The Anxiety Machine

New emotion-sensing technology will help us spot terrorists — assuming they’re sweating and nervous about blowing themselves up. 

If you’ve had to catch a flight recently, you’re no doubt aware of the increasing hassle it’s become to get from the long-term parking lot to the departure gate, let alone the possible flight delays or cancellation once you finally do get into the airport.

You start the whole process by wedging yourself and your bags, along with a lot of other weary travelers, into a parking shuttle, which takes you to the terminal. Inside, you no longer can talk directly to a person at check-in but have to use an infernal computer kiosk. It inevitably doesn’t recognize you or your flight, causing you to have to flag down an agent anyway.

Then you get to security, where you’re asked to take out your baggie of embarrassing personal-hygiene items, pull out all your electronics and do a virtual public striptease before going through the metal detector. That goes off because you forgot the 75 cents in your pocket, causing the security guy to put you in a special area where...