sweasel.com

Terrorism adds human malice into the equation: a bunch of somebodies aiming all their brainal capacity at sneaking past every safeguard to do something of maximum horror, pain, visibility and surprise.

Ezzactly.

” Do you remember “, said O’Brien, ” the moment of panic that used to occur in your dreams ? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open.

Events over which you have no control are always more frightening than those where you have a perception of control. If I am driving my car, I ‘feel’ that I can maybe avoid the idiot behind the wheel of the other car. If I am riding in an airplane, I am at the mercy of the pilot’s skills, and whether or not he is feeling well.

I think that may be why the “Global Warming is caused by Mankind” mantra is so popular. If we cause it, we can control it, but if we don’t…. All I can say is don’t piss off Mother Nature. She can be a real bitch!

“Don’t look Weasel! If you can’t see it, it won’t hurt you!”

The Ostrich Theory of Risk Assessment. 😀

Well, I guess that explains where Keith Olberman and Janine Garofalo got their idea to “Round up any and all Conservatives, lock them away from ‘decent people’ and have a Neurologist experiment on them to determine why their ‘Limbic brains’ are so inferior to those of ‘good, right-minded’ Liberals….”

Like, I’m a hell of a lot more frightened of getting cancer (logical; there’s a lot of it in my family) than I am being crushed by a grand piano falling from a great height.

That has to be the stupidest, farthest fetched example I have ever seen. Cancer is about the only thing in the universe that won’t touch me. You try ordering from an ACME catalog and see what it does to your risk assessment.

Beep Beep……

Unfortunately Acme Inc. was swallowed up by our hard economic times. Inept, redundant, inefficient, expensive and worthless products must now come directly from the government (Obamacorn Inc.). What’s a coyote to do?

Okay, you’re like a willionty-jillion times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. So why do people sweat flying in a way they don’t sweat driving?

For the same reason I fear tornadoes more than just about any damn thing.

Car crash…yeah, statistically far more likely, but except in the most extreme circumstances (the ones that happen so fast you’re more than likely dead before you notice you’re screwed), fast reflexes and proper reactions might just save you.

Tornadoes? Plane crash? You are in the grip of forces beyond your control, and your survival is completely and utterly at the mercy of pure chance. You can’t run your way out of it, you can’t really think your way out of it, and any skill you might’ve acquired in your soon-to-be truncated life is crap. (Unless that skill is flapping your arms fast enough to hover like a hummingbird, which I guess is conceivably useful in either situation.)

Enforced inaction is the key to the horror. As long as you can act, you can feel like you’re improving your chances. But plane crashes (and tornadoes) pretty much limit your proactive solutions to “assume the crash position”. That leaves a long…LONG time, seconds or even minutes, for a vivid and now unoccupied imagination to conjure up every horrible variant of what’s rolling up to punch your ticket.

I just got a creepy crawly at the nape of my neck writing that. Egads!

So if you’ve already been in a horrible car accident and survived, does that mean the probability of you getting into another one has been reduced? Just wondering.

Not to mention Kitteh snatchers! THEY TOOK PIGPEN!!!!! THEY TOOK OUR NUCLEARPUSSY!!!!

lol… 1 down, 4 to go – if they are good fur parents.

I’ve lived through car accidents, three heart attacks, a coma, and various other life-threatening situations. I’m not scared of flying, and I sure as hell ain’t scared of “global warming.”

Bite me, Algore.

Weas, gotta admit that as soon as you said Algore, I tuned out. That guy is an assclown, and I don’t need to read any more about him.

But that picture? It had me rolling on the floor. I adore you.

Aw, Scubafreak — Pigpen was your favorite, wasn’t he? (Makes a mental note not to sit next to F’Lurker on the bus. He doesn’t sound…lucky).

And, yeah, that’s it, apotheosis. If there’s something you can do, it lessens the anxiety. Lack of control makes people crazy.

There was a huge shift in my person anxieties when I went from desperately poor to…well, creditworthy, at any rate. At that point, about 70% of the emergencies life might throw at me could be solved with an American Express card.

I just listened to a broadcast on irrational fear.
The person has only to think of fear to feel fear.
The thought then has produced the fear.
The fear brings the thought back.
Now the thought has come back twice and that begins to sound a little more valid and it begins to set up a vicious cycle in the mind going faster and faster and faster.

Remember your Litany Against Fear Dawn:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I liked the mortgage example from yesterday’s post. Algore’s statement that you “can’t reason people into fear” comes from someone that obviously has never been on the recieving end of “If you don’t pay us a lot of money you don’t have, we’re going to put you and your family in the street.”

The difference being that Citibank really can and will, with good reason, make their threat a reality. So far, I’ve seen more sensible evidence that I’ll get eaten by a chupacabra than suffer any of the consequences algore is promising, much less for the price that he’s asking.

“So if you’ve already been in a horrible car accident and survived, does that mean the probability of you getting into another one has been reduced? Just wondering.”

Bernie ! Damn. No, it does not. They’re independent events.

Mike C. do you assess risk for engineering projects?

{weasel said they would scoff}

That’s one of the most brain-hurty things about probabilities, Dawn. Your chances (as a decent driver) of being in several accidents for several days in a row are quite small. But every day you go out, your chances of being in an accident are exactly the same.

I think you have to be a little mad to ‘get’ math.

The name for that is the Gambler’s Fallacy. The will to believe that something occurring in the past somehow alters the chance of it occurring again appears almost congenital among us homo saps.

Casinos, btw, take advantage of this with those light-poles at roulette tables showing the last ten or so numbers hit.

Oops, somebody forgot to turn the italics off.

In any case, there is one exception to that: An individual’s death generally reduces greatly the chance of a second death occurring to that same individual.

Not me. …a coward dies a thousand times…

I reckon I’ve died a jillion or so times already. I contend it has to do with a vivid imagination, but I’d make a crap soldier…

Makes a mental note not to sit next to F’Lurker on the bus. He doesn’t sound…lucky

Ooops. I forgot buses. Now those scare me!

It’s Rostrom, dammit!

I can spell Sotomayor and Schwarzenegger and Ahmedinejad and Netanyahu and Berlusconi and Yousefzadeh and Volokh and Hinderaker without looking them up.

Rostrom is a nice simple name: seven letters, no silent consonants or non-anglophone pronunciations. People should be able to spell it correctly. Even weasels!
(Especially weasels who have it typed out for them.)

Yes, I am ranting. This is my sore toe: the one thing I will always complain about when someone steps on it.

Aaahhhrrrggghhh!!

(I note again that Al-goracle’s first quoted paragraph was complete gibberish. What’s up with that anyway?)

<quietly fixes the spelling and tries to look casual>

Easy now Rick Rostrom.

{tee hee}

Al Gore 2003: He played upon our FEEAAAAAAAAARRRSS!!!!

Al Gore 2009: We have to play upon their fears.

Oooo, a post on the probability of flaming destruction, and I’m late to the game!

Yep, the car crash thing falls under the choice with replacement scenario. Every time you get in a car you get to pick from the bag that contains some marbles that say: exploding car crash! That marble gets put back into the bag for your next pick.

I’ve done a lot of studies on hazard scenarios for explody bits and bobs over the years. Now that will give you some nightmares.

Hey did you hear the one about two overhead crane operators having crane races while they were carrying large rocket motor segments? I shit thee not, damndest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

“If you see me running try to keep up.”