What was that I said yesterday about fear mongering? DISCOVER briefly discusses Daniel Gardner’s soon-to-be-published The Science of Fear:

In the aftermath of 9/11, many Americans were so afraid of flying that they chose to drive instead. That decision, based on the perceived threat of another airliner hijacking, led to 1,600 casualties in the following year. The families of the people who died in those crashes thought they had lost them to “the routine traffic accidents we accept as the regrettable cost of living in the modern world.” Daniel Gardner begs to differ: What killed them was fear.

Has fear become an epidemic . . . spreading like a virus by doomsayers on both sides of the fence? And let’s not forget about the biggest fear mongers of them all: the media. How else do they keep you glued to your computer screen, your TV?

I don’t know about you, but I refuse to be terrorised.