In a timely reaction to the recent bombings in London, and perhaps taking a cue from New York’s plan for random searches, I noticed that TriMet was stepping up fare inspections. I think this is an overly simplistic reaction. The terrorists could scare and terrorize us in many ways, as this site points out. For example:

Terrorists might convince the corn crops not to mature
Terrorists might throw the nation’s largest pancake breakfast
Terrorists might multi-mall truck bomb attacks near Thanksgiving
Terrorists might suicide bomb a sporting event
Terrorists might kill the head of every fortune 500 company when he went out to get his morning paper
Terrorists might use model rockets to transport copper wire onto high-voltage power transformers, grounding them.
Terrorists might destroy railroad tracks with a rented forklift
Terrorists might infect the bills and coins of the US with disease or poison
Terrorists might remove all the pictograph buttons from fast food cash registers
Terrorists might set off a nuclear powerplant
Terrorists might cover a location with tons of thermite
Terrorists might bury all the gold in Ft. Knox
Terrorists might hijack a Sausage & Cheese cart and slowly destroy the economy of the mall
Terrorists might reveal the secret societies of the Skulls “secret handshakes”.
Terrorists might rig all the bridges over the Potomac with explosives and detonate them during rush hour.
Terrorists might Uhaul truck bomb Wall Street
Terrorists might bring down the internet forcing nerds to find more constructive pursuits.
Terrorists might fly a jumbo jet into a nuclear reprocessing facility
Terrorists might build a pretzel catapult to assassinate the president
Terrorists might take over the emergency broadcasting system and replace our television programming with a large, hypnotizing wheel.

Not the internet! I’d happily waive every one of my silly ‘freedoms’ granted by the Constitution to protect that.

Update 7/25/2005:Trimet must be reading my blog. In what may have been a response to my sarcasm, they rolled in with (what I’m assuming was) a bomb-sniffing dog at Pioneer Square. If it was a drug-sniffing dog, I’m going to have to point out that their priorities are in the wrong place entirely.