Jens Bergensten and Notch have recently revealed that shears are making their way into Minecraft most likely in the 1.7 update.
Jens originally tweeted that “Shears on TNT defuses the block” which will undoubtedly make many Minecraft players happy at the thought of not dying to accidentally set of TNT blocks.
Notch tweeted back to say to Jens that the Shears defuse TNT “Just like in real life”. As beta 1.6 brought in a lot of bug fixes expect more of Notch’s feature creeps with 1.7.