Mickey Kaus, and many others are aghast at the failure of our crack Homeland Security slugs to spot a car load of bombs at LAX. Not to excuse incompetence, but let me show you how this stuff can happen. I used to supervise both Sonar and another recognition system that appeared as a wavy line on a screen. It was boring. The Sonar "pings" drive you so nuts that nobody can listen to them for more than fifteen minutes out of an hour at a time. The oscilloscope, with it's constant similar lines literally hypnotizes the operators so that we took breaks every fifteen minutes. We also found that smart people were the absolute worst at these jobs because their active minds tend to wander while less intelligent people could concentrate better. I submit to you that looking at that goddam screen for an hour or more without a break guarantees that the screeners will miss stuff. It's a tough job. Ideally, people would be pulled off shift and tested or something before they are forced back on the job. I'll bet the screeners at LAX get no breaks so that they are numbed out within twenty minutes.