BUT I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT….Patrick Nielsen Hayden, ruminating over the DoS attacks that haven taken down several blogs over the past week, takes a crack at defining terrorism:
I may not have a precise and bulletproof definition of ?terrorism? in my hip pocket, but I do know this: a disruption that does not require me to get out of my chair isn?t ?terrorism?, it?s an annoyance. Buildings being blown up, people being killed: definitely terrorism. Weblog inaccessible for a few hours, hobbyists cranky about it: not terrorism.
I guess that covers the extremes, now all we have to do is work on the middle ground. I also liked this:
I wish I didn’t have the uneasy feeling that there’s more to this story, but I get that feeling from most stories like this, these days.
Boy howdy, ain’t that the truth? I feel like that about once an hour or so these days.
