In today’s edition, the L.A. Times reports an amazing survival story. A trio of lost fishermen from a Mexican village were rescued 5,000 miles away from home. Their vessel was found intact near Baker Island in the middle of the Pacific. After being blown away from shore in October 2005, they had been adrift for nine months. The men survived on rainwater, raw fish and the occasional seabird, but had to go without food for stretches of up to 15 days. They reported reading the Bible to pass the time, which I suppose they must know pretty well by now.

Now that the scare about self concocted liquid explosives bringing down planes is about to fade due to the complete elimination of all liquids and gels in the possession of passengers, all of us who like or need to travel are wondering what will be next. I’m not looking forward to my next flight to Europe or elsewhere. No more brushing teeth (no toothpaste), no more applying deodorant (yuck), no more water to drink. (Hello, flight attendant!?). And no more of the liquid meals I’ve preferred to the ghastly trays which airlines try to pass off as “in flight meal”.

Shoe bombs, toilet bombs …. what is next? Shall we install cameras in plane lavatories to prevent bombs from being assembled in there? Subject passengers to strip searches before each flight? X-ray everyone to make sure they don’t carry something dangerous inside their bodies?

I wonder when we will finally wake up and begin to rationally and honesty address the roots of terrorism instead of the symptoms.

P.S. 2016: Ten years later. Toothpaste and deodorants are not a problem, since small “travel sized” containers are now widely available. But air passengers suffer even more indignities, and surprisingly, people only grumble but still accept the new status quo. And yet, a relatively small portion of the general public is interested in examining the political, economic, ideological and religious factors responsible for creating and feeding the terrorism problem in the first place. But I suppose that would be too complicated. 

In England, a guard dog went on a rampage, ripping apart a costly collection of rare teddy bears valued at more than $900,000. Among the victims of Barney the dog was Mabel, a brown 1909 bear once owned by a young Elvis Presley. All in all the six-year-old Doberman pinscher reduced hundreds of teddies to bits of limbs and fluffy stuffing. “He just went beserk”, said Daniel Medley, general manager of Wookey Hole Caves near Wells. A security guard chased the dog for several minutes before finally catching and subduing him. I guess Barney is in the doghouse now.

I’m a believer in self reliance and the “do it yourself” concept. But some people are taking it a bit far. According to a wire report, a Massachusetts couple was arrested for allegedly performing liposcutions in the basement of their home. One female patient has died. Luiz Carlos Ribeiro and Ana Maria Miranda Ribeiro were charged with practicing medizine without a license. I wonder how they found their patients. Word of mouth?