The irritating thing, to me at least, is the almost total irrelevancy of the security measures to the actual danger. Seems to me that using the contents of, say, a paperback book or a tube of toothpaste is not the most direct nor effective way of blowing up an airplane.

Yes, terrorism is a definite threat. But let's be real about trying to deal with it.

And Dave--over here, in the 60's, we had protesters blowing up things. Admittedly these were more-or-less targeted attackes, rather than simple terrorism.