I love this quote from security expert Bruce Schneier:

Remember, if it’s in the news don’t worry about it. The very definition of news is “something that almost never happens.” When something is so common that it’s no longer news — car crashes, domestic violence — that’s when you should worry about it.

The truth of that^[1] hit home recently when I saw a news feature on the abduction of a four-year-old girl from her front yard in Missouri. Candlelight vigils, nation-wide amber alert, police blockades where every single car was stopped and questioned, FBI agents swarming the house. I think the expected reaction from parents is “oh my god, I need to be so vigilant, even in my own front yard!” My reaction was the opposite: Wow, this sort of thing really does essentially never happen. Let the kids run free!

I’m saying this without a drop of irony. Stranger abductions just don’t happen. You should worry more about your baby boy dying from complications of circumcision (true). What you should actually worry about are the real killers of kids, like driving and drowning. Speaking of which, here’s a valuable public service announcement about what drowning looks like. (It doesn’t look like drowning.)

By the way, if you didn’t hear the news story about the four-year-old girl, it had a happy ending. She turned up unharmed.

The Opposite Story: Things That Do Happen