Uhm, so the Pentagon suddenly came to the conclusion that their most bizarre scheme in the war on terror, basically betting on future terrorist activities, was a bad idea. Uhm, duh. I’m still puzzling over who the hell thought this could possibly have been a good idea in the first place. Imagine, for example, if the White House chief of staff, suggested that Wednesday afternoons should be reserved for dwarf tossing in the west wing. You’d think he would just be met with blank stares and muttering about what the guy’d been smoking, right? Well, maybe not in this particular administration.
If I seem a little, uh, speechless, THAT’S BECAUSE I AM. What else am I supposed to be upon reading “The Pentagon, in initially defending the program, said such futures trading had proven effective in predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie ticket sales.”
Yeah. Hey, it works for predicting movie ticket sales. That means it should scale well to terrorist activities, right?
Wait. Backup a second. People lay wagers on movie ticket sales?
It sounds like someone is thinking “outside the box”. I’m only surprised that anyone thought this would be okay as an overt military operation.
The news report that I read earlier today had someone saying that this system would actually encourage terrorist acts, but I think it would also be scary to predict correctly an act—wouldn’t the men in black be at your door instantly to ask you what you knew about the incident?