. Unfortunately, I am nearly sure that a liberal judge will let her off the hook. But I dearly hope that will not be the case, both for the sake of her and other people who will attempt to bring a real bomb looking like prank.
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A view from Boston
I live in Boston, and I'm not surprised this girl goes to MIT. My job involves a lot of contact with students. The ones with the most book smarts tend to have the least street smarts.
MIT stunts are famous around here, and most, like a police car on top of a building, aren't harmful. Unfortunately, some are. Earlier this month, a volunteer group cleaning up the Charles River fished a grey, putty-like substance out of the water. It exploded, destroyed the boat, and injured 2 volunteers. The putty turned out to be a block of pure sodium. Apparently, MIT students traditionally throw a block of pure sodium in the Charles every September, because it fizzes and explodes. MIT issued a apology and donated money to the volunteer group.
I think TSA and the Staties did the right thing. LED lights by themselves wouldn't have been a problem, but LED lights attached to a visible circuit board, with visible wires connected to a visible battery and a lump of suspicious-looking putty, scream "suspicious" to me. She could have at least hidden the batteries and circuit board. Yes, she should have been detained, but she is lucky she wasn't shot.
The girl is from Hawaii and has been at MIT for 2 years, so it's safe to assume she has been to an airport since 2001. She should have known better than to wear anything remotely suspicious to the airport that 2 of the September 11 flights left from. Contrary to popular belief, the hijackers arrived on a connecting flight from Portland, ME.
A lot of posters have mentioned the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident. Every day, I pass through one of the subway stations that got shut down. It's under an overpass for I-93, a major highway connecting Boston to New Hampshire. The night before the scare, I saw the "Moonite" lit up on a bridge support, and wondered what it was (I've never seen ATHF). The day after the scare, the Globe had a picture of the unlit Moonite. In daylight, from the busway, it looked like a circuit board, with batteries, attached to a major highway overpass. Does that strike anyone else as suspicious? Other cities reacted differently, but in other cities, the Moonites weren't attached to bridges.
It's easy to play Monday-morning quarterback, but security guards and cops are supposed to investigate suspicious-looking objects at airports, and this one practically screamed "investigate me". An expensive MIT education can't buy common sense.
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Over there
Thanks for a smart letter that does not kowtow to the "brilliance" of MIT (or Harvard, or BU, or Boston in general).
Dumb is dumb, no matter how well you did on the SAT.
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Another thing to focus on
It's be nice to hear the opinion of real security people--that is those who know what a functioning bomb would look like--to see if there is any merit to the case besides the fact that a guy at the info desk thougth it looked like a bomb.
My admittedly humble knowledge of a bomb-things is that there need to be a lot of explosives if its going to do up-blowing. Also, from what I've heard, people usually try to detonate it before they alert someone to their presence. Oh, well, your tax dollars at work.
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This isn't unique to this country
Everyone is acting as though it is our stupid American provincialism that resulted in our "overreaction" to this incident. I've been to airports in the UK and Ireland where there are signs saying that jokes and comments about bombs will be taken very seriously. If she showed up at Heathrow dressed like that,or an airport in Tel Aviv,it would have been the same reaction or worse. At least we avoided the same tragedy of that poor fellow shot on the underground after the tube bombings. This is an unfortunate situation but people are nervous, and she needs to take responsibility for her actions, just as the authorities need to review their behavior and response, which also showed no preparation and questionable training. Most people would have the common sense , or at least good manners to show some concern for the public's reaction in that setting, and that applies to both Simpson and the authorities.