So how would you behave sitting next to an agitated man on the top of a bus?

London bombs :

"The statistics are those killed and hurt. And the uninjured face physical “chaos” as they attempt to move from one place to another. But what has it done to our heads? Because, for most people, that’s where terror lives."

This is a wonderful piece of journalism by David Aaronovitch. Wonderful because it keeps your feet on the ground and makes you look at the whole picture. It explains some of the things which come into play in traumatic events like this and looks at the mechanisms by which the truth is subverted into speculation because people are trying to deal with the shock of it all and have a great need to rationalise the irrational. Everytime an event like this occurs we go through the same old sickening routine of media hype and our need for it but the terror in our heads is never resolved. We know we are expendible. We know our leaders will come out and pontificate. We know it's not working and we know it's going to go on like this because people can be replaced but property, oil, land,position...that all has monetary value. So we are constantly caught up in the reportage and the blatant truth of nothing having changed. We are not safer because of the "war on terror." The world doesn't need a cataclysmic event to do it in because we are doing that quite well ourselves. For all of that we still love humanity, we still react to the pain and we are still mucked about in the head. Is there a better way? Yes. When you find out what it is, tell me and I'll blog it.