New TSA restrictions: Knee-jerk reaction (with an emphasis on the "jerk")?

An Amsterdam-Detroit Northwest/Delta flight is almost blown up on approach to Detroit by a Nigerian man, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab (son of a Nigerian banker, by the way; don't forget - poverty breeds crime!).  He tried to detonate a powder-liquid mixture which he had strapped to his leg, having mixed the deadly cocktail in the washroom moments before.  And the Transportation Security Agency responds thusly: According to the New York Times, passengers on U.S.-bound flights will be prohibited from leaving their seats during the last hour of a flight, nor will they be permitted to have any "personal items" on their laps during the same time period.

Since this policy was obviously well thought through, and was certainly not a knee-jerk reaction to a foiled terror attack, I am sure the TSA has considered the following possibilities/questions:

1. Is it not possible to mix a deadly potion earlier than the last hour of the flight?  Or all all in-flight incendiary devices limited to this window of opportunity?
2. Is it not possible to mix a deadly potion at one's seat, and not in the washroom, under the guise of it being a health shake, or some other kind of innocuous beverage?
3. Questions 1 & 2 lead to the following: How would the new regulations, even had they been in effect before Flight 253, have prevented the terror attempt?  At least the regulations adopted in response to the liquid explosives plot in 2006 and the shoe bomber would have stopped them from carrying out their attacks.  But the recent regulations could have been easily thwarted.
   
4. Does "nothing on passengers' laps" include laptops, newspapers, and books?  What about an iPod in a passenger's pocket?  A book held in the air?  Do these count as "on the lap"?  The potential Talmudic hairsplitting of these new regulations is endless.
5. Will passengers have to beg to use the washroom during the last hour like children (I really, really have to go!!!").  Assuming flight attendants do not want passengers urinating on the floor of the cabin, the exceptions to these "regulations" will effectively render them moot.
6. Can you imagine the outrage when a flight is delayed in the air, and the passengers cannot leave their seats for the last hour and a half?  ("See?  I could have worked on my presentation for another half-hour!")  Do flight attendants really need this virtually-certain headache?
   
7. Will all writing implements be banned after a flight attendant is stabbed with a pen in an attempt to force her to get the pilots to open the cockpit door?  There comes a point at which one must recognize the absurdity of all the security regulations.  Our enemies must be laughing their heads off, seeing how insecure we all are.  They have won.
   

I realize, of course, that the TSA puts all of these regulations into effect in order to reassure the public that they are on the ball.  The result, however, is to further convince travelers that the TSA has no clue about how to deal with international terrorism, and is a) always defending against the last terror attack, and not the next, and b) refuses to go after people, but rather against objects.

As I have said for many years now, if I were on a flight packed with Mormons, priests, ministers, rabbis, nuns, and Miami Beach grandmothers et al, all of whom were packing heat, I would feel tremendously safe.  I have yet to hear of a terror attack committed by anyone from these groups.  If, however, I were on a flight with one 25-40-year-old Muslim male who had not been given extra security scrutiny, I would feel nervous.  I might even watch him carefully during the entire flight.  Does this make me an Islamophobe or a racist?  I am sure some might see it that way.  I see it as watching out for Number 1 and Number 1's loved ones, without regard for how such efforts will be perceived by others.

Finally, a pop quiz: What is the common denominator between the 1970s terrorists who precipitated the stringent security measures at international airports,  the Pan Am 103 bombers, all the way up to the above-mentioned liquid explosives plot, the shoe bomber, and the powder bomber?

I'll give you one guess.  But be careful in your guess; you might be labeled a racist.

What Norman Borlaug taught us about feeding the world

A great man died this past September.  Though he was one of the four living American recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize (including President Obama), most people in his native United States had never heard of him, but approximately one billion (yes, that's a b) people owe their lives to him.  The man's name was Norman Borlaug.  (See this Wall Street Journal article from September 16, 2009, and one from the Atlantic Monthly from January 1999.) How did he save so many lives?  By giving birth to the Green Revolution, which helped many societies in the developing world become self-sufficient, or nearly self-sufficient.  One of the major components of the Green Revolution was high-yield agriculture, which used the same amount of land as before, but also used pesticides and fertilizers.

And who opposed his techniques?  Environmentalists, who were upset that a) Africans were not farming in traditional ways, without tractors or modern farming techniques,  and b) as mentioned, high-yield agriculture required the use of pesticides and fertilizer.  In other words, they cared more about preserving classical farming techniques than in feeding hungry people, and they cared more about the possible impact of pesticides on some animal species than they did about the certain effects of no food on humans!  (Do I think they consciously decided this?  Of course not.  But we are concerned with results, not with intentions.  Had the environmentalists had their way, hundreds of millions would have starved.)

So what do we learn from Norman Borlaug and his efforts?

1. Don't rely on governments to solve the world's problems.  Turn to the private sector.  When even the  World Bank cut funding, Borlaug turned to Ryoichi Sasakawa, a Japanese investor, and also got the support of the Rockefeller- and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations.  Private enterprise will be more than willing to support an effort it thinks will succeed (read make them money).  Some will scoff at this notion - "One should want to do the right thing; you want to make money off of poor Central Americans and Africans?!"  I would answer in two ways: A) That is what anyone in a for-profit business is doing - making money off of those who want his product.  In effect, he is taking advantage of others' needs.  B) Why do you care?  Don't you want hungry people fed?  What difference does it make if someone makes money off of it?  If someone else can do it more efficiently for less money, the hungry will still get their food.
2. Environmentalists in general are much more concerned with saving plant- and animal life than with  saving human life.  Why else would they oppose Norman Borlaug?  Let us say that some animal species died as a direct result of Borlaug's agricultural efforts.  So what?  Is it more important to save an animal species, or to save hundreds of millions of human beings?  The same is true about the ban of DDT, which could have saved the lives of at least hundreds of thousands of Africans.  But since they care more about animals than about people, the environmentalists were willing to sacrifice the Africans on the altar of saving some birds.  Rachel Carson must be proud of the impact Silent Spring had.  Does anyone think that if asked, Africans would say, "Some birds might die due to DDT?  In that case, I'd be glad to let my children die of malaria.  Thanks for enlightening me"?  Yet to the environmentalists, the birds' value far outweighed the African villager's children's.
3. You need not be famous to be important.

If we imbue the lessons of Norman Borlaug, there is no telling how much actual (not theoretical) good we can do throughout the world.

Blacks upset Tiger cheated with white women. Seriously.

So it now appears that Tiger Woods cheated on his wife, Elin Nordegren, with at least a half-dozen women.  The fact that anyone is surprised by this amazes me.  The man had everything going for him in life, but everything going against him when it came to marital fidelity: One of the world's richest men, handsome, athletic, literally at the top of his profession et al.  This is a perfect recipe for thousands of attractive, young women to literally throw themselves at one's feet, in the hopes of getting close to a man with that combination of assets.  As a woman, Ms. Nordegren probably has no idea what kind of effect that can have on the most loyal of spouses.  But give in to his lower instincts Tiger did.  It seems like your typical athlete-adoring females-jilted wife story, right?

Wrong.  According to an NBC/MSNBC article, there are some blacks who are upset about the race of woman with whom Tiger chose to cheat!  I thought it was a joke, too.  But they're serious.  Apparently, there are a fair number of blacks who are resentful of the fact Tiger married a white, Swedish woman, and not "one of his own."  What is remarkable is the fact that Tiger Woods is as close as one can come to being a "post-racial" or "non-racial" person.  He has described himself as "Cablinasian" - a mixture of Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian.  He does not consider himself as an ambassador of golf for blacks, because he does not consider himself one!  But they do consider him one.  And that is why they are upset that he chose to cheat outside of his race, as they see it.  As one black woman, Ebonie Johnson Cooper, put it, "...we still see him as a black man with a white woman, and it makes a difference.  There's just this preservation thing we have among one another. We like to see each other with each other."

Three questions for those blacks who are upset that Tiger cheated with white women:

1. How does it feel going around every day feeling that you are a victim, no matter how good America has been, overall, to your people?  I cannot imagine very well.
2. Why is it not OK for whites to desire to marry only intraracially (can you imagine the reaction if a public figure advocated only intraracial marriage among whites?) but it is OK for blacks to publicly express their desire that fellow blacks marry only other blacks?  Is that not anti-white-/Latino-/Asian racism?
3. What if it were your daughter or sister with whom Tiger cheated?  Would this make you satisfied, knowing that Tiger cheated "within the family"?

I think these are important questions to ask.  Those blacks who express frustration at the fact Tiger only cheated on his wife with white women make themselves look extremely foolish.  They should spend more time appreciating all of the opportunities America has afforded them and their children.

And be grateful it was not your daughter/sister on the news with Tiger.