On Christmas day, the United States was attacked by terrorists. Americans who should've been drinking eggnog spent the day glued to their TV screens, watching 9/11 happen all over again in the form of some lunatic failing to blow his own dick off. The world will never be the same, because 12/25 -- like 9/11 before it -- changed everything. Clearly, the only rational course of action is to re-invade Iraq. That, and have every air passenger drop their pants as they take off their shoes before boarding. Otherwise, the republic will surely crumble.To put things in perspective, whizbang statistician Nate Silver breaks things down. He compares flights that have experienced some sort of terrorist attempt with those that haven't.
There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.
So, the odds being forced to witness some lunatic failing to blow his dick off are pretty slim. You could be struck by lightning 20 times before you reach the same level of improbability. If you do manage to see this happen on an airliner, buy a lottery ticket immediately -- you may be in some sort of cosmic sweet spot... [CLICK FOR FULL POST]
