Terrorism is an autoimmune disease; its purpose is to cause harm by provoking an overreaction. –Adam Gopnik
When the terrorists arrived, they arrived unexpectedly--as expected--… --Tim Nolan, "The Lost Work"
Yet another “third highest ranking al-Qaida leader” has been killed, this time by a rocket attack from an unmanned drone. There are a lot of jobs that I wouldn’t want, and “third highest ranking al-Qaida leader” is right at the top. But I can tell you for sure that if I ever got that job, the first thing I’d do is narc out one of the top two guys so I could move up a notch. Apparently one of the perks of being in the top two is having a really, really good hiding place. The number 3 through 10 leadership guys are pretty much scurrying between mud huts and looking at the sky a lot. –Scott Adams
It is a fact that our brain tends to go for superficial clues when it comes to risk and probability, these clues being largely determined by what emotions they elicit or the ease with which they come to mind. In addition to such problems with the perception of risk, it is also a scientific fact, and a shocking one, that both risk detection and risk avoidance are not mediated in the “thinking” part of the brain but largely in the emotional one (the “risk as feelings” theory). The consequences are not trivial: It means that rational thinking has little, very little, to do with risk avoidance. Much of what rational thinking seems to do is rationalize one’s actions by fitting some logic to them. --Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Radical fundamentalism is like cancer. It can strike anyplace, anytime, and you can’t predict it, and, by the time you discover it, it has usually spread too far to be contained. –Dr. Shukri Ghanem, former Libyan Prime Minister
[Robespierre represents] the ascent of the mass-murdering nerd—a man who, having read a book, resolves to kill all the people who don’t like it as much as he does. There is a case to be made that the real singularity of the Terror [the massacre of aristocrats and clerics in Paris in September, 1792] was the first appearance on the stage of history of this particular psychological type: not the tight-lipped inquisitor, alight with religious rage, but the small, fastidious intellectual, the man with an idea, the prototype of Lenin listening to his Beethoven as the Cheka begins its purges. In normal times, such men become college professors, or book reviewers or bloggers. It takes special historical circumstances for them to become killers: the removal of a ruling class without its replacement by a credible new one. In the confusion, their ethereal certainties look like the only solid thing to build on. –Adam Gopnik
Terrorism is a technology problem disguised as a political problem. –Scott Adams
It all began with the name Homeland Security. Somebody with a tin ear came up with that, maybe the pest exterminator from
"Homeland" was a word you heard shrieked by a cruel man flicking his riding crop against his shiny black boots: "Zie homeland - ve shall defend it at all costs, achwohl!" Americans live in Our Country,
You know who I feel bad for? Arab-Americans who truly want to get into crop-dusting. –Brian Regan
[responding to those who think civil liberties should be restricted in the War on Terror] We could easily trim the cumbersome, nearly 500-word document down to a more manageable couple of dozen words: “…The right of the people to be secure in their persons, homes, papers and effects … shall … be ... delegated to the United States.” Much simpler. Much easier. Now back to Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith. –Bob Barr (2007)
