Betting on assassinations and terror attacks

Oh poo! Does this mean I am stuck with the door prize?

But, I don't want Poindexter's dirty socks!

What I want to know, BFN, is how you got them!

Ollie North auctioned them off on EBay. I was the highest bidder.

Psst -- Since I'm in Texas, I kin git stuff easy. You want a good deal in Bush's empty hat?

That would be the hat he's presently wearing, I presume?


note: the illusion that I double-posted there a moment ago was just that ... merely an illusion

I met the Wolfomeister a couple of years back when I was trying to decide whether to apply to PhD programs in medieval history, or to switch fields and do international relations. Since I was doing my MA in the area, I visited the DC area schools, i.e Georgetown( I felt like a peasant!), American ( I really, really, really...really liked American!), GW (Ditto, almost as freindly and welcoming as American, but no funding. ),and Hopkins' Nitze SAIS, of which Wolfy was dean. I met with him , and over the course of an hour or so's discussion, the man scared the living daylights out of me. it wasn't any particular statement that he made, it was rather his manner. He is eerily calm and serene,and has the madman's certainty that he is absolutely right in anything he says. Needless to say this helped scare me back into the past! Those that deal with the present are nutters!

I am still trying to wrap my mind around, as the saying goes, the concept of futures betting on assassinations, terrorist attacks, etc. My mind just doesn't want to wrap it, I simply don't understand, from a mechanistic view without considerations of appropriateness for us to be involved in...how that could be a smart thing to do.

Can someone spell out how this could help in the effort to thwart nongovernmentally-arranged (at least upfront) violent acts with political ends?

Timber -- I've been double-posting all afternoon and evening. "Submit" -- "This page has expired" -- repost. Now I've learned to cut, copy, hold and see if the first post ultimately got written in. A2K usually gets a bit screwy at mid-week, at least for the past couple of months.

Hobitbob (welcome!) -- you describe the Wolf perfectly!

Tartarin, "slowdowns" can occur, and may pop up anywhere on the 'net between your 'puter and the one with which you're trying to comminicate and back again. This server could be slow, something on the 'net could impede timely data transfer, your browser could be slow to refresh ... any of those and any combination of those can contribute. Generally, as long as your connection is live, once you've clicked "submit", your message is on the way, and will appear on the forum almost instantly regardless how long it may take for confirmation of that to happen at your end. Copying to clipboard or to notepad is always a good idea, while clicking "Submit" more than once is usually a bad idea. If you've copied your post, and discover upon re=establishing contact with the website, you can always paste it in and resubmit. If you re-click "Submit" prior to getting confirmation, however, you very well may wind up with multiple posts of the same message.

Oh yeah, familiar with all of the above, Timber! As I noted, I've been copying and reposting. No, this is a real glitch. It's been happening on other threads. A2K has its little bouts of hysteria and hormones!! No big prob!

Odd ... I've experienced no site-related problems at all today. The double post I managed to effect was my own clumsy fault. The problem you're having appears to be more localized than general. How 'bout you give a shout over on The Help Forum?

every post i have made this evening as resulted in "page not found" and yet if i go back and refresh i find that it did indeed post.

You said it precisely, Dys, as usual. Page not found. Not every post, but most posts.

You said it precisely, Dys, as usual. Page not found. Not every post, but most posts.

Now that time I got "page cannot be displayed."

Good evening: A couple of quick comments...(1) Thanks, Tibererlanko, for taking off your shirt and showing your MODERATOR t-shirt. I appreciate that you don't like to do that. I hope that your "to whom it may concern" admonition will register;
(2) hobitbob....bizarre story; thanks and (3) Ossoboco:
The notion of setting up a market where people would bet on the chance of an assassination of a world leader or the lives of US soldiers (for example) created quite an outrage in Congress.
I'm sticking with my opinion (expressed several pages ago) that in the next few days some cogent arguments will appear supporting the logic, albeit not the rhetoric.

Pentagon Buys Into Tragedy

The Pentagon at least deserves credit for thinking inventively in coming up with a new way to spot terrorists before they strike.
Its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was due to launch a project Friday that would have tried to forecast major political events in the world by tapping inside knowledge within the business community through a government-run speculative financial market.
Here's how it would have worked (before an uproar in Congress forced the Defense Department to kill it): Up to 10,000 investors would have been invited to buy contracts that would have paid out money based on the outcome of a range of speculative political events.
This "policy analysis market," as DARPA called it, was based on the theory that someone somewhere in business may know something about a political development that US spies and diplomats might be missing.
DARPA was right in its theory, but it failed to forecast the moral problem in having public servants encourage capitalists to profit by investing in forecasts of tragedies befalling Americans - with the hypothetical tragedies selected by government.
Private markets can do that, and do so already by tracking political events to decide where to place investments. But government shouldn't be in that business.
Much of that information already is available, often for sale. DARPA's plan revealed that the government's intelligence agencies need more resources to match the secretive tactics of terrorists. Now that Congress has made its point, it can calmly ask what more it can do to help

Bingo. And you'll note that nowhere in au's citation did they question the intellect of those who understand the theory involved.

Is there a source for the article au posted? It's not apparent. If these sources know of an imminent attack, why wouldn't they inform the authorities? By letting them bet on it happening (and benefit if they're right), it seems to give them an incentive to keep it quiet.

Or am I missing something here?

Like most of au's quotes, it's from the Christian Science Monitor:
Pentagon Buys Into Tragedy