There are some people whose self-inflicted anxieties drive them to a state where sighting an unfamiliar new channel causes them to break out in cold sweat. While hoping for a decent daytime job, some of such elements opt to peddle doses of paranoia, hoping to end up as hawkers for an alarmist lobby. H.L. Mencken once declared that “the whole aim of practical politics” is “to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Perhaps with such elements in mind, last year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually went so far as to urge people to “get a life”, pointing out that “you have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.”

Such persons need to try hard not to end up like a cynic, who, as described by H. L. Mencken, is the one that when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.