"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm
?When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what's called the availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we?ve seen such dramatic deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a stroke because we don't have so many vivid images readily available.?
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