I'm all for ridding the world of people who think that terrorism is the way to get attention or change the world. I have no problems with the changes to security at the airports to make travel "safer". We can leave the debate for whether or not certain techniques make the world safer for other discussion boards. :) However, I think people take things a little to far sometimes.

For example, take the recent traffic counting "explosive device" in Boston. This wasn't all that well publicized in the media, probably because of how ridiculous it ended up looking. Take a peak at the video from the Fox News affiliate in Boston. The bomb squad was called in to deal with a suspicious device chained along the side of the road with rubber tubes stretching across the road.

One of my friends is a traffic engineer and I joke with her that every time I drive across the rubber tubes in the road I think of her. I know she hates it. Of course, I would ask her how many times she encounters a omputer problem and think of me. :) Needless to say, I thought it was extremely humorous to see that no one in Boston had ever seen such a device and resorted to blowing up this suspicious device. As I said, I'm all for fighting terrorism, but how many terrorists would place a bomb in such a location?

Oh well, another case of paranoia trumping logic. Enjoy the video!

Nothing against people with doctorates, but it seems you have to either sell part of your soul in the process or at least give up a good chunk of common sense. I've known a few where neither of these is true, but in general it seems to be true.

Case in point, one of my friends (who shall remain nameless) participated in an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program while at Wayne State. From my web site, you can see that I also participated in one, although mine was with a different research group than the one in question. I think most of us found this program worthwhile, and although I didn't personally end up in research, I found it quite beneficial.

That being said, I talked to this friend in question and she pointed me to a web site where one of the supervising professors had some choice comments about the various participants in her particular REU program. The professor mentioned several aspects of my friend's experiences in school which seem to be generally positive and then goes on to say "Not a Clear Success Story." Other interesting comments about other students included, "without the experience he would have never gone to grad school", "I agreed there is no point in him graduating", "Not bad for a guy who had a 2.8 GPA, but that I brought in because I could see he was trying very hard", "academic career has been severely hampered by Krohn's disease", and, certainly not least, "Great success story as she switched from Medical School (much to her mother's chagrin)".

To boot, the professor listed several people's phone numbers. I personally had this professor in question when I was a student and all I will say is that this doesn't really surprise me...feel free to ask me in person what I actually think about him! Fortunately, my friend contacted another professor involved in the program, made her concerns known, and now the page has been removed from the Internet...although being up for how knows how many months/years.

As I mentioned at the start, how much common sense do you give up when you get your doctorate?