Joel

“If Australia had not been settled as a prison and built by convict labor, it would have been colonized by other means; that was foreordained from the moment of Cook’s landing at Botany Bay in 1770. But it would have taken half a century longer, for Georgian Britain would have found it exceptionally difficult to find settlers crazy or needy enough to go there of their own free will.”
― Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding

“Big Data isn’t magic, and it doesn’t tell the feds who’s a terrorist and who’s not. But it doesn’t have to be magic to generate long lists of people who are in some ways red-flagged, elevated-risk, “people of interest.” Most of the people on those lists will have nothing to do with terrorism. How confident are you that you’re not one of them?”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

“But caution can have unintended consequences. After the 9/11 attacks in New York, many people felt more nervous of flying and took to their cars instead. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer states that 1,500 more people than usual were killed on US roads over the following year.10”
― Michael Blastland, The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers About Danger and Death

“One accident that kills, say, 10 people gets far more attention than 10 accidents that kill 1 each. The 876 people each year who die on US tracks usually have little publicity, but imagine if they all occurred at once. . . .”
― Michael Blastland, The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers About Danger and Death