Statistics, Terrorism, Lack of Access to Health Care

“What I hope the president does… is talk about jobs, debt, terror and if he stopped right there it’d suit me fine, because if he focused on those three and got them in a better direction, then we could deal with health care.”

- Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) via NPR

In a fit of anger upon hearing this, I tweeted:

“Lack of access to health care kills more Americans every month than terrorists have in our nation’s entire history.”

- Me, via twitter

Admittedly, this is a very bold claim.  And I stand behind it.

The presumptions I’ve made in making this claim take into account the following assumptions which, depending on your point of view, are refutable:

• “Americans” means US Citizens on US soil.
• “Terrorists” means those who apply the calculated use of violence to achieve mass casualties against US citizens  in order to forward political goals.

The thing about statistics is that you could game either body count either way.  You could immediately throw out the study I reference, using a 2002 Institute of Medicine study which puts the total at less than half of the study I quote.

You could also pile on to assume that Terrorist attacks are any random act of violence leading to death, in which case the reverse claim could be made.

In looking at Terrorism, I’m using a much narrower focus.  The “terrorist” I speak of is the kind that we’re supposedly fighting in this War on Terror.  This precludes things like hate crimes, campaigns by the KKK, and many other uses of systematic violence with political motives.   It also precludes attacks on those working for the military, law enforcement or those attacks committed abroad.  I’m talking about organized terror groups acting specifically against civilians in the US along political lines.  All that being said:

Deaths attributable to Lack of Access to Health Care: 44,789 Annually, (approx. 3,732/month)

Deaths attributable to Terrorism in US History: 2,910 (Running total)

• 9/11: 2,668
• 1995 Oklahoma City: 168
• 1920 Wall Street Bombing: 38
• 1910 Los Angeles Times Bombing: 21
• 1993 WTC: 6
• 2001 Anthrax Attacks: 5
• Unabomber: 3
• 1996 Atlanta Olympic Bombing: 1

Which basically means there’s 822 terrorist deaths left to go before my statistic fails.  Any other attacks I forgot?

42 Points on the Future of Everything

When I asked Twitter what I should bring up in a talk on “The Future of Everything”, the only consistent answer I got was 42.  So, I came up with a talk featuring 35 points on the future that I’ve been thinking and invited fellow SIGINT participants to fill in the rest.

The More Things Change, The More Stay the Same

1. In the future, there will still be bad, memory leaking code
2. More data will be collected, and they still won’t know what to do with it
3. More “content” will be produced, it will be cheaper and of lower quality
4. LOLCats will not die, stupid memes will only get worse
5. Privacy is a relic of the past
6. Hackers will proliferate: Hacking in general will become more important
7. You’re still going to die

Old Memes: Things Ain’t Like They Once Was

8. Profanity
9. Arbiters of Taste
10. Context
11. Linear Narratives
12. Fixed Realities : Everyone Will Construct Their Own Reality
13. Newspapers : The Daily Newspaper is Dead

The Future is Now: We Can See, Touch and Taste It.

14. Voluntary Surveillance : The Creation of Parallel Realities
15. Ethnic Identity as a Choice : Everyone Will Decide What Race to Be
16. Smarter Terrorists : More of Them, More Creative Attacks
17. More Democracy : People Have the Tools to Make Decisions
18. People Will Do More With Less : Work 2.0, Energy 2.0, Materials 2.0
19. World Population Will Shrink (Because It Has To)
20. Money Will Lose Importance
21. Information You Produce Will Gain Importance as Currency
22. We Will Have to Use Less Energy: Fewer Resources, More Users, Heavier Load
23. We Will Source More Locally

Tomorrow : Educated Guesses About the Future

24. Makerbot = Altair 8800
25. Girls Will Get Into RepRap…When They Find Out It Makes Shoes
26. We Will Design Our Own Things
27. We Are Making Backup Copies Of Our Personas
28. Symbolic Interactionism ++
29. The Future Will Be More Modular
30. Microsoft Won’t Sell Software Anymore
31. The Basic Income Will Be The New Idea of Freedom
32. The Final Frontier Belongs to Us (Government Has Failed at Space Exploration)
33. Sattelite Internet by 2020: Net Neutrality Fight Will Be Won in Space
34. C-Base Will Pwn the Moon

Revenge Affects: The Future Is Not All Hope and Dreams

35. Water, Water Everywhere : And Were Flushing Out What’s Left to Drink
36. People Will Get More Spiritual

Crowdsourced Items

37. Radioactive Mutant Vampire Zombie Robots from Outerspace (Corrected, see comments)
38. Future of Warfare: Perpetual, Asymmetric Warfare
39. Digital Drugs & Data Integrity : Your Best (and Possibly Last Trip)
40. Risk Cannot Be Managed
41. Crowdsourcing Works, Bitches
42. Time is a finite resource … Even If We Have Club-Mate