For context, especially for our out-of-country readers and those reading through the archives – over the weekend there was a “terrorist attack” (quotes appropriate) in New York City.

A guy who had a lot of explosives and almost no idea how to use them parked an easily tracable-back-to-him SUV in the street and… as far as anyone can tell… just sort of hoped it would explode.  I mean, he had some wires and a couple of clocks hooked in to a thing of black powder and gasoline (neither of which really detonate when you run an electrical charge through them) but there really wasn’t a lot of bomb in his bomb.

For the first real time since 9/11, instead of going “OMG TERROR!” we all reacted like… well… real people.  Like horrible, horrible, real people who are no longer afraid and who are mostly just sick and tired of this crap.  We started dismantling his plan, judging him not on the merits of his extremist jihad but instead on his inability to put together a simple explosive device that anyone who’s watched McGuyver, Mythbusters, CSI, or almost any other hour long drama would have been able to put together in their sleep.

See, now I’m doing it.