"Equasy"

There was an interesting opinion piece in the July 19/20 issue of the Wall Street Journal that might resonate with Unionville's equestrians. The authors, Michael Blastland and David Spiegelhalter, talked about the nature of risk: "Risk isn't a settled fact of nature. In the UK recently, a government adviser lost his job for saying that ecstasy [the illegal drug] was safer than horseback riding, which he called 'equasy.' "
The authors ran the statistics and concluded that the risk is actually about the same: between one-half and two MicroMorts per ride or tablet. (A MicroMort signifies a one-in-a-million chance of death.)
I found the article interesting enough to make me put the authors' book, "The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers About Danger and Death," on my to-read list. If you liked the "Freakanomics" books, this should be right up your alley.