Statistical Analysis of Terrorism 265
Harperdog sends in a Miller-McCune story about Aaron Clauset, a researcher whose studies on the statistics and patterns that arise from large numbers of terrorist attacks could help governments better prepare for such conflicts and reduce uncertainty about their frequency and magnitude. Quoting:
"After mapping tens of thousands of global terrorism incidents, he and his collaborators have discovered that terrorism can be described by what mathematicians call a power law. ... Using this power law relationship — called 'scale invariance' — the risk of a large attack can be estimated by studying the frequency of small attacks. It’s a calculation that turns the usual thinking about terrorism on its head. 'The conventional viewpoint has been there is "little terrorism" and "big terrorism," and little terrorism doesn't tell you anything about big terrorism,' Clauset explains. 'The power law says that's not true.' Massive acts of violence, like 9/11 or the devastating 1995 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, obey the same statistical rules as a small-scale IED attack that kills no one, Clauset's work suggests. 'The power law form gives you a very simple extrapolation rule for statistically connecting the two,' he says."
Double edged sword (Score:2)
No doubt this sort of analysis will soon be used to plan terrorist attacks.
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Re:Double edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for heading off an anticipated terrorist attack, this is a good result. Good = "attack didn't happen".
It's probably pretty similar to how the FBI views serial killers and rapists, except in this case they have more leeway with how to deal with suspected perps overseas. At some level, the flow chart kind of goes like "we killed someone(s), and the big boom didn't happen. We probably got the right perps." Or, "we did something, and the expected big boom didn't happen or we (think) we interrupted it", so that's good too.
While Donald Rumsfeld was being a bit trite and sarchastic (shock!) when he gave his infamous "what we don't know" speech, he probably got it right as far as this area goes.
The professionals involved realize that it's a probability game, though. The Politicians and polity expect exactitude, though, which in the US, really sucks these days. We (in the polity) don't seem to want to accept probabilities anymore. Our political mobthink currently is that "80% sure" isn't good enough. Nor is 90% or 95% or 99-44/100ths sure good enough, because...we really like to grasp on to the "but what if it was your kid that was the .00001%" these days, and "shit happens" has left our collective meme space, as has some level of reasonableness and perspective, not only as a whole, but individually.
We in the US (and western Europe?) are pretty self-deluded in that we think we respond rationally and deliberately, but really we just seem to react right now like a big pack of baboons when a lion or hyena has been spotted.
But I'm likely preaching to the choir anyways...
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"... of course we all know how > 99% of terror attacks could be prevented easily, however that would violate "freedom of 'religion'"
Violate freedom of religion or be decried as . . . OMG!! ... "Racial Profiling"!
Or maybe just enforcing the F&^%$#@ immigration laws that we already have, like arresting and deporting people who are here on expired Visas (e.g. several of the 9-11 hijackers).
Tracking down a lead about people taking flying lessons but opting out of the "how to land" course might be a good
Pointless comment (Score:5, Insightful)
or rather, as soon as it starts to work, and stops terrorist attacks...
well then it stops working, doesn't it?
You reply suggests that you misunderstood.
The power law doesn't suggest where and when an attack happens, so it can't stop a single one from happening. Statistics doesn't predict that just like statistical climate laws won't predict whether it rains tomorrow or not.
The power law only says how many attacks will probably happen in the next period of time in a certain large area - within a certain degree of freedom.
And with that infinite wisdom, politicians are able to take appropriate measures. That's the whole point of it.
Today, politicians scream the loudest so that all voters can hear they take the strongest measures against terrorism of all. That may not be necessary when terrorism can be regarded with the same statistics as traffic deaths, plane crashes, diseases and other causes of death.
Maybe in the future politicians will say that it is indeed a little pointless to allocate 20% of the annual governmental budget to prevent 3000 terror-deaths, while the same money could save 100,000 in hospitals if it were to be spent on medicine rather than anti-terror measures. (But maybe that's just my wishful thinking).
Besides, I don't think you can't stop terrorism. You can only motivate people not to be a terrorist in the first place.
Once people cross a line, and decide they want to hurt our society, they will. Somehow.
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Ah, but the summary did clearly say:
the risk of a large attack can be estimated by studying the frequency of small attacks
(main article slashdotted as I write this so it take the summary as accurate - fool that I am)...
This would suggest the power law uses small acts to predict big ones. I'm not seeing any reference to time period or location.
So a given pattern/frequency of small attacks (or the lack there of) may have predictive value for large ones in spite of or in addition to all the usual and customary sources used to scare, er, warn the populace.
I'm not so sure you can leap from a sim
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Estimating the risk doesn't mean predicting the event. It's like if you throw dices, and see that about 1/3 of the throws get a 6 (i.e. you notice that the dices are biased). From that you can estimate the chance of getting five 6s in a row, and thus can decide if you should prepare for this possibility (assuming that in the game five 6s in a row have some effect in the game play). It doesn't, however, tell you when, or even if, those five 6s in a row will happen. It could be the next five throws, or it co
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How is this going to suddenly and magically change the way politicians behave?
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How is this going to suddenly and magically change the way politicians behave?
I admit that it's unlikely that politicians will change soon. But at least it gives them the necessary information to be more rational about terrorism (rather than the standard "OMG!! They come to kill us all!" kind of emotional response when someone farts on an airplane). With the information, it's up to them if they are populist emotional idiots, or rational statesmen (and women).
They will be able to compare the risk of terrorism to other risks.
Right now, they estimate budget for disaster relief and preve
Totally OT (Score:3)
So what happened with the mayor today? Suicide?
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Once people cross a line, and decide they want to hurt our society, they will. Somehow.
Unless you kill them.
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I think the point was that if the terrorists know that the model predicts a big attack for this Wednesday, they can schedule it for next Thursday instead.
It's similar to predicting the stock market. Even if a method works it fails once everyone knows it.
Why bring rationality into it? (Score:2)
The government is very happy letting irrationality dictate discourse. Fear keeps rational discourse out of the conversation. It is much better to have the people think that it is a good idea to duct tape themselves into their homes and suffocate. Fewer trouble makers that way.
nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
The observation of scale invariance in this kind of data tells you nothing about the short term relationship between low level and high level attacks. Physicists really shouldn't be doing statistics...
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Physicists should do statistics. What they should not do is do statistics which they dont know about.
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How about, physicists who are not statisticians shouldn't claim to be, and physicists who aren't should make sure they know at least a little?
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I have taught stats, was a physics major (Masters level, switched to an applied Math PhD), and have done more graduate stats than many of my stats colleges. I am in no way unusual.
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The observation of scale invariance in this kind of data tells you nothing about the short term relationship between low level and high level attacks. Physicists really shouldn't be doing statistics...
You're right... it's the bloody politicians who should be doing the statistics. After all, they govern a millions of people. They face problems which should be approached by statistics, and nothing else. But since they don't, someone else has got to do it, right?
Politicians are too busy with incident-management.
I applaud the attempt.
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Physicists really shouldn't be doing statistics...
Just calculus.
by what mathematicians call a power law. ... Using this "power law" relationship
I actually just stopped and laughed.
Also:
'The conventional viewpoint has been there is "little terrorism" and "big terrorism," and little terrorism doesn't tell you anything about big terrorism,' Clauset explains. 'The power law says that's not true.'
Now it's like a zero-tolerance law for a terrorist act. (And we all know how effective those are...)
...
On another note anyone have a copy of the article or is able to grab a snippet? - because I really like to actually read these things and it seems we have crashed the site atm. (Math articles = I read)
Naught to do with physicists, really (Score:2)
Statistic should not be used to try and predict phenomena which depend on variables or data that are neither quantifiable nor reliable.
SB
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While it tells you nothing about the short term relationship, it does tell you that the chance of a major terrorist incident is more likely than it would be if these attacks followed a normal distribution.
If it were a normal distribution, the World Trade Centre attack would be an aberration, orders of magnitude bigger than typical terrorist attacks. There would be no need to preempt such attacks.
But the scale invariance shows us that we should be prepared for the possibility of an attack of this magnit
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Scale invariance always demonstrates one thing clearly. Wherever it occurs for a real phenomenon, there is no sharp line between two or more things that are usually being called by different names (at least by somebody involved), and so, it's logical to infer that they are really not such different things at all. As one of my instructors put it back in the dark ages, "When you analyse data on smooth flow and turbulent flow and the problem turns out to be scale invariant, you have a situation where there are
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Is there any way to move grants off the national security paper money for paper bullshit scheme?
Don't wanna see people living off the mil-ind complex, it's bad for the country.
Seems obvious to me (Score:2)
Analyse this ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Statistical analysis shows that the amount of terrorist incidents is actually quite small, but the governments around the world like to exaggerate how many there actually are, to deprive decent hard working people of their freedom and democracy, and pee a lot of money up a wall in the process.
Re:Analyse this ! (Score:5, Insightful)
And by "up a wall", you mean "into other peoples' pockets", right?
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They're just paying out dividends to their investors!
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No offense, but I didn't need statistical analysis to figure that out. :)
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Statistical analysis shows that the amount of terrorist incidents is actually quite small, but the governments around the world like to exaggerate how many there actually are, to deprive decent hard working people of their freedom and democracy, and pee a lot of money up a wall in the process.
Your sig is, "Take Nobody's Word For It." Very fitting. You don't know what you are talking about.
The list of terrorist attacks in just 2008 [wikipedia.org] isn't short, and doesn't include the many arrests and foiled plots. Wikipe
Re:Analyse this ! (Score:5, Informative)
Source?
Also, even if your stats are true, globally 609 dead per month from terrorism in comparison to the global total of 4,680,652 (from http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/pcwe [census.gov]) is negligeble. Considering the number of average monthly deaths from smoking alone is over 410000 (http://www.quitsmokingsupport.com/global.htm), I'm not sure how you can justify your statement of "not "quite small"...
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The source would seem to be http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ [thereligionofpeace.com] which seems rather unreliable, for instance, it counts incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan which are war zones without a functioning criminal justice system and also counts incidents like "policemen got shot" where you generally have no idea if that's just normal criminal activity.
Re-analyse that (Score:2)
I'm afraid you are wrong. Compare it to the number of car accident deaths [edgarsnyder.com], for example. (and yes I know the source isn't great, but you are welcome to google to your hearts content to see if you can show me how terrorism is more dangerous than driving or riding in a car.)
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
These are the same type of guys that gave us statistically accurate risk modeling for the complex derivative securities and we know how well that turned out. One must be careful with mathematical models, especially when you're modeling sentiment.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
BS on you. The mathematicians gave a statistical analysis for a specific purpose. The brokerage managers miss-used it, and were told by their own people that they were applying it to something they should not. They went ahead and crashed the whole thing anyways. No fault to the mathematicians. Just the fault of a bunch of managers and bean counters, probably at best with a MA in business.
Losers.
Oh, wait, many of them got big bonuses and promotions. Some of them work for Obama. I guess they aren't losers, after all.
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Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of them work for Obama. I guess they aren't losers, after all.
You know what I find most disgustingly ironic about all the rhetoric lately?
Too many people are forgetting that the real roots of the problems we have now don't stem from just this administration or this congress, but from decades worth of corruption and self-serving jackasses that WE - yes, WE - have elected into office.
As George Carlin said once: "Where are all the bright, honest people of conscience?"
SB
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As George Carlin said once: "Where are all the bright, honest people of conscience?"
In just about every other profession/occupation except for politics and management.
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SB
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Actually, they were going to use statistical tools from, I think, the futures market to assess various risk vectors for terrorism. I read an overview of it and, well, it seemed as good as anything else when trying to predict what a society of billions of individuals will generate. I thought it was enough outside the box to be interesting. But then the media so misreported it that people truly thought a market was being set up to *wager* on terrorist events. I remember it because it was one of the final thin
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These are the same type of guys that gave us statistically accurate risk modeling for the complex derivative securities and we know how well that turned out. One must be careful with mathematical models, especially when you're modeling sentiment.
I challenge you to name a nontrivial model that stays "careful" when you gamble on it with 50 to 1 leverage.
Stock Market Shenanigans (Score:3)
This is just like all those crap magazines you can buy to show you how to make millions in the stock market. There is always someone willing to look at a graph of past occurrences, draw a line through it, and show you the formula for what happened.
The trick being, of course, that they are all 100% worthless for predicting future trends. The only thing you know in the stock market is this: If a stock is going up, it can continue to go up. Or it might stay the same or go down. The only thing this guy will learn from his analysis is that there might be another terrorist attack. Or there might not. And it might be more, equal, or less severe than previous attacks.
Re:Stock Market Shenanigans (Score:4, Insightful)
The trick being, of course, that they are all 100% worthless for predicting future trends.
Actually, they're pretty good at predicting broad trends. It's just that they're not good at predicting specific outcomes. In the same way that understanding the odds of roulette doesn't let you predict what number will come up on a specific spin. The only way to really use the odds is to bet across the entire table to take advantage of the trend - that's what the house does.
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Actually, they're pretty good at predicting broad trends.
The problem with this and the market compared to random or natural phenomenon is that an accepted, accurate model changes things to make the model invalid. In this example, if the model is shown to be accurate predictor, is well published, then the organizers unconsciously making the current pattern will change their behavior if they are about to do something a model is going to predict. Similarly in the economic market, accurate models drive behavior changes that heavily distort the market. Simple fact
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You pose an interesting dilema: If the market is accurately modeled and understood, that very model changes the market, thus rendering the model invalid.
From my experience, I would say it really depends on the model, and how well you're at keeping secrets if it's any good ;)
During the past 200 years, people have modeled the markets in so many ways, yet, the dynamic expression of markets is very much the same as so long ago. There is not much difference, when comparing the same levels of liquidity, which is
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The trick being, of course, that they are all 100% worthless for predicting future trends.
Actually, they're pretty good at predicting broad trends. It's just that they're not good at predicting specific outcomes. In the same way that understanding the odds of roulette doesn't let you predict what number will come up on a specific spin. The only way to really use the odds is to bet across the entire table to take advantage of the trend - that's what the house does.
I have two friends who work in finance (I'm sure I'm not alone in this here), one as a trader and one as a quant. The trader does very, very well. The quant, who is using some very sophisticated mathematics (say, "power law" to him, and he'll retort, "most examples aren't actually power laws, just things that look like power laws that people don't bother checking; a severely skewed distribution does not a power law make") does not do quite as well, but still has a positive return.
Not everyone in finance i
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Sounds like you've been had there my friend. However, do you think we now know everything there is to know? For it sure sounds like that.
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> The only thing you know in the stock market is this: If a stock is going up, it can continue to go up. Or it might stay the same or go down.
Not really. There are a few things you can say. For example, increases in volume almost always come before significant increases in movement, and forecast them--they just don't tell you whether the stock will go rapidly up or rapidly down. You can also say "Look, I can buy a share of company X for Y dollars, when the company as a whole, based on its balance shee
If Terrorist Attacks Could be Modelled ... (Score:2)
Then they wouldn't be terrorist attacks. The element of surprise is the chief weapon.
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Then they wouldn't be terrorist attacks. The element of surprise is the chief weapon.
It's the same concept behind password cracking; passwords are supposed to be difficult to predict, however certain passwords (e.g. 123456) are used very frequently and so if I want to crack your account I'll try that first. Just because people try to be unpredictable doesn't mean they act in a way that cannot be predicted.
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Fear and surprise.
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> Fear and surprise.
And ruthless efficiency.
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you forgot "a fanatical devotion to the Pope", but that doesn't fit with the theme. Monty Python sketch does not apply to real-life situation. Film at 11.
The term "Terrorism" is... (Score:2, Flamebait)
... misleading, after all many so-called terrorists are merely frustrated people who have not had their voices heard or who have been abandoned by lawless and reckless rulers or who've had their countries unlawfully invaded.
I wonder if these studies check the conditions that these "terrorists" arise out of.
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Actually, it's very simple: Blowing up innocent people, just because you can, is terrorism.
Wether you do it from a Comanche helicopter or with pipe bombs doesn't make much difference.
Why make it more complicated than that?
It's more than that (Score:3)
Terrorism is also threatening to blow people up just because you can. It's also threatening economic sanctions or embargoes if certain ultimatums are not satisfied. By this measure, the United States government is the largest and best funded terrorist organization in the world.
There are a variety ways we express it: an private diplomatic threat, a publicly implied threat, an threat of economic sanctions through the UN (while we ignore UN resolutions against us), military "exercises", CIA coups, and of cours
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The people with weapons are the terrorists.
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That isn't even close to the definition of terrorism. Blowing them up in the hopes of some outcome in the name of some cause, no matter how misguided, is terrorism. Blowing up innocent people just because you can is more likely to be the act of someone who is a sadist with Antisocial Personality Disorder, but is definitely not terrorism at all.
Terrorism is not simply blowing people up. (Score:3)
> Actually, it's very simple: Blowing up innocent people, just because you can, is terrorism.
No--terrorism requires some component of "terror." Blowing up innocent people often qualifies, but not always. For example, blowing up innocent people may be genocide, with an intention of eliminating--rather than terrifying--a population. Or it may be an untempered reaction to being a twenty-year old who's just seen his friends killed--a twenty year old with automatic weapons, who lashes out too easily at a r
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Says who?
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Not sure if that's true or not, but sociopaths account for something on the order of 1-3% of the population, according to estimates I've read (I'm recalling specifically Sam Harris' book, The Moral Landscape, but you can find some estimates online easily enough). That's obviously plenty of people to inflict lots of death and destruction on the rest of us.
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But most people will kill innocent people just because a sociopath told them to do so, as Stanley Milgram demonstrated.
Also, an interesting part of the terrorism issue is that the UN was challenged to come up with a definition of terrorism that didn't also included the kind of stuff governments (including the US) do all the time. Their solution was to specifically include the rule that terrorism can only be done by "non-state actors".
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Terrorist = "someone opposing any government who should be dead"
Calling someone a terrorist is just a lame excuse to place them outside the law.
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Terrorist = "someone opposing any government who should be dead"
Calling someone a terrorist is just a lame excuse to place them outside the law.
So your thinking is that no government in their right mind would label the people who do things like ths terrorists?
Or
1995 Eh? (Score:2)
Or is he just so meta he doesn't even need to get the date right?
Use log-log paper. (Score:5, Funny)
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For small values of x, tan(x) is approximately equal to x.
Here is the stat that really matters (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe you spend too much time watching sensationalist media, but most of us aren't concerned about terrorism at all. Rather, we're much more concerned with the bullshit the gov't does using counter-terrorism as an excuse.
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Actually, NHTSA studied fatality rates by vehicle type [dot.gov]. SUVs do offer more protection in collisions by virtue of their greater mass. But this is almost exactly offset by their greater tendency to roll over (and higher fatality rate in roll-overs). Consequently, occupants of mid-size SUVs are only slightly safer than occupants of small cars, and occupants of full-size SUVs are slightly more likely to die than occupants
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Global war on road safety and the common cold (Score:2)
I think the parent thread is pointing out that in terms of saving lives, money spent on road safety campaigns and improving driving ability might be better value than spending it on counter-terrorism in the way we do right now.
But you also make the fine point that spending money on public health and health education would also be a fine use of that money, perhaps even a better one. It's probably easier to spend money on driver education and reducing road deaths than curing the common cold but anti-poverty m
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Re:Here is the stat that really matters (Score:5, Insightful)
you can have an arbitrarily high level of control over your vehicle safety and over how severe crash would be
Bullshit.
I had an accident a few years ago. I was stopped at a red light and the one-ton pickup truck coming down the road behind me at 60 mph somehow didn't see either me or the light and slammed into me. It was miraculous that I survived and didn't have any crippling injuries. What, exactly, could I have done to "have an arbitrarily high level of control" over my safety in that situation, other than stay off the road?
Another example: My aunt and uncle were in a quad-cab pickup truck with their friends, who drove through a country intersection in which the cross traffic had a stop sign. The driver of the semi truck coming down the road failed to notice the stop sign (or the large "STOP" painted on the road a couple hundred yards before the stop sign) and t-boned them at probably 65 mph. All four people in the pickup were killed. What, exactly, could they have done to "have an arbitrarily high level of control" over their safety in that situation, other than stay off the road?
The truth is that no matter how careful and skilled a driver you are, when you're on the road your life is in the hands of whatever other drivers happen to be nearby. Generally, they're at least careful enough and skilled enough not to hit you. But sometimes they're not, and there's nothing you can do about that.
And you're vastly, vastly more likely to be killed by one of those people than you are by a terrorist.
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I've never heard that SUVs were particularly unsafe before. Just out of curiosity which type of vehicle is safer?
Think it's the vehicle that most people in nyc use.
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Rollover risk varies by vehicle. I think it is higher among SUV's because they have higher centers of gravity and the wider wheelbase doesn't make up for it. It's still not that high, and a good SUV helps in other situations. My grandparents survived being hit by a tractor trailer at 55 because they were in a suburban. SUV's also give you an advantage in that you are a little higher up and are slightly more likely to be able to see what is happening on the road. The downside is that you're more dangero
IED attacks as terrorism? (Score:2)
I question whether road-side bomb attacks against soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan should be considered terrorism (I am, perhaps wrongly, assuming that most such attacks are against soldiers rather than civilians). If soldiers are being 'terrorised' by the threat of facing bombs, they probably aren't very good soldiers.
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Not saying it isn't scary. But so is all war, and I don't understand why people should pop up and complain that the opposing side is terrorizing 'our' soldiers.
Just to finish the quote for him: (Score:5, Funny)
"'The power law form gives you a very simple extrapolation rule for statistically connecting the two,' he says" ..as long as all terrorists are perfectly spherical and act in a complete vacuum.
The observation is not completely new... (Score:2)
I thought... (Score:2)
... I remembered reading about a study like this years ago. Turns out, I did. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/21465 [physicsworld.com]
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Yes, because of course all terrorists are the same color and come from the same place, and only attack people that are actively engaging them militarily. There's nothing but ignorant generalizations in your post, and personally, I'd take masturbation over nose-picking any day.
Parent wan't a gerneralization. (Score:2, Interesting)
If the parent was generalizing, her would have said something like Muslims are the terrorists.
Let's say this - if we stopped meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, we'd see a huge reduction in terrorism. Because, in the last 15 years most of the terrorist attacks have been made by Muslims (mostly Arab) pissed off at the US for supporting Israel, being in the Middle East and basically throwing our weight around like we own the Goddamn planet.
Yes, we'll still have to occasional Tim McVeigh or abortion clinic bo
Re:Parent wan't a gerneralization. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Northern Ireland shows a strong correlation between both economic failure and economic uncertainty and increasing terrorist acts. The costs of the middle east and their impact on the rest of the economy have created precisely the situation that the record shows triggers a largish spike in terrorism in and around Ireland. You ignore this fact and call others naive, and come to the illogical conclusion that restoring a stable peacetime economy won't help. By your viewpoint, we have to stay the damned course a
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Northern Island is a success. While there may still be some people who continue the fight the vast majority are now engaged in power sharing and the democratic process. Once the government decided to try to negotiate a resolution instead of just fighting the terrorists both sides were able to reach a compromise that has been shown to work. The British government had to realise that there were genuine grievances and what it called "terrorists" saw themselves as soldiers.
Fighting terrorists is not the answer,
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I'd take masturbation over nose-picking any day.
Frankly neither are things that should be done in public.
Re:How about... (Score:4, Informative)
How about we just stop killing and otherwise pissing off brown-skinned people?
You don't understand what is actually happening. Read Bin Laden's Letter to America [guardian.co.uk]. You will see that the actual demand isn't to be "left alone". Bin Laden's first demand is:
Bin Laden demands that we convert to Islam. He follows that up with demands that we ditch the Constitution, implement Islamic Sharia law, and do away with the separation of church and state. Among other things we would have to start killing homosexuals and adulterers, end the charging of interest on bank loans, put an end to drug use, pornography, and alcohol use, amputating the hands of thieves, and many other things. Dressing "immodestly" could get you whipped, which probably means burkas for women. Men would have to grow their beards out, or face a whipping. Crucifixion may be a required punishment for some crimes [timesonline.co.uk]. Afghanistan under the Taliban was almost ideal to them. If we do not agree to this we can expect that his minions will continue to try to kill us.
It is not especially significant that Bin Laden issued that demand to the United States, in time every country will have to deal with it. Subduing the United States is just one step along their path, and they understand that it could take 500 years. Many countries have been attacked. Stockholm had a suicide bomber this weekend [economist.com]. (Thankfully it appears that one of the Stockholm terrorist's bombs blew prematurely and he couldn't get about five more planted - otherwise it might have been another Madrid, London 7/7, Bali, or similar bombing.)
What Do the Terrorists Want? [A Caliphate] [danielpipes.org]
Good background here [telegraph.co.uk].
Ignoring them won't make them go away. They have their own goals - nothing we do other than covert to Islam or fight them will dissuade them. Trying to buy them off or deal with them only delays the inevitable. We are in for a long struggle that will be far bloodier for us if we aren't clear about it. Al Qaeda has a f
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I'm surprised that this got modded up to 4 - people have not taken the time to critically reflect on the letter that Bin Laden openly promulgated, and when they do, they tend to dismiss it as ravings of a madman. It is not the workings of a madman. It is the work of a very sane, highly intelligent man who happens to be a major figure in a world-wide death cult dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal slaves to a hateful, spite-filled deity known as Allah.
The problem comes about because we
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You forgot the words 'moon worshippers'. It is vital that next to every mention of 'death cult', you have at least one 'moon worhippers'. Get with the program ! No dessert for you.
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Increase education, human rights, and quality of life in those countries and religion - as well as all of the strife, human rights issues, and general pain-in-the-ass retarded ideas (my opinion, YMMV) that come with it - will disappear on its own over time.
How many terrorist attacks of any sort have taken place in Sweden or The Netherlands?
If the people have not only their basic needs met but also have things like a good social safety net they will be far harder to sway to extremist causes that try to chang
Re:How about... (Score:4, Informative)
How many terrorist attacks of any sort have taken place in Sweden or The Netherlands?
Sweden had its first suicide bombing [economist.com] this last weekend. The Netherlands have seen a number of killings [economist.com], perhaps to some disturbing views: Dutch Muslim: 'Murder is normal' [jihadwatch.org].
How many middle class persons of any country - people two or three times above that country's poverty line - have parked an explosives-laden truck next to a building and blown it up?
The middle class are strongly represented among terrorists and leaders of terrorist organizations. Here are just a few examples, there are many more:
“Doctor’s Plot” Trial Examines Unexpected Source for UK Terrorist Attacks [jamestown.org]
MOHAMMED ATTA [discoverthenetworks.org] - 9/11 Ring Leader
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri (MD) - Al-Qaeda's theological leader [infoplease.com]
It might be easier if this was all about poverty and social safety nets, but that isn't the case. Increasing numbers of young Muslims born and raised in the West are taking up arms and bombs to kill in the name of what they call Jihad. They are being radicalized in Western Europe.
The poverty/terror myth [jihadwatch.org]
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There's no doubt that Bin Laden is a fervent Islamist fundamentalist. Without doubt, he will not be satisfied with anything less than the subjugation and conversion of the entire world to Islam. The real question, though, is how does he continue to attract so many followers and so much support? The vast majority of people, no matter their religion, are perfectly happy spending their life living as best they can (being the "sheeple" that some around here seem to detest so much) - they wouldn't have anything
Re:How about... (Score:4, Interesting)
That is one of the worst citation mangling cases I have seen in a while. Moderated troll for only lifting the parts that support your argument from the linked doc and then attempting to speak with authority. Feeble when the sources are one click away
You are a sad little troll. You aren't part of the Electronic Jihad [jihadwatch.org] by any chance? Or maybe simply practicing Taqiyya [danielpipes.org]?
Please read the links. They support my statements, although I wish they didn't. I would prefer that we could live in peace.
Another useful story: What al-Qaida Really Wants [spiegel.de].
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