To ensure we never offend anyone - particularly fanatics intent on killing us - airport screeners will not be allowed to profile people. They will continue random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, Secret Service agents who are members of the President’s security detail and 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips.

Pause a moment and take the following test.

In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Iran was taken over by:

(a) Norwegians from Ballard;

(b) Elvis;

(c) A tour bus full of 80-year-old women; or

(d) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

In 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:

(a) A pizza delivery boy;

(b) Crazed feminists screeching that being able to throw a grenade beyond its own burst radius was an unfair and sexist requirement in basic training;

(c) Geraldo Rivera making up for a slow news day; or

(d) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:

(a) Luca Brazzi, for not being given a part in “Godfather2″;

(b) The Tooth Fairy;

(c) Butch and Sundance who had a few sticks of dynamite left over from the train thing; or

(d) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

In 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:

(a) Mr. Rogers;

(b) Hillary, to distract attention from Wee Willie’s women problems;

(c) the WWF, to promote its next villain: “Mustapha the Merciless;” or

(d) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked and destroyed by:

(a) Bugs Bunny,

(b) the Supreme Court of Florida trying to out do their attempted hijacking of the 2000 Presidential election;

(c) Mr. Bean; or

(d) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.

How’d you do? Did you detect a pattern that would indicate we’d better take a close look at a certain type of individual who might be boarding an airplane?

On my way to work and running errands, I was starving and this is what came to mind:

There is nothing in a convenience store that humans should actually consume, if they want to stay healthy.

Trust me on this on folks. I searched the store up and down for something even remotely healthy to eat. It’s impossible.

Our favorite rock star and man of much funky eyewear, Bono, is on the cover of Time this week. Overall, I think Bono will have 10 times the political impact of, say, Princess Diana who brought many a tough issue to the forefront.

Before you brush Bono off to the side as a rock star that thinks people want to hear his opinion because he’s famous (that would be Cher and Richard Gere), he does spend a good deal of time studying public policy and trying to mend the many sides.

But lately, there has just been something bugging me about him. And I think I can narrow it down to his jacket. Yes, his jacket. Every time I see him pull that jacket open and show off the American flag, my blood starts to boil.

Maybe I’m a traditionalist here, but I really don’t like it when people turn the flag into clothing. Ok, a shirt with an image of the flag on the front is ok, but Bono is practically wearing the flag as an undershirt here. He pulls his jacket open and the flag is hanging from his armpit. Every time I see that I want to unzip my pants and pull out the Irish flag.

Maybe I know one to many Vietnam vets like my father, who carried the flag into battle and got shot because they loved the Red, White and Blue. People have died for that 3 square yards of fabric and he lines his jacket with it. Daniel Pearl was just killed for many different reasons, one of them being he grew up under that Red, White and Blue.

So now Bono is on the cover of Time… with that jacket held open and the flag hanging out. In trying to speak for America’s rage over September 11, couldn’t he demonstrate a bit more respect for the one thing we can all rally behind?

As you might have heard, authorities now have a videotape of Daniel Pearl’s death. We have talked at length about his death and now this final disgrace comes about.

This certainly does make us think a lot less about who to blame and more about the people involved. Mr. Pearl’s wife has spoken and I’m sure that all of us who have been thinking of this in the abstract now feel a little silly.

What I find interesting is that the first thought that crossed my mind reading this story is that “this is war.” Our politicians and other officials have been telling us that this is a war that will be fought in totally new ways and new places. I believe we have the first casualty of our new kind of war.

Everyone wants to take the moral high ground and not stoop to the level of terrorists. But I want to ask, “Is there moral highground to be had in a war?” I don’t believe so. No matter what the Geneva Convention says, when two men face off on a battlefield in whatever form that battle takes place, the only rule is survival at all costs. Honor and bravery are noble pursuits and I thank God that humans are sometimes capable of these things in war. However, at the end of day, we need to be the last ones alive, if that’s what it takes.

This site has been on the serious side lately, so I thought that I would pepper everyone up with somthing funny for a change.

The Olympics are over and now I can return to normal life. Yes, I’ve been caught up in Olympic fever for the past 17 days. I watched as skiers, skaters, sleders, and snowboarders carved, sped, and jumped their way across my TV screen.

And like the rest of America, I saw plenty of Olympic moments come and go.

Among them, I saw Michelle Kwan win the Bronze medal. Or lose the Gold, depending on your perspective. The media had made her the skater of the moment and set her up to win the gold, not because she’s a great skater but because she deserved it. Yes, at the cusp of her moment in 1998 in Nagano, Kwan was up-ended by Tara Lipinski. How rude of Lipinski to skate better than Kwan.

So now Kwan was going to get what was rightfully hers - the gold. But it happened again. Kwan was up-ended and walked away with the bronze. Sarah Hughes replace Lipinski this time to steal the gold from Kwan. Or maybe, Kwan shouldn’t have fallen down. Just a thought.

So Kwan stood there with the Bronze hanging from her neck like it was toilet paper that she was going to wipe her butt with. The look on her face was telling. No matter there are hundreds and hundreds of athletes that would love the bronze, would cherish the bronze, and in old age would pass it to their grandkids with a loving story of a grand Olympic moment. But no, Kwan wore it like a scarlet letter. No matter Sarah Hughes skated a perfect routine. Maybe there is a greater victory here. Maybe it’s Kwan’s time to learn some humility and appreciate what she has.

Speaking of bronze, Brian Shimer finally won a medal in his 5th Olympic attempt in the 4-man bobsled. The 39 year-old came to compete for the final time. Piloting a sled for the United States, he was behind the whole day. In the last attempt he squeaked his team into 3rd place. It was really something to see Shimer jump for utter joy at the fact he would have a Bronze. Grinning from ear to ear, he could hardly speak during the post event interview.

Then there was skier Bode Miller. He scored two silvers by the end. But the media did one spotlight after another on Miller and how he was raised. They couldn’t tell us enough he grew up in a home with no electricity or indoor plumbing. I kept thinking, doesn’t something like 25% of the worlds population live that way? Why is it so shocking? Because Bob Costas said so?

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t critique. I could only get into the Olympics if eating Nacho’s became an event. But I am glad I don’t have to see anymore Gateway commercials with that cow discussing how cool it would be to win a medal at the Olympics. The only thing that cow would get is his ass on a hamburger being served to a hungry Australian.

I was listening to Fresh Air last night and they had an interesting piece on humorist Jon Runson’s experience in tracking down and writing about the various extremists in the world in his new book Them: Adventures with Extremists which you can hear here.

Terry Gross repeatedly asked the Jewish journalist Runson if he was ever worried about whether or not Omar Bakri Mohammed would have him killed as he spent almost a year with the Muslim extremist. Runson said that he felt as though the two were almost friends and that they still kept in close contact by phone. Apparently, in the book, Runson portrays Bakri as a bit of a buffoon and someone who perhaps was more of a glory hound than a real extremist threat to the sovereignty of Britain.

As my title states, Runson’s experiences make the death of Daniel Pearl seem strange. They were both Jewish and both confronting extremists known to hate Jewish people. Why then were their fates so different?

It is the absurdity and inscrutability of our life on this planet. Both men were putting themselves in danger. One didn’t make it and the other lives to make money off his book. We never know how our day will end when we wake in the morning. We can try to be safer than Pearl and Runson in who we deal with and how we deal with them, but the crazed lunatic with a gun is always around the corner of time. We simply do our best at all times and enjoy the fruits of that labor.

That’s what Daniel Pearl was doing: his best. At least, what he thought was the best thing to do, even though it was insanely dangerous. He simply ended up with the worst.

CNN is reporting Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is indeed dead, killed by his kidnappers.

A senior U.S. administration source said law enforcement officials received a videotape in recent hours that gave them reason to believe the 38-year-old Pearl was dead. Pearl’s wife is pregnant with the couple’s first child.

Where do we point the fingers? Can we simply write it off as an act of terrorism?

Personally, I hope the Wall Street Journal feels like shit. But are they really to blame? It’s easy to blame the popular media for wanting to send reporters into high-risk areas to cover events. This trend became popular during the Vietnam War. It’s also easy to blame the reporters themselves. They know the risks, yet they go anyway.

Or are we, the public, to blame? We love front-line reporting. Or at least we don’t shy away from it. We like to see gun-camera footage of laser-guided bombs hitting their targets. We like to see that we are indeed winning.

It reminds me of what Walter Cronkite once said:

Twenty years ago reporters told us what we needed to know. Now they tell us what we want to know. The two are not always synonymous.

Did we care about Chandra Levy, or did we just want to know if she slept with Rep. Gary Condit? That’s all the media cared about, or cared to ask.

I think in situations like this, we all have blood on our hands.

There’s another privacy brouhaha cropping up. This time, it involves Microsoft’s Media Player, which apparently tracks not only the songs you listen to but the DVD’s you watch as well. All of this is made possible by the XP operating system and a magical log file that no one seems to know how to find.

Sure, there are privacy concerns here that are valid in my opinion, but I learned a long time ago, that if you are going to surf the web or use a computer connected to the Internet for any reason, then your privacy is at risk.

Because there are no laws, no standards, and no precedents for may of these activities, companies are going to try any way to make money from that activity. That’s what companies do. The shareholders and Wall Street demand that these companies explore every possible revenue stream. Does that make it right? That all depends on who you ask.

It might be worth the infringement of privacy to have a player automatically download Track and Artist information. It might not. That’s the question here. As long as I am knowingly making certain info public or accessible in some way, I have a choice. The real problem lies in taking away that choice by not telling me I am providing information.

So, we get into a circle. Does a company have to tell you that it is logging info about you? If there are laws that force them to do so, are they clear and without loopholes? What if they tell us, but we don’t read it and just click “Next,” who’s responsible?

The upshot of all this is that privacy is constantly eroding and certain activities make you more susceptible to the total extinction of your privacy. If it is that important to you, than you may not want to use a computer. Run, don’t walk, to your closest bookstore and read a book. But beware, if you use a credit card, someone knows what book you are reading.

We were discussing the usability of one of our new projects here at the office and one of my coworkers repeated this adage:

If you make something idiot-proof, they’ll just make better idiots.

It’s a sad commentary on humanity, but it’s true. As a wise man once said, “It’s funny cuz it’s true.”