I paid attention to news of the Marathon bomb ...

is the amount of media attention they get when they do. I ignored it.

Hopefully the AC comment was posted as a sarcastic comment. It's hard to tell sometimes. But yes, the social media hords did get two INNOCENT people on the cover. Mostly it seems as though the crowd sourcing folks did a great imitation of Chicken Little.

In my estimation, this sort of event is on the order of once a decade, and kills on the order of 10 people.

School shootings and similar mass murder/rampages outside schools (the Batman movie theater shooting, the odd mall shooting, etc.) seem to occur on the order of once a year, and kill on the order of 10 people.

Gang and/or drug-trade related homicides are on the order of 3000 a year.

Motor vehicle deaths are on the order of 30000 a year.

I'm not trying to in any way minimize the impact of this on those who it has actually affected, or to suggest that the authorities are necessarily overreacting, just to say: what's the point of following all the in-depth coverage of it? I'm unlikely to find myself embroiled in a similar bomb plot and its aftermath, so more knowledge is unlikely to have a practical benefit to me; I already know that it happened, satisfying the social usefulness of knowing what somebody means when they say "That thing in Boston sure sucked, eh?"; what utility am I missing that I would get if I watched more?

I'm just not seeing anything good that comes out of following each tragedy in depth -- and there's plenty of bad: the mundane deaths are enough, I don't need to get depressed by morbid examination of each more exotic death as well. And it's worse, because even though I know the many exotic deaths each have a tiny probability, and even taken together, sum to a ridiculously small probability, the human mind still sucks at dealing rationally with probability. How much worse for the people who can't be arsed to even estimate the probabilities with the rational part of their mind -- this is why we have a frightening number of people who believe either restricting gun ownership or putting an armed guard in every damn school is a reasonable reaction to the tiny real-world incidence of school shootings. (This is not to say that either of those 'solutions' is necessarily without merit in the big picture (although I do think they are), just that it's literally insane to suggest the tiny, tiny amount of harm associated with school shootings justifies a response as costly as the ones being pushed by each US political party.)

I grew up in the UK in the 70's and 80's and during this time the IRA were detonating bombs in Northern Ireland on a regular basis, funded by collections taken in places like Boston where there is a large Irish community. Yes, it's sad that people died in Boston, but just because this particular pair of bombs were detonated in the USA it doesn't make it an international event.

Ganty

I'm just not seeing anything good that comes out of following each tragedy in depth

Here' s the good - if you see someone leave a backpack at a crowded event and wander away, stuff it into an alley and then go find police to tell about it.

That was obviously kind of suspicious before but now you have a better understanding of what a heavy backpack might be able to do in a crowd.

If it helps people just be a little more tuned into what people are doing around them, it could help prevent the next bombing in a crowd. It's not like you have to be suspicious or fearful - just present and aware.

Even more chilling when you realize these aren't just "12 year olds on Reddit", these were a variety of people that you would think should know better.

Now you're either a backpack-stealing thief, or a bomb-planting terrorist.

If you really think you've spotted a bomb, it's probably best to say something like "omg I've spotted a bomb", so everyone will move away from it.

The Irish had the "home advantage" --- they were operating in or near to their home country, providing them a lot of recruits, material, and support. Al Qaeda attacks in America are a lot farther from home, so the basic logistics are far more difficult. Attacks on American outposts and allies closer to population centers sympathetic to Al Qaeda causes are correspondingly far more frequent --- terrorist attacks are pretty much a daily occurrence in, e.g., Iraq.

Just reacting to what seems to be hinted at here: I grew up in Boston in the 70s and 80s and Boston has an even larger NON-Irish community which was definitely not backing the IRA. Plus I wouldn't think the IRA was automatically universally popular in the Irish-American community either. So any implication that Boston deserves payback for crap the IRA did is way off.

These people didn't do that, so I think they are mass murderers rather than terrorists.

Are they really mass murderers though? Three people died as a result of the bombs.

According to the FBI, for individuals, mass murder is defined as the person murdering four or more persons during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders. [wikipedia.org]

sad that this was modded funny when it is obviously insightful.

You might, however, care about policy decisions with regard to deterring future attacks. Do we need to strip away everyone's civil liberties? Bomb and occupy a few more countries? Improve access to mental health services? Ban pressure cookers? Make no changes whatsoever? Properly analyzing the events that happened (instead of just dumping everything into the big "oh no, scary terrorists! panic! panic! panic!" bucket) allows rational responses and accurate assessments of future threats.

No, that makes them murderers. If they intended to use this as a threat to influence policy under fear of future attacks, then they are terrorists. If they did this instead for some twisted personal satisfaction from causing harm, then they are not --- no more than a serial killer is a "terrorist," even if they terrify the population.

I'm sure the intent was to kill more than just three people. From what I've heard about those bombs it seems to me that they were meant to be deadly, and to cause as much damage as possible. And as such I wouldn't be surprised if the culprits were somewhat disappointed by the results.

All people are innocent, until proven guilty in a court of law. And even then, much of the time they are innocent, but did not have a good enough lawyer, or were railroaded into accepting a plea-bargain, or just damn well were unlucky.

The person shot and killed by police is innocent for all time, because they'll never get their day in court. The young man caught by police and arrested, innocent, until proven guilty.

At least, I hope that people are not jumping to conclusions and trusting not just the media, but the police and government. When it has been shown many times all three lie, don't tell the whole truth, etc.

Wait longer for the facts, and see what happens. Don't make up your mind now.

And I'm sure the intent of some of the runners were to win the race - they didn't, and we don't think of them as having won the race.

The 24 hour news cycle hasn't had anything worthwhile to contribute since the 90s. And even that is being generous.

I bet you're the sort of dickhead who ignores requests by authorities to evacuate when a hurricane is coming, and ends up having to be rescued from the roof of their house.