This Just In. . . .

[Monte Davis]

 " i tend to think this kinda stuff isn't funny in this day and age "
 
GMAFB --*look* at the photos.This is not a duffel bag artfully left open
with wires and a bit of clockface showing. Even the WaPo's choice of the
words "small electronic circuit boards" and "[a] magnetic object, which
looked like circuit boards with protruding wires" is tendentious.
 
The very first thing I see -- what the devices were located and positioned
to show passersby  -- is a DISPLAY PANEL. To anyone in this culture over the
age of 14 months, that says "here I am, look at me" louder than "mystery
hardware in inappropriate location"... let alone "doh dee doh, nothin to see
here, just pass on by foax while I get ready to explode..." It's attached to
a girder under an interstate hifghway? Meet me across the river <tm Bruce
Springsteen> and I'll show you *thousands* of non-official displays attached
to girders under every major road into the Holland and Lincoln Tunnnels. 
 
Does the surface show red numbers, nixie-tube or LED style, counting
balefully down to apocalypse? (Cut the blue wire, Bond... the BLUE wire) 
 
Does it show the Arabic characters for "Surrender Laura -- and her little
dog Barney, too"..?
 
No, it shows a styhlized, big-chunky-pixel block figure flipping the bird. I
hadn't heard of the Cartoon Network show... but I *do* know that image is
not the globally recognized Logo of Doom, spray-painted by Hezbollah teens,
thousand-stitched into kamikaze belts by Aum Shinrikyo fanatics, found in
the wreckage in Madrid. 
 
I can readily understand a train passenger calling to report a quick
glimpse. I concur 100% with the decision to send a bomb squad to check it
out. But from the first moment someone got a steady close-up look at it, the
response should have been ratcheting *down*, not up.
 
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