Last Friday an MIT student was arrested for wearing a piece of homemade jewelry (for lack of a better term - it’s NOT a fake bomb) in an airport. The spokesman for the State Police was congratulating her for surviving the incident.

Wow.

Oh, I forgot to mention this happened at Logan Airport in Boston. You might remember Boston from a recent publicity stunt, where the whole city came to a standstill over “mysterious electronic devices”. And I forgot to mention she wasn’t arrested inside the terminal, but she was surrounded by police holding machine guns outside of the terminal. Apparently she wanted to blow up the terminal by being outside it.

One of the explanations dictionary.com gives for “terrorism” is “the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization”. When our police force is freaked out by a student wearing a piece of circuit board, LEDs and a battery (it is uncertain if there was a piece of putty involved), to the point that they are ready to use deadly force, they are definitely in a state of fear produced by terrorism. Maybe we need to set up a terror thermometer to measure how freaked out law enforcement is over simple things.

Her choice of clothing was described as “scary” by the arresting officer. Of course, in this day and age anything remotely resembling high-tech equipment is scary. Especially when it involves batteries and LEDs.

So be careful next time you walk around with your laptop or cell phone. It better be clearly marked as a laptop or cell phone, or you might be suspected of attempting to blow up your local Starbucks.