Pretty wild!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston ... index.html

"Mooninites duplicate, reunite, and unihilate."

Yes, it was all over the news this afternoon and evening. Deval (Patrick, the Governor) and Tom (Menino, the Mayor) are not amused. There was a special report at 8 PM this evening on Channel 5 saying that someone's been arrested.

It was on the news down here. I got a chuckle out of it when they were looking for boxes that were supposedly shipped to Austin as well.

I believe this fits a trend with Turner Broadcasting -- it's one extreme example of the poor judgment that outfit has been showing. I believe it stems from a broader desire Turner Broadcasting has demonstrated to "push the envelope" with regard to the Cartoon Channel.

Many of the offerings by Turner seem to be deliberately vulgar and unwholesome, as if the producers are starting with the question "What can we do that might shock and offend?" When you start with that question, you end up sometimes making poor judgments like this public safety nightmare in Boston.

This is bigger than Turner Broadcasting, I think. This is an example of established media, and society in general, encountering "guerilla marketing" in the post 9/11 world. Flash Mobs, fake YouTube phenoms, the Interactive Urinal Communicator have been appraised with a roll of the eyes, and a 15 second soundbyte on the morning news. Now we have a major bomb scare.

This also exposes a major flaw in our National Security, too. We are incapable of assessing threat levels. Electronic devices showing cartoon characters giving you the finger were assumed to be bombs. That's asinine to me. If we can't differentiate between Al Queda and Cartoon Network, we are not secure.

We are not secure even if we can. We are not secure. Period. Moreover, we cannot ever be.

The issue is the poor judgment of the perpetrators, not some failure of security.

American citizens surrepticiously planted electronic devices all over a city. They were promptly noticed, the alert was sounded, and the devices were destroyed by the bomb squads.

It really wasn't possible to respond any more effectively. If it had been a terrorist plot, the hope would be to pick it up through intelligence. Here there was no intelligence because there was NO PLOT. It was a cartoon network.

Again, I'm less interested in the security angle and more interested in the stupidity angle of the ones that did it. They've been arrested and there may be more arrests that go higher up.

And the electronic device was an LED depiction of a character giving the finger. Hope it was worth it. In my area, Cartoon Network put up two giant billboards. One had a guy saying "I pooted." and nothing else. Another said "I have toejam" and nothing else.

Have you seen the latest cartoon offered by Cartoon Network, Assy McGee?

I've managed to miss Assy McGee. I used to dig the Aqua Teens, Harvey Birdman, and Space Ghost - Coast to Coast on Adult Swim, but it's been a long time since I had enough TV time at home to do anything more than catch up with whatever has been recorded on the DVR.

The perpetrators did indeed have poor judgement, but those in charge of assessing and reacting to such threats have GOT to do a better job. We can't have major cities shut down because of incidents like this. It reminds me of when a drunk UGA fan decided he was going to race through the security checkpoint at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, rather than patiently wait in line with the other travelers. The airport was shut down for hours, with everybody escorted out because this knucklehead jumped over a turnstile and dropped his backpack. A cautious, cursory examination of the backpack would have revealed nothing wrong, and thousands of air travelers wouldn't have been stranded.

So, in other words, you want the terrorists to win.

Jay Matthews: Cultural Critic
David Alan Carr: Security Critic

Takes all kinds.

You're not one of those guys that says "Thank you sir, may I have another?" when they make you remove your belt and shoes and get patted down at the airport?

True. Anyone who wants to attack America badly enough WILL find a way to do it.

No. When that happens, I secretly wish for profiling of some sort.

I'm just not as intrigued by the "overreaction by authorities" discussion (in this case) as I am by the "what was Turner Broadcasting thinking?" discussion.

The reason that "devices" and bags tend to cause an overreaction is that there is a danger to the security personnel investigating it. Sure, the odds of any particular suspicious device being a bomb are low, but if you're the guy who routinely investigates them, and you casually peruse them all year, odds are that one day you go down. The only to be safe for the workers is to respond with a little bit of extra safety.

I'd like to think that if I was the security person nearest to the issue on these electronic boards, I would have just walked up and ripped it down and opened it. But I'm not prepared to judge the people in harm's way who decided differently.

From CNN news article:
Turner Broadcasting said the devices had been in place for two to three weeks in Boston; New York; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Francisco, California; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

We have conflicting opinions on the phrase "promptly noticed". I'd kinda like to have things suspected as being bombs noticed a little quicker than two to three weeks once installed at busy locations.

I'm throwing all of my arguments about overreaction out the window as of seeing this.

These are the two guerilla marketing guys that installed the devices. I hope they get the book thrown at them.

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fJkTNJ7BM9I"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fJkTNJ7BM9I" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

2 to 3 weeks, huh? Oh. Once the suspicion was there, they found them all pretty quickly. Nobody probably reported them for that long as a threat. I don't think I would have. It depends on how the light hits it. If you see the lit up cartoon character, you probably just shrug nad press on. If you catch a view of it and see some circuitry in the daytime, you might freak out.

This will add to the "boy who cried wolf" effect next time.