She had a circuit board, some LEDs and a battery fastened onto her sweatshirt. She was also carrying some Play-Doh. When you added it all up, it appeared to be some type of bomb device. It’s funny that some of the slanted reporters covering the story left out the fact that she had the Play-Doh.

Never Question the Obvious

Some dismissed the whole incident as an overreaction by police. Still, who are they to judge something that could have been very serious? A civil liberties lawyer had this to say:

There is no way prosecutors can convince 12 sane jurors that a student wearing such a sweatshirt with flashing lights tacked onto the outside rather than hidden underneath her clothing was actually trying to perpetrate a hoax that she was a suicide bomber.

What about the Play-Doh, counselor? Can you recognize and identify C-4 or Semtex versus Play-Doh? C-4 and Semtex are plastic explosives. Terrorists could just wear the bomb outside a jacket because lawyers out east would never think it’s real. They all “know” how terrorists act and how they look, right?

There’s a phrase that goes like so: “I never met a con man who looked like one.” As there’s a first time for everything, what about an outside bomb vest? Why would you dismiss the obvious as it could be ingenious? Trained security personnel better not dismiss something that looks harmless.

If you want to wear improvised explosive device (IED) art, be prepared to suffer the consequences (including deadly force). For someone supposedly so book smart, Simpson exhibited poor common sense.

Some of her sympathizers are clueless about the gravity of real security measures in airports and that you don’t mess around with this. In other airports, police could have reacted swifter and without any hesitation. Bomb threat? Shoot to kill. Done.

It was only some Play-Doh, right? We can’t make that analysis in a split second. People’s lives are at stake. Another article appeared later in InfoWorld saying the cops are basically “tools” for overreacting.

The only tools here are the people wearing IED art to the airport and those who sympathize and think her actions were overreacted to by police. Some are worried she might be scarred for life by the trauma of looking at the business end of MP5 sub-machine guns pointed at her when she was arrested.

How would she be handled if she walked into O’Hare Airport in Chicago? What about the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Sears Tower or John Hancock building? If you work at any of those places, how would you want a threat to be handled? Would you want it handled timidly or swiftly?

Since Sept. 11, Airports Are Slow

Having to travel a lot for a job has increasingly become a hassle when you ask those who need to fly to different destinations. Some have actually left jobs because they were fed up with the travel.

In some cases after Sept. 11, 2001, driving to Midwestern cities was a better alternative than waiting in lines at airports. I knew several Chicago-based technology salespeople who rented cars to go to Minneapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati and other places as a routine solution. Before, they would have taken a short plane trip from O’Hare to each of them.

With gasoline prices so high today, I don’t know which is the better way to go. From a time standpoint, driving might still be a quicker alternative.

That said, the tolerance to flight delays, runway problems, gate delays and any type of airline slowdown has become nil as passengers look at a simple, two-hour flight becoming a six-hour ordeal due to a myriad of security checks and potential flight delays.

People who travel don’t have any sympathy for this girl and probably want to see her get punished to the fullest extent of the law so no copycat will try to do something similar.

People are fed up with waiting in lines, taking out a laptop to be checked by security and taking off their shoes. Hearing about some brainless stunt that might create more security hassles is the last thing people want to hear.

There’s no sympathy for stupidity. People want to get from point “A” to point “B” with the least amount of hassles and delays no matter what mode of transportation they are using.

Airport Problems? Deter the Idiots

Some may think this Boston incident is being overblown. It is.

There should be no cries of racism, fascism or any other police criticism. They did their job. Was this girl testing airport defenses? Was she just trying to make a statement? Some say she is a nice kid who got caught up in her own absentmindedness. Still, how did she ever qualify to get into MIT?

While she apparently is a good student who has won some awards, another award she can now put on her mantel is the coveted dummy of the year award. As one person commented, she should have to pay for all the police and emergency response she triggered by wearing such a device.

As for the whiners about civil liberties, government authority and the erosion of rights, they don’t have a clue. They would be the first to complain if a bomb did get through and they would say the police failed.

Since they like beating the drum for civil liberties, beat it for all those passengers who have to put up with delays due to some clueless individual. Add up all the time wasted by passengers, security and police. Where are their rights? Where is the injustice done to them by someone who wants to make a fashion statement?

To me, anyone who interrupts or stops transportation and impacts my rights and the rights of thousands of others just trying to get from one airport to another should be prosecuted to the fullest so the next loser thinks twice before making a fashion statement.

As Henry Cabot Lodge once said: “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from poor judgment.” Maybe this student learned something more valuable than what she ever could learn in a classroom.

Carlinism: There is no sympathy for stupidity.