Terrorism, WMDs

The BBC reports an attack on the South Korean Daegu underground. The lone perpetrator seems to have just used fire, fueled by petrol or something, and killed at least 100 people. It's not reported how many are injured but alive.

In comparison when the Aum cult attacked the Tokyo underground using sarin, a nerve gas, there were many people performing the operation and they only killed twelve people. On the other hand, thousands suffered more or less unpleasant direct and indirect side effects.

I'm also reminded of the once fairly common meme that the best place to be if the cold war went hot was near a target: it'd be over quickly for you.

Perhaps the terror we associated with NBC weapons is to do with what happens when they don't kill you: the debilitation from being poisoned, the radiation sickness, the ostracism ("he's the one from that weird attack").

Tuesday

I haven't done any of the various self-rating, shart pointy truth things that have been floating around here lately (except one which was a joke anyway), neither to express opinions on others or to gather opinions on myself. In both cases I have a fairly strong gut reaction against wanting anything to do with them.

In the former case I can (post-hoc) rationalize it as liking my friends "warts and all" and not feeling particularly inclined to probe the warts (ewww) as it were. Possibly that's a negative viewpoint (I could just answer the questions that I wanted to give positive answers to and leave the rest, but that risks them assuming the worst where the truth might only be mildly suboptimal).

As to the latter, I don't feel any need to produce a rationalization, it seems a perfectly natural thing to want to avoid. l-)

An oddly tiring evening - shopping, food, a bit of work on the (now pleasantly blue) bedroom. There is plenty more work to do but we reckon it's sensible to sleep in again, something which I personally plan to do quite soon after finishing this entry.

At work I've pushed things forward a bit, there are a couple of open questions about the scope of the project, one feature which someone wants enough to defend and another which was suggested but nobody seems particularly inclined to push.