Today's national news reports that a 19-year-old MIT student was arrested at Logan International Airport for wearing a circuit board with blinking LEDs on her sweatshirt. She told authorities it was an artwork.

This event, taken together with the digital graffiti scare from earlier this year, firmly establishes digital circuitry as a symbol of terror in the American visual lexicon. Which is deeply ironic given that under their smooth plastic covers every cellphone and iPod in America carries the very same circuitry and blinking LEDs.

iPods are to Big Macs as bare naked electronics are to blood-spattered cow intestines: both cross-relations involve deep consumer ignorance and denial. So when one encounters the real thing in public, the response is likely fear.