Escapee incident begs questions

There was quite a flurry of excitement —and anxiety — Wednesday when murder suspect Teddy Munet, 29, escaped during a morning transfer from prison to a court hearing.

Fortunately, no one was hurt during the 11 hours Munet was on the lam, which triggered lockdowns at more than 20 schools from Kakaako to Manoa. Unfortunately, though, more than 50 law enforcement officers burned up precious man hours before Munet was recaptured about 7:20 p.m. in Kakaako, just eight blocks from his courthouse escape.

Public Safety Director Ted Sakai has since ordered that all medium- and maximum-security inmates be required to wear handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons when being transferred. Ya think?

Munet, inexplicably, was minus the leg irons.

Public Safety’s internal affairs office is now investigating, as is routine when there is an escape. Let’s hope laxity over following procedures is not routine or condoned.

Can you be mad and say rainbow?

A University of Vermont analysis of millions of tweets posted in 2011 has found that the Aloha State was the most chock-full of happiness. based on how often various so-called happy and sad words were used.

Tweets from Hawaii were loaded with words such as "rainbow," "beach" and those related to food.

If the analysis had been more recent, Hawaii might have scored even higher (though it was already No. 1), due to all the chatter about "Rainbows" — but those probably mostly would have been gripes about plans to change the University of Hawaii team name.