Jinn of Current Events

One role for these US troops is to stop Turkey from grabbing the oil fields in Northern Iraq and from putting the Kurds there under their boot. This is likely to be the final nail in NATO. In a serious blow to U.S. war plans, the speaker of Turkey's parliament nullified a legislative vote Saturday that would have allowed deployment of 62,000 U.S. combat troops in Turkey to open a northern front against Iraq. [via Washington Post] 

Mark Krikorian (National Review Online): This weekend things change yet again. Not only will immigration responsibilities be moved to the new Department of Homeland Security, but they will be broken up and reshuffled. In place of the INS there will now be three bureaus that deal with immigration within Tom Ridge's department -- one for border enforcement, one for interior enforcement, and one for citizenship and immigration services. 

Henry Petroski (Washington Post, 2002-Jun-29): Risk is ubiquitous. Each of us is born with a life expectancy, and like it or not we play the odds every day. Numbers can be put on the risks we face from cradle to grave, but it is not possible to play life strictly by the numbers. That is why each of us, in responding to risk, makes personal decisions based not simply on quantitative measures but on qualitative interpretations as well. We party on arsenic-impregnated decks. We play golf in thunderstorms. We build multistory houses despite the risk of falling down stairs. These days -- in a climate of heightened awareness of risk, both real and perceived -- many public policy decisions appear to be made in much the same way. Decisions come ultimately from the gut rather than from the computer.