Collaborate Disseminate
Here’s a crazy story from the UK. Basically, someone sees a man and a little girl leaving a shopping center. Instead of thinking "it must be a father and daughter, which happens millions of times a day and is perfectly normal," he thinks "t… Continue reading Worst-Case Thinking Breeds Fear and Irrationality
Here’s a crazy story from the UK. Basically, someone sees a man and a little girl leaving a shopping center. Instead of thinking "it must be a father and daughter, which happens millions of times a day and is perfectly normal," he thinks "this is obviously a case of child abduction and I must alert the authorities immediately." And the… Continue reading Worst-Case Thinking Breeds Fear and Irrationality
Here’s some interesting research about how we perceive threats. Basically, as the environment becomes safer we basically manufacture new threats. From an essay about the research: To study how concepts change when they become less common, we brought volunteers into our laboratory and gave them a simple task – to look at a series of computer-generated faces and decide which… Continue reading Conservation of Threat
A Turkish Airlines flight made an emergency landing because someone named his wireless network (presumably from his smartphone) "bomb on board." In 2006, I wrote an essay titled "Refuse to be Terrorized." (I am also reminded of my 2007 … Continue reading Needless Panic Over a Wi-FI Network Name
A Turkish Airlines flight made an emergency landing because someone named his wireless network (presumably from his smartphone) "bomb on board." In 2006, I wrote an essay titled "Refuse to be Terrorized." (I am also reminded of my 2007 essay, "The War on the Unexpected." A decade later, it seems that the frequency of incidents like the one above is… Continue reading Needless Panic Over a Wi-FI Network Name
Funny: The Department of Canine Security urges dogs to remain on high alert and employ the tactic of See Something, Say Something. Remember to bark upon spotting anything suspicious; e.g. firecrackers, sparklers, Roman candles, cats, squirrels, mail carriers, shadows, reflections, other dogs on TV, etc…. Continue reading "Dogs Raise Fireworks Threat Level to ‘Gray’"
An economics professor was detained when he was spotted doing math on an airplane: On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man – with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent – boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse. Or so dozens of unsuspecting passengers thought. The curly-haired… Continue reading Economist Detained for Doing Math on an Airplane