<I’ve been sitting on this post for a while undecided if I wanted published – here it is – now a couple of months old>

One minute you’re having a meaningful technical discussion about something at work and hours later that person is gone without any advanced notice – weird feeling. Very weird, indeed. “At-will-employment” works both ways, I guess. Coming from Europe, I’m not a friend of this policy… It’s like: sudden death. BTW: we had  a co-worker passing away earlier this year, too. Very disturbing, I can say. Also, because nobody is legally allowed to talk about what happened medically at work… Village gossip used to bridge that gap… No more. Lawyers have closed that hole. The only indication of sudden death is the announcement of such occurance, as well as the reassignment of the office space. Sad.

A huge amount of research on fear and the brain teaches us that we exaggerate threats that are rare, spectacular, immediate, random — in this case involving an innocent child — senseless, horrific and graphic. Terrorism pushes all of our fear buttons, really hard, and we overreact.

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Terrorism isn’t primarily a crime against people or property. It’s a crime against our minds, using the deaths of innocents and destruction of property as accomplices.

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So what should we be afraid of?

BS: Car crashes. Global warming. It feels insensitive to say it so close to the tragedy, but it’s true. What people should worry about are things so common that they’re no longer news. That’s what kills people. Terrorism is so rare, it’s hardly a risk worth spending a lot of time worrying about.