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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Appreciate your posts, and agree. FYI, 38 years ago I was in a far off S.E. Asian land where 1 kilo blocks of C-4 were handed out liberally to any ground pounder who had an extra space in his ruck. The oblong bricks, tightly wrapped in O.D. green heavy duty plastic, much like soft cheese today, were used to blow hasty clearings for hasty L.Z.s in emergencies (like medivacs).

But their secondary function was to heat our cans of C-rats. The explosive itself is whitish-gray in color and (contrary to what the other 'military expert' told his girlfriend) does look and feel just like PlayDoh, if you warmed it and kneaded it with your hands. You could make sculpture with it.

The grunts would break off a 1 oz. (give or take) hunk of the C-4 and place it in an empty C-rat can with puncture holes near the bottom. We burned it like Sterno. It lights easily and burns with a very hot little blue flame, gives off a nasty toxic odor, but the blue flame could not be seen from a distance. Very handy.

Sometimes a block of C-4 would take accidentally take a bullet. This always amazed the grunts because it wouldn't detonate. But more than one stupid G.I. was sent home with an arm blown off, and/or his face missing, if he tried to demonstrate that you could lay a little piece of it on a concrete slab and hit it with a hammer. Ba-looey! You're dead.

This was instructive, in a brutal sort of way, that even though the stuff looked like PlayDoh, it had the energy of it's cousin, TNT. It's nothing to fuck with, even in a palm-sized amount.

As far as color goes, C-4 could be made to look exactly like the colors of PlayDoh with a little household food coloring.

I don't know what the military has got these days. It's not an area of expertise that I would want. But I would bet that plasticized high explosives have evolved since back then. It could replicate almost any shape, even that cream-colored circuit board behind the cute little led lights with the blinking stars.

Now having said all that, here's my take on the situation:

This country of ours is paralyzed with irrational fear. For all the talk about the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" people in this country are like a bunch of goddamned sheep. They panic and stampede and shit themselves at the least provocation.

I think it's shameful how cowardly and selfish American people can be. Look at people in Lebanon or Tel Aviv, or even Baghdad, who must put their children on school buses, shop in open air markets, take car trips through sniper zones. They must go about their daily lives with a sense of courage that should make Americans ashamed of themselves for being such cowards.

We Americans are not used to living with danger. Whereas in far too many places in the world, people have resigned themselves to a kind of mental toughness Americans don't have. Those people will not be intimidated.

But here in this country, people not only willing to give up every freedom they have in exchange for the illusion of safety, they literally demand that the government take their liberties away from them.

So when this hapless innocent college student wears a shirt that blinks, she comes within a 2 oz. trigger-pull on a submachine gun of getting her young ass cut in half.

What happened to her at Logan was not her fault. It's the fault of the perpetually scared-shitless American public and their jumping and cowering at the slightest things.

The "terrorists" have already accomplished what they set out to do -- to make America terrified. And it was far easier I think, than even they could imagine.