NASA to fight terror with mental telepathy

No, we're not making this up; we can only hope that Moonie sheet the Washington Times is. But according to this WT story, NASA is attempting to develop some manner of remote stress detector along the lines of a polygraph machine which will monitor the brainwaves and heart rates of airline passengers as they pass blissfully through the gate to their waiting aeroplane.

"Computers would apply statistical algorithms to correlate physiologic patterns with computerized data on travel routines, criminal background and credit information from 'hundreds to thousands of data sources,'" the WT quotes from a NASA document.

Well, these folks put men on the Moon, so I reckon they'll be able to crack an important prerequisite: that is, to alter the very nature of air travel, miraculously making it bearable to normal human beings so the Osama alarms won't be ringing every ten seconds. Otherwise, everyone with a spotty credit history and a healthy tendency to go ballistic after hours of ineptitude and patronizing contempt from the airline industry is going to be flagged as a terrorist, and air traffic will cease.

Well, except for direct flights to Guantanamo Bay, on which we expect extremely heavy bookings if this preposterous scheme ever gets off the drawing board. ®