Safety Fork, the

On the BBC News website this morning I read an article reporting that the UK terror threat level has been downgraded from “critical” to “severe.” The article reports that “severe” means an attack was “highly likely, but not imminent.” I was inspired to check the Department of Homeland Security to learn the current US threat advisory. It’s “orange,” which is subtitled, “Significant Risk of Terrorist Attacks.” Does nobody else find these descriptions patently ridiculous?

If I flip a coin, I’d say it’s highly likely to land face-up. In fact, there’s only one other possiblity, and that only happens half of the time. If I start smoking cigarettes every day, there’s a significant risk that I’ll develop lung cancer or emphysema before I die.

Five percent of all people who have flown in space have died. When an astronaut sits in a chair atop an enormous bomb designed to go off very slowly, there’s a significant risk of death. Nobody cares. If the risk was four times that, if NASA came to me and said, we’ll send you to space, but there’s a one in five chance you’ll die, you better believe I’d do it.

I’ve been alive for 8,458 days. During that time, the population of the U.S. has been (conservatively) 250 million people. That’s around 2.1 trillion person-days. In how many of those person-days, do you suppose, was the person injured or killed in a terrorist attack? I’d wager it’s less than ten thousand, but if we’re generous and say the number is ten times that, that’s still only 4.8×10^-6 (0.0000048) percent.

Terrorism alert levels are meaningless, because they don’t reflect a degree of risk anyone cares about. Nothing worth doing is absolutely safe. I’m more likely to get fired from my job, be run over by a car, suffer a heart attack, or be stabbed by a mugger than I am likely to be targeted by a terrorist. Flaunting these ridiculous scales just makes government seem like a guy on a streetcorner ranting and waving a sign that reads “The End is Near.”

Tuesday was Darren’s birthday. A friend of his gave him tickets to see Of Montreal play in Minneapolis, but couldn’t make it, so I went with him instead.

The concert was literally so loud I couldn’t hear it. I can’t tell you, o hapless reader, whether I liked the music or not, because I don’t know whether it posessed lyrical virtue, nor whether instrumental talent was exhibited, nor whether scintillating harmonies were woven. Any such possibilities were sacrificed early and continuously on an altar of pure volume.

It looked like the performers had a good time, the fifteen-year-olds nearest the stage gyrated wildly—which I can only assume was a symptom of vibration-induced insane euphoria—and I am certain the electric company will enjoy sending the venue its bill. There’s just one thing I don’t get: does the guy who ran the sound board—who presumably does that for a living—not understand that he could have made the show twice as good by giving one knob a half-turn to the left?