Tiger Tiger!

I was browsing the front page of nytimes.com and read the top story, which is out of London. Apparently there was an old Mercedes packed with petrol and nails which started to fog up/smoke last night outside of the popular night club Tiger Tiger. Ambulance crew members probably assisting a drunken chick who fell down some stairs took note and called in the police.

Now, there was one line in the article which truly cracked me up. Peter Clarke, Britain's senior most counter terrorism officer said "we are keeping an entirely open mind" regarding the potential suspects. As Guy said, is that code for "the suspect might not be Muslim?"

Obviously Clarke's job meddles with a sensitive social situation in the UK, but come on - the IRA throws mini bombs in trash cans, do you really think they'll snap their hands one day and say "ah yes, we do have that Mercedes we could fill up." And correct me if I'm wrong (very possible) but wouldn't those Irish guys send in little warning phone calls so people could run away? And the Irish love to drink, chances of them wanting to hurt a drinking establishment are very slim.

Or perhaps the "entirely open mind" must be kept because it's fathomable some school girls from Richmond were involved! Or the leprecons! Perhaps it's all a conspiracy and Brown had just wanted to come in with a bang (no pun intended) so he had the scene set up!

Now lets look at another sensitive social situation. When I go to the airport I sometimes get picked out for some extra checkings. This woman gives me a full body massage while I'm standing, measures my magnetic enegery pulses with this wand that looks like a streightening iron ripped in half, and finishes off with repacking my carry-on for me. And then she lets me go on my merry way. Now think about this - what are the chances that a very white, 20 year old, female is going to want to blow up the plane? That's what I thought.

Profiling may be un-pc, but when I see grandparents in wheel chairs having their shoes taken off by airport staff and 12 year olds with Barbie backpacks being asked if they packed their carry ons themselves I have to wonder if profiling is really that bad of an idea. Of course - if you were to let it be tolerated with airport security who knows what kind of precedent that would encourage among the rest of the general public. And so the politically correct circle swings around again. Perhaps it is better that a couple obviously-non-terrorist-types get held up for a second.