"Corky Scott" wrote in message
...
Has anyone been following the disturbing (to me anyway) news stories
about airliners approaching to land being hit with laser beams aimed
at the cockpits?

There are several possibilities:

1) There are terrorists out there planning to make airliners crash with
laser beams and the government has warned us in the nick of time.

2) Terrorists read the government warning and thought "What a good idea!"
and are conducting tests.

3) The local airport haters read the government warning and thought "Revenge
at last!" and are trying to shut down airports, hopefully with great loss of
life so they can say "See, I told you so! Airplanes are dangerous and a
hazard to the community and should be banned forever!" The only difference,
of course, between an airport hater and a terrorist is that the airport
hater is not generally associated with Islam or extremist political groups.
Other than that, both are willing to resort to violence and intimidation in
order to achieve their idea of paradise. The news media, law enforcement,
and politicians are too cowardly to call a local soccer mom who doesn't like
airplanes a terrorist, even if she has repeatedly threatened life and
property in public hearings.

4) Kids read the government warnings and thought, "Cool, we can make a plane
crash!" and are zapping planes with their laser pointers.

5) Pilots, alert because of government warnings, are over-reacting to
accidental contact with legitimate (but possibly careless) users of lasers,
including folks who got new telescopes for Christmas.

6) Any combination of the above. Heck, there could even be web sites and
Usenet forums devoted to such things.

Personally, I doubt that there is one single conspiracy run by some
mastermind who is coordinating these attacks. I mean, in any population of
nearly 300 million people, there are bound to be some heavily armed random
nuts out there. Sooner or later one of them is going to build a nuke, and we
can forget all about lasers.