Shall We Play A Game?

Reading the paper yesturday morning I ran across a blurb that I thought was a joke. I thought the local rag had been taken in, or the AP wire had a crimp in it.

It was real.

The story was about the Pentagons new toy. A Futures Market in Terrorist Attacks. Not on the drawing board, not something kicked around at a Brain Storming meeting or some sort of Management retreat where the participants are encouraged to think out side the box. A Real Thing. A Funded Thing. A Thing with its own web site. How sick are they up there that no one came foreword about this sooner? How could this go on for even this long? This, quoted from the Raleigh News and Observer, July 29, 2003

in its statement Monday, DARPA said markets could reveal "dispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions."

Hog futures as crystal balls.

Traders would buy and sell futures contracts - just like energy traders do now in betting on the future price of oil. But the contracts in this case would be based on what might happen in the Middle East in terms of economics, civil and military affairs or specific events, such as terrorist attacks. Holders of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of traders who put money into the market but predicted wrong.

A graphic on the market's Web page Monday showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown. Although the Web site described the Policy Analysis Market as Middle East market, the graphic also included the possibility of a North Korea missile attack.

A Dead Pool. You don't have to waste time with celebrity deaths, the big boys traffic in foreign heads of state And not just any foreign heads of state just the ones in our way. The vaunted Road Map would work so much better with viewer cars on the road.

The asshats are going to make sure we all die. How many points for a civilian? Is an American, Christen, born again fundamentalist civilian worth more then a Jordanian, Muslim, fundamentalist civilian? Are civilians worth points or is on a block system? 10 or less, 20 or more over 100, under a 1000? Would genocide be graded on a curve?

This is why my flag droops, not for lack of wind, but embarrassment.

By lunchtime, this had appeared, quoted from the Washington Post, Online edition, July 29, 2003

Pentagon will abandon a plan to establish a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.



For Now.