HAIRSHIRT 

        Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery

  
.

 

 

 

 

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Monday, July 11, 2005

 

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Al-Qaeda?

After the horror of last week's bombings in London, American officials are doing a lot of thinking--or at least a lot of blabbering on news shows--about how to prevent that sort of thing here. In New York, the answer is apparently to position over-worked cops on trains. Elsewhere around the country, people have other ideas. On Meet the Press yesterday, Tim Russert made reference to a poll in which something like 69% of respondents said they'd favor putting metal detectors on mass transit.

These are both awful ideas. First off, what the hell good is it going to do to have cops working extra shifts on subway trains? It's not like they're bomb-proof. The Bush administration's got everyone so paranoid that Americans are hyper-vigilant to every stray backpack and misplaced alarm clock as is. No cop's going to be any better at spotting suspicious packages. As for the metal detectors, I think that's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. You know how often I miss a train because I'm stuck on the stairs behind some dawdling nincompoop? You add in a Laguardia-esque frisking and I'm never going to get anywhere. Fuck that.

You want to know how we should combat terrorism on our mass transit systems?
  • Guard animals. This city has dozens of animal shelters full-to-overflowing with homeless cats and dogs. Let's train 'em. Teach them how to sniff out and defuse bombs.
  • Questionnaires. When you go to buy your MetroCard, you answer a short series of questions, such as, "Do you have any intention of exploding a bomb on a train?" Anyone who answers "Yes" gets taken to jail.
  • Superheroes. Batman and the Fantastic Four seem pretty good at keeping the city safe in movies. We just need to get some of those guys on the city payroll.
  • Incentives. For every mile of mass transit you ride without blowing something up, you win points that you can redeem for CDs,movies or harbor cruises.
  • Impeachment. Get Bush the fuck out of the White House and perhaps people who are currently inclined to blow us up will have a little less motivation.
  • Clowns. Put clowns on every bus and train in the city. They'll be so entertaining that the terrorists will be in too good a mood to blow anything up. Plus, it'd take care of the city's out-of-work clown problem.
  • Technology. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So our current situation should be driving some Pointdexter in an R & D lab somewhere to come up with a workable teleportation device. Think about it: no buses, no buses to blow up.
  • Beat 'em at their own game. We could just rig random buses and trains to blow up. If a terrorist thinks that there's a chance that the train he's trying to bomb might explode before he wants it to, he's not going to get on in the first place, is he?
When the government wises up and implements some of my ideas, we can make our country truly secure. In the meantime, I'm going do a lot of walking.
posted by Joe  # 9:31 AM

Comments:
If there would be a stupidity detector, that could solve the terror problem or ....the problem of the American presidency.
# posted by Blogger Konrad : 11:40 AM
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

 

  
Links

 

  
           
     
    
.