Beyond Fear

I listened to an interesting interview with Bruce Schneier about his new book Beyond Fear.

A couple of interesting things.

More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.

I found this fascinating, because a good friend, NickD is always preaching the dangers of shark attacks. Especially when I tell him I am going diving or playing in the ocean.

Nick's response to me emailing him the quote:

Killed being the key word here. Shark attacks predominantly end up without a fatality. It just scares the life out of you. A pig attack, well, I can work with that. The big pigs in the movie Hannibal are pretty terrifying but I think I can take any pig in the ring. A shark however, pure evil.

In the interview Schneier refers to a government website where you can view vital statistics, and that is how he verified that quote. His point is we worry, and spend money, on things that are not as likely to harm us. (Terrorism being one of them).

A little googling found the National Center for Health Statistics. Which shows that overall, across age, race and sex, the number one leading cause of death are disease of the heart. But for my age group Malignant Neoplasm, which is another word for cancer or tumor.

Makes you think. :)

Boldness of Blogging

I love the entry from this article :


http://www.slis.indiana.edu/news/story.php?story_id=958

One wonders for whom these hapless souls blog. Why do they choose to expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers? What prompts this particular kind of digital exhibitionism? The present generation of bloggers seems to imagine that such crassly egotistical behavior is socially acceptable and that time-honored editorial and filtering functions have no place in cyberspace. Undoubtedly, these are the same individuals who believe that the free-for-all, communitarian approach of Wikipedia is the way forward. Librarians, of course, know better.