Let me get this right: Ryan wasn't detained, but after being interviewed he was "then released."

Perhaps the Finnish language is to blame here, but by this translation he was clearly detained.

1. While fixed-frequency laser pens are popular now, tunable dye lasers can operate at any wavelength. They're widely available on the surplus market from medical devices, and you can readily buy larger laser modules of hundreds of miliwatts. And even pen lasers now operate in shades of yellow, purple, blue and orange, in addition to green and red. Filters must be tuned to a small wavelength range, and each color range would require several filter layers. Blocking all would result in opacity.

Filtering is not an option. If we don't want to see wholesale banning of laser sales, we'd better get started with education.

2. Eyes of both pilots and drivers have been damaged many times. Laser exposure to the rest of the public is already part of the problem.

Naval Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly and Canadian helicopter pilot Capt. Pat Barnes suffered eye injuries hours after an aerial surveillance mission to photograph a Russian merchant ship that had been shadowing the ballistic-missile submarine USS Ohio in Washington state’s Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Navy recently turned down an appeal from the Defense Department inspector general to award Cmdr. Daly a Purple Heart for the incident. Cmdr. Daly, who retired from the service last year, continues to suffer eye pain and deteriorating vision.

There are many reports of SERIOUS, career-ending eye damage to pilots due to lasers. Here's just one, why not google your heart out until you're convinced the threat is real. http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Even a minor eye injury could end his flying career.

Immerman and kyosuke: Yes, the beam is already diverged owing to imperfections of the laser collimating optics. That's not the same thing as adding deliberately diverging optics. As I noted elsewhere, divergence makes the problem worse for pilots, because the beam is still very bright but at distance becomes 6' or more in diameter, making it very easy to target aircraft.

ShanghaiBill: you misunderstand the problem. The beam is already diverged owing to imperfections of the laser collimating optics. That makes the problem worse for pilots, because the beam is still very bright but at distance becomes 6' or more in diameter, making it very easy to target aircraft. It's the temporary blinding effect that is so dangerous, where pilots are unable to read their instruments for a critical period during takeoff or landing. It's happened to me, and is like having a bright searchlight suddenly flood the cockpit, destroying night vision and rendering instruments unreadable. You can find youtube videos illustrating the effect.

Dear Sick: if you had bothered to put on your Google goggles you could have easily found instances of pilot eye damage:

http://abcnews.go.com/News/jet...

Dear sick: you are dumb and don't know what you're talking about. The risk is not pilot eye damage. It's pilot distraction or temporary blinding during a critical phase of flight. As a helicopter pilot, I can tell you that every phase of flight in a helo is critical, as we typically fly at 500' AGL by law and are constantly looking for obstacles to avoid. A laser that makes me not see and avoid the power lines ahead will kill me just as effectively as if it had been a photon torpedo fired from the USS Enterprise.

When an airliner is landing, this is also a critical phase of flight. Blinding the pilot then will make it impossible to read instruments, possibly if not probably resulting in the aircraft departing from the glide slope and runway centerline and into a collision with airport surroundings.

You're right that no aircraft in the US has been shot down yet by a laser, although some pilots have suffered permanent eye damage. This is where the part about you being dumb comes in. See, intelligent people try to be pro-active about foreseeable disasters and take action before anyone, even a dumb person, dies. So we're just looking out for you. Pity you're too dumb to realize that.

Swell: try this experiment. Get on a busy freeway during nighttime rush hour. Now point two high-intensity flashlights directly to into your retinas for thirty seconds. Then try driving.

It's not eye damage we're worried about. It's collision damage from the aircraft careening into a parking structure during final approach, killing everyone on board.

Too bad lasers blasted your eyes and you can't read. You would have read that we're talking about all-spectrum goggles. You should have paid attention to the t-shirt ;)

But we're all buying from the same places. There is no way to reliably verify that a person is, say, a construction worker. Not without some kind of idiotic heavy-handed government licensing. You want that? Really?

They don't.

Actually, Googles will work, and are excellent for education. Goggles won't work. ;)

That won't work because "the public" includes the many tradespeople and professionals that use lasers for surveying, construction, directional antenna alignment, and cat therapy.