Latest Laser Sightings

The rash of laser attacks on private and commercial
airline pilots threatens to escalate into a media-driven panic on the
level of Mad Cow Disease or the Beltway Sniper.  Over 30 new incidents
have been reported just in the last week.

We have been dubious, to say the least, since the first
reports several
months ago.  Most of the laser pointers we have seen were pretty
wimpy, even at short range. The idea that one of these innocuous devices,
available for $5.99 at the local 7-11, could be hand-held, pointed at
the sky, and have any discernable effect on an object several miles away
and moving at hundreds of miles an hour seemed improbable to the point
of rediculousness.

Just goes to show how much we know. According to todays
Boston Globe,
the devices in question are considerably more powerful than those we
are familiar with. For example, the device that David Branch, the guy
who got arrested in Jersey, is described as follows.

The laser pointer, which sells for $119, is the most powerful that can
be used in a public place without government regulation, according to
Bigha, the company that manufactures it.

It produces a bright green beam that can be seen up to 25,000 feet away,
and is used by bird watchers, astronomers, and lecturers to point out
faraway objects.

Although many professors swear by laser pointers, we have shied away
from them after receiving one as an end-of-semester from a particularly
demonic class a couple of years ago and promptly suffered temporary blindness
after shining it into our eyes trying to get it to turn on.

Finally, honest to God we are not making this up, listening to the Celtics
game on the radio tonight we heard that the game was suspended while
security guards searched the stands for a patron who had SHINED A LASER
POINTER IN THE EYES OF A PLAYER TRYING TO SHOOT FREE THROWS. This opens
a pandora’s box of potential hazards. Lasers in the eyes of a goalie
trying to stop a penaly shot? A placekicker trying to make a game winning
field goal? Drivers on the Interstates? Blinded meter maids trying to
read meters and write tickets? This laser stuff is a slippery slope….

article from the Boston Globe