Items on security, security theater, a proper climate of caution, and an excessive climate of fear:

1) A very powerful column by Salon's Patrick Smith, in his "Ask the Pilot" series, explaining why media, politicians, and the public have collectively magnified potential terrorists' powers, by treating attacks on airliners as the worst imaginable threat to the nation. The column begins with surprising historical perspective. You'll be glad to have read it. Smith goes systematically through most of the justifications that have been advanced for airport-based security theater and lays out how extreme our reactions have become.

2) On the general climate of excess fearfulness, Fabius Maximus has an angry, trenchant article, here, about the media and internet (over) reaction to the purported missile contrail seen earlier this week in Southern California. Summary:

>>It's a serious weakness for America, since panic and fear are contagious. Someone with a bomb in his shoe, someone sending a few bombs in printer cartridges -- no matter how small the threat, each provokes extreme reactions. Large expenditures of funds, inconvenience to millions of people, loss of civil rights. On a larger scale, pointless foreign wars (WMD in Iraq!), torture of prisoners, and now Presidential orders to assassinate US citizens...It's hardly the behavior of a confident superpower.<<



For more on the "missile" launch, see AVweb, here.