…both of these stories suggest a prime battleground for the next year: as the old TV businesses come to grips with the internet (finally). Just like other parts of the entertainment industry, it will be messy and annoying — and incumbent players are going to make a lot of really stupid mistakes. But, in the end, we should start to get some pretty cool stuff out of it — though, most likely not directly from the incumbent players, but from the upstarts and innovators on the margins.

It would make sense to fight the next battle, for once, instead of the last one. Sense, though, is not the criteria by which public money is spent in this country—and it hasn’t been for a long time.

Thank you, Anne Applebaum. We need more voices to fight the security theatrics put on by the DHS and TSA while they also spend billions on needless projects at the behest of members of Congress looking for quick reelection spending.

If you see something, say something. Hmmm. Has that actually worked? Or x-raying shoes? When was the last time a bad guy was foiled because he couldn’t use a good camera to take a picture of a tourist attraction? Why do the authorities at Grand Central Station in New York wear desert camouflage?

…a risk-free flight has never existed; nor has a risk-free car trip; nor a risk-free ocean liner voyage; nor a risk-free bike ride. To be alive is to face risks.

And don’t get me started on cars vs. terrorist bombings. Ugh. 30,000 to 40,000 people die every year in automotive crashes in the U.S. But there’s no TSA for driving. And should we talk about food terrorists? The companies that produce products known — proven — to be bad for us, but there’s no regulations to stop them or even slow them down.

I’m far more likely to die prematurely in a car or via diet than in any terrorist attack.

All this money and technology seems to have reduced the risk of future attack. But, of course, the system is bound to fail sometimes. Reality is unpredictable, and no amount of computer technology is going to change that. Bureaucracies are always blind because they convert the rich flow of personalities and events into crude notations that can be filed and collated. Human institutions are always going to miss crucial clues because the information in the universe is infinite and events do not conform to algorithmic regularity.

Resilient societies have a level-headed understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.

But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week.

2010 is only a few days old, but this may end up being the most important David Brooks column this year.