News Is Not For Everyone

News Is Not For Everyone

CYA is so pervasive at Universities that a student has a better
understanding of events than university administrators. (Peter Gelzinis, "D’oh!
Play explosive could’ve detonated a tragedy with pranks gone wild," Boston
Herald, September 23, 2007) The MIT spokesman called the wearing of a circuit
board reckless. A student noted it was due to lack of common sense.
Criminal intent is necessary for criminal liability. The MIT student had
none. Having no street sense is not a crime. Many academics do not read
newspapers. Sorry to disappoint you Peter.
In this day of government paranoia it is no wonder we have the highest
incarceration rate in the world. Have the terrorists won? They diminished our
freedoms knowing the mentality of the government leaders who lack self
knowledge. The President of Iran knows the politics of America better than most
Americans.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

D’oh! Play explosive could’ve detonated a tragedy with pranks gone wild
By Peter Gelzinis
Boston Herald
Sunday, September 23, 2007
http://www.bostonherald.com

“What was the Play-Doh all about?”

The state cop who posed the question was not on duty at Logan International
Airport on Friday morning when his colleagues trained their machine guns on Star
Anna Simpson, a 19-year-old goofball genius from MIT.

But his intimate knowledge of Logan’s fail-safe procedures left him more
disturbed by the Play-Doh than the circuit board or blinking lights fastened to
the front of the sophomore’s sweatshirt.

“You train for hours and hours,” the cop explained, “you train against the
possibility of numerous (explosive) devices. And when it comes to preparing for
plastic explosives, what we use to simulate C-4 is Play-Doh. It’s the same
texture.

“That’s one of the things that amazes me about this incident,” he said. “Bad
enough she decides to walk into the same airport where two sets of terrorists
boarded two separate jets and flew them into New York’s two tallest buildings,
with wires attached to a battery and a circuit board.

“Even if she says the board, the blinking (LED) lights and the battery were only
art,” the cop said, “what was the Play-Doh all about? Of all the things she
could have been holding in her hand, she walks in with a hunk of Play-Doh? What
did she think was going to happen?”

It’s true that geniuses often come in wildly eccentric packages. Still, it’s one
thing for Star Simpson, a beguiling tinkerer from Hawaii, to make a fashion
statement during MIT’s career fair by accenting a black sweatshirt with a 9-volt
battery attached to a circuit board.

And it’s quite another to wear that sweatshirt into Terminal C at Logan Airport
while holding a hunk of Play-Doh. She went there to pick up her boyfriend,
another electrical engineering genius, who was flying in from California.

But did Simpson also go to Logan in search of a YouTube moment, not unlike the
one created a few days earlier at the University of Florida by unctuous
self-promoter Andrew “Don’t Tase me, bro” Meyer?

There was nothing stupid about what Andrew Meyer did during a
question-and-answer session with Sen. John Kerry. The solo riot he generated
with a bunch of campus cops was little more than a shameless attempt to show how
easy it is these days to grab 15 minutes of cheap fame.

Indeed, less than a day after Meyer quite deliberately asked a friend to video
the moment when he essentially begged campus cops to zap him, more than 400,000
suckers were clicking on this fool.

Today, you can buy several types of “Don’t Tase Me, Bro,” T-shirts on the Web.

I don’t know if Simpson’s journey to Logan on Friday was quite as calculating.
On the other hand, I can’t buy the pixie genius defense her court-appointed
lawyer used at her arraignment in East Boston on Friday.

Simpson was a freshman at MIT last year when a couple of freelance bozos,
looking to make a few extra bucks, sent this city into Def-Con 4 with a handful
of cartoon circuit boards that gave everyone the finger.

Sure, maybe we weren’t hip enough to appreciate a little guerrilla marketing.
But that doesn’t matter, because the city still got the last laugh with a $2
million apology from Turner Classic Movies for our frayed nerves.

Maybe Star Anna Simpson thought she could saunter through Logan and return to
Cambridge with a helluva tale about how no one said a word to her. Or maybe she
thought a half-dozen machine guns would do wonders for her Web site profile.

“A couple of things struck me,” the state cop said, “I thought about what a
burst of machine gun fire might do to other people in the area. And then, of
course, if it had been a real device, what those bullets would have done to
everyone after the explosion.”
Article URL:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1033468