Now Mumbai

1. Naturally, we are chilled by these latest attacks in India, but it's not certain that they forebode any new attacks here. My gut feeling is that terrorism is not likely to disappear, or even decrease, because it is a more effective political tool than open armed revolt. That worked in Castro's time, but as more people in underdeveloped countries choose democracy and free markets, conditions will sufficiently improve so that extremists, whether of religious or political identity, will realize that they can never hope to mobilize the general population to bring down the government. The benefits of freedom will have become too much a part of people's lives.

No, terrorism will be the best weapon for these dangerous fanatics to destabilize the government, perhaps paralyzing it. As the global market heats up, they will feel even more pressure to take violent action. But covertly, and only against the innocent and unarmed.

2. Here in America, we are faced with daunting choices. Recently, a federal judge issued a ruling which permitted a civil lawsuit to proceed to trial. The suit was filed by two Egyptian-born men who were arrested and questioned by federal air marshals because they behaved suspiciously during a cross-country flight. What was their "suspicious" behavior? I haven't read the decision, so I only know of this from a NY Times article (11/25/08), but it seems that it was mostly because they spoke Arabic and were seen changing their seats. They were finally released after four hours.

What are we to make of this? Can innocent people really be arrested just for speaking in their own language? I'll answer that: of course they can, if the "totality of circumstances" are found too similar to the scenario of a terrorist attack, at least as conceived and rehearsed by trained security officers. But if so, how can we claim that the Bill of Rights still exists in the 21st century?

I have no answer for that now. In the meantime, I will read the judge's decison and follow the trial.

Information Obesity

One of the most anxiety-producing problems in America is obesity. No one disputes that it shortens life, limits our activities and relationships and is getting worse. And, in most cases, it's caused by an uncontrolled appetite.

But America also has another problem due to lack of dietary discipline. This is what I call "information obesity". We are becoming bloated with information that is poured into us 24/7, and we can hardly move because of it.

Is this so bad? Yes, if we just look at its "nutritional value". Like the artery-clogging fats and starch sold in fast food outlets, most information we take in is cheap, useless and has the same flavor as what we ate yesterday. Which is why, of course, we love it so.

One example, a relatively harmless one, is the "Top 10" grossing movies of the week. We are told that last week's Number 1 was "knocked off" by this week's entry. This is true, if you only look at raw numbers, but where is the competition anyway? The new Number 1 wasn't in release last week, so nobody could see it. But last week's Number 1 was seen by millions. Those same people were not going to see that same movie again, were they? Yet we still let the media pretend that this is an actual contest where the two movies are compared for the same thing!

But if we know it's phony, why do we still look at the list? We do it because it's "fun" to compare anything at all even if we know that the comparison is whimsical and statistically meaningless.

I've noticed that some papers have dropped the list altogether, probably because television gets the drop on the print media on the Sunday evening news, so it's already stale by Monday morning. Too bad.

But you can be sure that the statistics machine will be tweaked again for some new popularity contest so that we can be "hooked" again on a regular basis.

We just love those empty calories.