Beelzebubalicious - The difference betweent that and the Peace Corps is that you are going in to develop a network of people that work for you in a business. Seriously, I think there is no better way to create a network that will give you "ins" into the real world. You aren't going to hobnob with the poor, you are going to get into the world of the rich and powerful. But aside from that, yes, it's got its similarities.


JeffC - The real concern I have with your proposal above is that it presumes that you even could create a simulated society of terrorists. The problem with that is that anything you come up with will be from your own map of the world. In this, Osama and his boys have an advantage over us. They know how we think and work because we broadcast it everywhere. We don 't even try to listen to what they are saying. If you are serious about it, and have no other resource, I would recommend following Al Jazeera and the major newspapers in Tehran, Lahore and Riyadh. It will be one hell of an eye-opener, that's for sure. I'm sure there must be a translated version of those available somewhere in the vast federal government bureacracy.

The first time you read an article on the front page of a major Arab paper that says, in all seriousness, that Israelis are harvesting Arab children to put their blood in passover matzoh, and you see that the author is a PhD professor at the university - well, you'll begin to realize how very different things are.

To really get inside the head of a fanatic though, one either has to have been one (of some religious persuasion) or else have been very close to one or more. Personally, I think one of the best resources we have in the USA on how those guys think is people like Falwell. They, like Osama, are "people of the book" and take its dictates as literally as possible. They both motivate large numbers of people. (Hope I didn't offend anyone here by saying that. They have different ideological maps, very different.)