Stochastic Terrorism

This is an excellent day because I've learned a couple of things.

First, I learned a little something about Stochastic Terrorism.  This is the tech term for the process that gives rise to the kind of Lone Wolf action that we saw on Saturday in Tucson.

And second, I finally did a little reading on Henry II and his problems with Thomas Beckett.

So, when I put these things together, it's a little clearer than before.  Not a lot, but some.

Read this from The Agonist.

The core of the theory claims a causal connection between the highly evocative political rhetoric of figures like "Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly" and acts that have a probabilistic inevitability when you factor in the total number of "people who are emotionally unstable" and the nonstop exposure of these three (and more) by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and broadcast operations.

There's still no direct-line cause-and-effect at work, but that's pretty much exactly what Plausible Deniability is all about, isn't it?