Just Step Away From the Almanac!

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning….The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, “the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities.” But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior — such as apparent surveillance — a person with an almanac “may point to possible terrorist planning.”

  — Associated Press, Dec. 29, 2003

Have we all lost our minds?

What’s next? You’ll need a passport to use an encyclopedia in a library (especially if you use the encyclopedia in a suspicious manner….)? A license to carry a concealed tour map? RFID tags in cameras and film?

We are such boneheads sometimes…almanacs as WMD (Weapons of Mass Direction[s] )…