Hash House Harriers Anthrax Attack On Ikea

Fear of fear itself.

Two members of a local Hash House Harriers ("The drinking club with a running problem") are facing first-degree felony charges for spreading flour in an Ikea parking lot in Connecticut.

Hash House Harriers are a cross-country running club, and they use fun and entertaining (and confusing) "signposts" for each of their runs to keep things interesting. This time around, the organizers were putting down flour arrows in the Ikea parking lot to direct the runners. (Obviously spray paint wouldn't have been very polite to use on Ikea's parking lot... hence this much more "temporary" marker.)

Anyway, people thought the flour was a terrorist attack, promptly freaked out, called the police, and the whole store had to be evacuated for several hours while authorities responded. Now the run organizers are facing "first-degree breach of the peace."

Really America: Have the terrorists scared you so badly that mere white powder arrows in a parking lot (or some Lite Brite cartoon characters in Boston) are enough to send you into a traffic-stopping panic? Has your perspective really been damaged that much?

If so... If the threat of terrorism has managed to replace rational consideration and level-headed first impressions with knee-jerk panic, and better-safe-than-sorry overreactions... then terrorism has accomplished exactly what it set out to do: Affect America's ability for rational thought, cause you to jump at shadows, and infect you with an unhealthy paranoia.