Beefed-up security at airport terminals is intended to make us safer when we fly. The practice of checking passengers’ bags and personal items for explosives, firearms, or weapons of any kind, it stands to reason, should also make us feel safer. Do we? Or does this hypersensitivity to the contents of our shaving kits have the unintended consequence of making us feel more wary and concerned than ever about the ways in which other passengers might do us harm?

The most recent episode making some critics question the logic of the regulations enforced by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) involved a suspicious cupcake. The threatening baked good was decorated with more than 3 ounces of what examiners identified as a gel-like icing and therefore exceeded the amount of gel a passenger is permitted to carry onto a plane in a single item.

Since then, an enterprising Rhode Island bakery has been marketing a TSA-compliant cupcake decorated with precisely 3 ounces of icing and sold in a regulation quart-sized clear plastic bag. In case the sarcasm is not clear enough to observers, the item comes with official-looking documentation proclaiming its compliance with safety regulations.

1. Are you amused that a business with a sense of humor finds the ban on icing funny and is using the incident to create a profitable novelty?
2. Are you disturbed that the sincere efforts of responsible security agents to protect the flying public should be openly mocked by smirking passengers carrying their cupcakes through security?
3. Most importantly for this class, do you think anyone could possibly have predicted that a program to enhance travel safety in the aftermath of the atrocities of 9/11 would result in travelers being denied their baked goods or made to feel unsafe in the presence of a cupcake?