Engineering a Safe Digression...

It looks like things are getting pretty crazy again up in the air. Maybe I'm slow, but I still find it hard to believe that there exist people who are so deranged that disintegrating planes-full of people in mid-air seems like a reasonable goal. While not an advocate of the death penalty, it is nonetheless emotionally hard to not want these individuals put down. Thank God we try not to base our laws on emotion but rather on reasoned and rational arguments. If guilty, I hope they sit in prison for a long, long time.

Interestingly, one thing I've noticed living back in Jersey, is that the pulse of these types of world affairs is so much more palpable here in the NYC area than it ever was when living in Honolulu. While we had the occasional fighter-plane flyover in Honolulu, and we were still included in the nation's color-coded threat scale (In Hawaii, I think it maintained a "coral blue" on the threat scale), it always felt like the safest place on Earth.

Although life obviously moves on, and one cannot be paralyzed with continuous worry about if/when the next attack will occur, it does become somewhat disconcerting to always see local areas mentioned as either targets or staging areas for these sinister events. For example, the bombing of the Twin Towers in 1993 was orchestrated from a Muslim clerics office in Jersey City, while the U-Haul used in the bombing was rented from a place in Cranford (again, NJ) only 3 or 4 miles from this computer. (kind of funny side note: a big break for this case occurred when one of the terrorists came back to the rental place to try and claim his deposit after blowing up the truck!)

The 9/11 plane that ended up crashing in Pennsylvania, and was reportedly on its way to DC, flew out of Newark, NJ, from the same terminal I've used countless times. All of the original anthrax letters that were sent to Congress and the NY Times by some deranged individual had New Jersey postal origins. And recently, some group was busted for planning to blow up the PATH train from New Jersey to NYC, a route that my family and myself takes regularly. Now these England-based bombers wish to destroy airliners bound, in part, to New York City. Aside from the fact that many of our friends and neighbors worked at the World Trade Center, and with most people around here knowing (at least about) someone who was killed, it maybe that the worry of another future attack is helping to keep many that I've asked cool to the idea of seeing the new Nicholas Cage 9/11 movie.

It's not that I'm expecting to be caught up in a whirlwind of death or anything, but I must admit that in this context, my views on both national and airport security have changed somewhat, with more of an appreciation now for some of the necessary security hassles than I had back when I was only flying from Honolulu to Maui. It is unfortunate, but I cannot think of a more efficient way to control for some of the obvious risks than to search passengers just before they get onto the plane. I know that El Al (Israel's national airline) has a policy of intensively screening every passenger before allowing them to get on, but they also conduct even stricter searches at their gates, so much so that at 5 out of 6 of the US airports they fly from, they are the only airlines with a specialized secondary screening (including hand inspections of all carry-ons) for all passengers. Additionally, I imagine that many of those rejected as future passengers by El Al security are of a targeted demographic, a practice that would be (righly or wrongly) vigorously contested by many if practiced in America. Regardless, given all the craziness, I must say that when we leave Monday morning from NYC to DC, I certainly won't be complaining when they ask for my shoes. (Full Disclosure: Then again, we did switch our NYC to DC flight...to Amtrak!)