HOW TO BE AFRAID

Following up on yesterday’s post, in which I pointed to a column on how society has reached a point where parents are afraid to let their kids go out and play in the same way that most people my age or older were allowed to 30 years ago, which begged the question: is the world really more dangerous, or are parents just more afraid?

trillsie raised a good point about awareness. Basically, we know a lot more now than we did 30 or 40 years ago. So we know of more things that are harmful to us and our kids, and so we worry more.

Fair call. The question remains, though: how much should we be worrying about all these “new” dangers, and are our concerns proportionate to the actual risk?

I’ve linked to this before, but it’s worth relinking: Bruce Schneier wrote a brilliant piece after the Virginia Tech shootings about how  people tend not to be very good at analyzing risk, especially when it comes to threats we hear about but rarely encounter in real life.

In case yr in a rush, I’ll paste the relevant bits:

We fear being murdered, kidnapped, raped and assaulted by strangers, when it's far more likely that the perpetrator of such offenses is a relative or a friend. We worry about airplane crashes and rampaging shooters instead of automobile crashes and domestic violence – both far more common.

In the United States, dogs, snakes, bees and pigs each kill more people per year than sharks. In fact, dogs kill more humans than any animal except for other humans. Sharks are more dangerous than dogs, yes, but we're far more likely to encounter dogs than sharks.

I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying.

But that's not the way we think. Psychologist Scott Plous said it well in The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making: "In very general terms: (1) The more available an event is, the more frequent or probable it will seem; (2) the more vivid a piece of information is, the more easily recalled and convincing it will be; and (3) the more salient something is, the more likely it will be to appear causal."

So, when faced with a very available and highly vivid event like 9/11 or the Virginia Tech shootings, we overreact. And when faced with all the salient related events, we assume causality. We pass the Patriot Act. We think if we give guns out to students, or maybe make it harder for students to get guns, we'll have solved the problem. We don't let our children go to playgrounds unsupervised. We stay out of the ocean because we read about a shark attack somewhere.

And so on. I recommend reading the whole thing (especially for the links Schneier includes to back his points).

Obviously, none of this means that it’s okay for yr kids to play in the bad part of town or take candy from strangers, or whatever, or that parents are silly to worry. It’s all human nature. But it’s also worth knowing that the world outside isn’t as dangerous as it looks on CNN, to say nothing of how dangerous both al Qaeda and the Bush administration have tried to make it look.

Again, it's easy for me to talk, because I have no kids and don't intend to. Plus, I'm a child of the Cold War – when I was growing up, we had the prospect of global thermonuclear annihilation to look forward to every morning. Talk about exaggerated risk.

But I think it stands to reason that if you let fear dictate yr life, you end up with a society where kids can’t go out and play, teachers carry guns to school, Muslims are thrown off planes for praying, the TSA declares water a potential weapon, and a worryingly growing number of cops and security guards are convinced that photography in public places is an act of terrorism.

And who wants their kids to grow up in a world like that?

No fear,

This is dF

WHEN BRAS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL WEAR BRAS

Speaking of irrational fears...

ITEM [via BoingBoing]: A large-breasted woman flying from Oakland to Boston is accosted by the TSA when the underwire in her bra sets off the metal detector.

She is given a choice: allow her breasts to be fondled or give up on flying. Instead, she took off the bra and passed, but missed her flight anyway.

Business as usual for the TSA, of course. The last paragraph is the most revealing, though:

Kates said that although she flies about once a month, the only other time her bra has set off alarms in an airport was while she was being "wanded" in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When she explained to the security agent that the wand was picking up the metal in her bra, she said, that was the end of the matter and she was allowed to go on her way.

TRAVEL TIP: Underwire bras ARE the “leading item that set off the metal detectors”, according to the TSA supervisor.

The same applies to federal courthouses, apparently.

The people who did the Airplane! movies solved this problem 25 years ago, of course. [Starting around 23 seconds into the clip, and probably NSFW.]

PRODUCTION NOTE: Airplane clip joke artlessly stolen from garbagecanmusic.

Turn me loose,

This is dF

FLYING SOLO IN THE MILE HIGH CLUB

And speaking of breasts on airplanes ...



Leave it to Fox News to make in-flight Internet sound like a potential porn haven waiting to infect yr children. Onoes! Porn on airplanes! Save the children! Etc.

Let's assess that risk for a moment, shall we?

Apart from the fact that only a few airlines offer on-board Wi-Fi, and (according to recent stats) 20% of passengers might have laptops and 5% might be willing to fork out an extra $13 for an Internet connection, everyone in this story (including the reporter) seems to accept the premise that people who look at Net porn don’t care if a complete stranger is sitting right next to them at the time – even if it’s a kid.

Okay, there might be a couple, and I can understand why people would complain. Hell, I’d probably complain (if I had kids, I mean – otherwise, it’d depend on whether they were watching anything good). But the point is that I’ll probably never have to complain because I’ll probably never see any Net porn on the laptop next to me. And I fly almost every month.

In fact, I’ll bet five American dollars right now that whenever flight attendants do field complaints over what people are watching on their laptops, it’ll be over things like a nude scene in an R-rated DVD or someone shopping on Victoria’sSecret.com or visiting a site with Arab-looking fonts on it or reading this blog because sometimes I post sexploitation movie trailers.

Like this one.

[Arguably NSFW – viewer discretion advised]

It’s also worth mentioning that this “risk” has existed for as long as people have been bringing laptops on planes. You could just as easily pre-download some porn for viewing on the flight, or bring some DVDs. For that matter, you don’t even an appliance. You can buy the usual mags at the airport and bring them with you. Know how many times I’ve ever seen someone looking at Club International on an airplane in 23 years of international travel? Zero.

Not while the lights are on, anyway.

Adjust yr seat, lower yr tray table and prepare for sexytime,

This is dF

I DON’T THINK THAT WORD MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS (FOX NEW VERSION)

ITEM [via dinopollard, and you've probably all seen this, but just in case]: Fox News' Megyn Kelly analyzes the DNC Michelle Obama speech, and the line "The world as it is just won't do" thusly:

“Do you think that, you know, her saying that she loves America, that she loves this country, is going to do it for those who questioned her patriotism? Because she said something -- what she said was, and I wrote it down, was, "The world as it is just won't do." If you replace "world" with "country," you're back to the same debate, arguably, that you have been having about Michelle Obama's feelings about this country. Did she give her critics any fodder with that comment?”

So ................................... basically she’s suggesting that if you replace key words of the speech with other words, then the speech would come across as anti-American.

Wait, this was a Internet meme, wasn’t it?

You know, even for Fox – home of the terror fist jab – this is just weird. The term “grasping at straws” comes to mind. But then I think the GOP passed that point when they started saying Obama was unqualified to be president because he would get the most votes.

No more pants do you require,

This is dF