Risk, Fear and Control

I think this quote from Daniel Gilbert has a surreal truth that makes it funny.

When people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it, such as whacking each other over the head, or voting.

It's from an article he wrote, which also has a funny title. Found it through one of Schneier's posts, which is also interesting. It seems the whole issue is a variation on control vs can't control, being that which people perceive can be controlled, vs those things that are perceived as being uncontrollable.

Articles on the Air Travel Situation

This article is an interesting take on implausibility of the chemistry involved. Although it makes the assumption of organic peroxides, which may or may not be correct. And the fact of one key point about how violent the reactions are and it'd be hard to contain them to create explosives. Unless of course the whole point is to spray a piranha solution around the inside of the plane, which may serve their purposes better than killing everyone anyways. Filling the plane with hydrogen cyanide is also mentioned - with the right gear to protect oneself, an individual could possibly incapacitate everyone else and take over the plane. It's all a matter of how far people are willing to go.

Bruce Schneier writes an good review (which also appeared in the paper), about how while these measures may make sense as a means to foil this specific plan in the short term, long term they're worthless other than to inconvenience people. His last paragraph is a great summary of the whole situation (and why I mentioned above that even attempting or threatening to kill everyone may not even be necessary for the terrorist goals). I think to be able to solve the problem we'll need to start making these standard medication though.