Harpy, couldn't agree with you more. All sense of proportion has disappeared with regards to security. Comments above such as "NEVER joke with security...." "the joking public" etc. play into the hands of jobsworths everywhere whose increased sense of power makes all our lives more miserable.
Let's face it, 99.999999999% of all flights are unaffected by terrorism. All the security in the world wouldn't have helped prevent the recent atrocities. It's just like saying if speed cameras round every corner in the land prevented the loss of just one life it would be worth installing them everywhere. Crap! Life is risky. Without actually banning ban all cars then some people will still be killed on the road, whatever preventive measures you take.
You have to balance the loss of 3,000 odd lives lost on the roads each year in the UK with which society considers acceptable (or else it would ban all cars) against the inconvenience of a disrupted lifestyle.
Same with terrorists. If you rubber-gloved every single passenger going anywhere by air, (leading, incidentally, to a massive reduction in passengers because of the hassle and huge delays, and therefore a lot of us losing our jobs as a direct consequence, which is probably already happening),you still won't be helping to prevent terrorism. These guys aren't just going to say "Fair cop, guv, we'll be nice world citizens from now on", they're going to go on and bomb the crap out of other targets, such as trains, cruise ships and city centres maybe with biological and chemical weapons.
So, following this logic,in the end we'll all be rubber-gloved the minute we step outside our homes. And what do security people know, anyway? After all, it was them telling everyone in the second WTC tower that the building was "secure" and people should return to their desks......