a. Bugs Bunny
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

a. Norwegians from Ballard
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

a. Bonnie and Clyde
b. Captain Kangaroo
c. Billy Graham
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

And so on for several more questions. I've picked the above examples out of order, but you get the idea. The answer, in all cases, is C. I mean D. (As a New Englander, I was stymied by the "Norwegians from Ballard" reference. You can Google it to some satisfaction, but still it's a weird attempt at humor.)

The quiz is a wonderful apples-and-oranges trap. First, it wants the guesser to believe that all acts of terror -- and, in this context, all serious air crimes -- are those committed by Islamic extremists, which isn't the case at all. And it makes a tenuous connection between the threats facing American airports and those facing, for example, embassies and newspaper reporters in hostile Muslim countries. What Daniel Pearl faced in Pakistan (a non-Arab nation, mind you) in 2002, is not the same set of threats facing passengers at the airport in Dayton, Ohio.

For more intelligent reading, I highly recommend Bruce Schneier's "Beyond Fear -- Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." Again, the title says it all. Among his many cogent arguments, Schneier smartly maintains that the most valuable front-line defense against terror is not a one-dimensional preoccupation with skin color. He advocates a mix of random screening and a cadre of well-trained, experienced professionals, skilled in the art of behavioral profiling.

The Transportation Security Administration, which isn't always as daft as it frequently seems, has begun training staff at several major airports in the finer points of behavioral pattern recognition. It's a slippery slope, some will argue, from behavioral profiling, which scans airport passengers for such telltale signs of criminal intent as "nervousness," to the more politically incorrect variety, but it's worth noting that Israel's airports, including the notoriously secure Ben Gurion International, have used it for many years. Israel appears to understand that its land crossings demand one set of protocols, its airports another.

In the meantime, here's a more useful quiz:

a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Bill O'Reilly
c. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir
d. Indian Sikh extremists, in retaliation for the Indian Army's attack on the Golden Temple shrine in Amritsar

a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Michael Smerconish
c. Bob Mould
d. A pregnant Irishwoman named Anne Murphy

a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Ann Coulter
c. Henry Rollins
d. Thomas Doty, a 34-year-old American passenger, as part of an insurance scam

a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Michelle Malkin
c. Charlie Rose
d. Auburn Calloway, an off-duty FedEx employee and resident of Memphis, Tenn.

a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Joe Scarborough
c. Spalding Gray
d. Samuel Byck, an unemployed tire salesman from Philadelphia

The answer, in all cases, is D.

GO-AROUNDS

Re: Conspiracy nation

Conspiracy theories and their proponents often bear many of the hallmarks of the uglier flavors of spirituality: an opportunity to be initiated in a mysterious truth, combined with a chance to lay blame and praise at the feet of unknown, idolized (whether loved or hated) forces that remain unseen. To insist that hijacked airliners were whisked away to quarters unknown, or that Kennedy was taken out by LBJ or the Mob or Cubans or some coalition thereof, or that Elvis is alive and flipping burgers in St. Paul, is to claim the hidden truth of the universe, the secret explanation, and the ability to name some entity on which to blame all the whims of fate. And in the folds of such beliefs, one can mask another agenda. Sounds a lot like radical religion to me.

-- Michael Williams

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