Oh, the Insanity

Need a chuckle? Check out this column on the oil spill by The New Republic assistant editor, Bradford Plumer. I don't know the guy, but I think he needs to get out more often. Note his subtitle: "Why our reaction to the oil spill absolutely scares me." The clinching line is in the middle of the third paragraph.

But a deeper problem is that, as Cass Sunstein argues in his book Worst-Case Scenarios, humans seem to have an inherently difficult time preparing for low-probability catastrophes—we tend to vacillate between total panic and utter neglect, with little middle ground.

I'm giggling again even as I type. "Humans have an inherently difficult time preparing for low-probability catastrophes." Oh really? Does he mean to imply that humans are more inclined to prepare for high-probability catastrophes? Who'd of thought?

I'll bet Plumer's prepared though. While the rest of us poor fools, "tend to vacillate between total panic and utter neglect", he's no doubt perched over his keyboard eager to punch out yet another primal scream of a column like this one if necessary.

Good grief.