Have bullets, will travel

It turns out that a Sudanese man snuck 5 bullets past security at Washington's Dulles airport - a fact that was unnoticed until they were detected at London's Heathrow. (BBC news report here).

Washington airport - who would have thought. Now it's true that five bullets by themselves are not a big deal - even if he had dissasembled them to extract the gunpowder he would have been lucky to set off the smoke detector that is fitted in the toilet because smoking is a safety hazard (that's funny - it wasn't a safety hazard in the 1980s...)

What's a bit scary though, is if there are terrorist groups testing out security methods to find weak points. Maybe this guy could meet up at an airline hub with half a dozen others each with a few pieces of a ceramic pistol...

The Brits were quick to point out that this shows America should be focussing more on ground security and less on ramming sky marshals down everyone's throat. I am inclined to agree - regular sky marshals would mean that there would be at least one gun on every international flight. That concerns me. (more discussion in this article)

In related news, at New York's Kennedy Airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value.

How the man managed to obtain a slide rule continues to baffle investigators.