The TSA follies

Just in case you’re not suff iciently horrified by Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segment, which reveals shocking levels of stupidity among random people on the street, you might want to check out the Transportation Security Administration’s blog chronicling the truly dumb things people pull at airport security.

With summer-vacation travel season in full swing, the blog’s worth a look, if only to understand why those lines might be so long.

It could be because that guy ahead of you plunked down a grenade (but, he insists, it’s just a harmless paperweight!). Or maybe it’s that passenger who accidentally packed a loaded .22-caliber pistol in his carry-on bag and decided that, instead of checking it, he’d just hide it in a potted plant.

Of course, TSA’s crack “Behavior Detection Officers” witnessed the none-too-stealthy move.

The blog’s “Week in Review” reads like a roundup of the world’s dumbest would-be criminals.

Want to hide that knife you’d like to sneak by security? Why not put it in a sock and stuff it into an envelope filled with dolls? That foolproof strategy didn’t work for a passenger in Tampa.

And how to cleverly disguise a stun gun? Try putting it in a walking cane, as a James Bond wannabe did at the airport in Knoxville.

“Yes, a stun cane!” the blog notes. “That’s a first for the Week in Review posts.” Maybe the cane’s former owner should get points for creativity, if not for brilliance.

The blog includes helpful tips for travelers, including one prompted by the aforementioned grenade-toting passenger.

“While I know that inert grenades are cool conversation pieces and make great paperweights,” a TSA blogger notes, “inert items cause problems at checkpoints. . . . We don’t know they’re inert until we check them out, and checking them out can often inconvenience your fellow passengers.”

We also enjoy the site’s whimsical headlines describing various confiscated taboo items, such as “Eau de Kaboom” (a cologne bottle shaped like — you guessed it — a grenade) and “Holy Bat Stars, Batman” (sharp throwing stars).

And we wonder why restaurants have to label their steaming cups of coffee with the word “hot.”

Remote-control heroism

The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield.

Pentagon officials have been briefed on the medal’s “unique concept,” Charles V. Mugno, head of the Army Institute of Heraldry, told a recent meeting of the Commission of Fine Arts, according to a report in Coin World by our former colleague Bill McAllister.

Mugno said most combat decorations require “boots on the ground” in a combat zone, but he noted that “emerging technologies” such as drones and cyber-combat missions are now handled by troops far removed from the war zone.

The Pentagon has not formally endorsed the medal, but Mugno’s institute has completed six alternative designs for commission approval.

The notion of greater recognition for drone pilots has been percolating for some time. Air Force Maj. Dave Blair, writing in the May-June issue of the Air & Space Power Journal, asked how much difference there is in terms of risk “between 10,000 feet and 10,000 miles.”