"May" trying to do Might's job

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:32 PM -0400 5/2/07, sagehen wrote:
>Heard on NPR news this morning  (roughly):
>New intelligence reports reveal that the public transport bombings in
>London, 2005 ,* may * have been averted since some of the perpetrators had
>been identified, were under observation and overheard planning the attack.
>Some amnesiac or other innocent getting information from this source  would
>be relieved to learn of the  happy outcome.
>AM
>
...and there was also an upsurge of the dreaded "metaphysical 'may'"
as an inevitable consequence of the Va. Tech massacre.  Here's one
example from a recent spam e-mail; I've seen others.

LH

(*highlighting* added)
=========================

Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:13:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Burton H. Wolfe" <bhwolfe at msn.com>
Subject: With 'Preventive Psychiatry,' *there may have been no massacre*

Preventive psychiatry offers the chance to detect, early in an
individual's life, the potential for development of criminality
and mental illness as well as heart disease, cancer, and
other life-threatening diseases, and to deal with any of that before
it is too late. - W. Horsley Gantt, M.D.

If W. Horsely Gantt's advocacy of what he called "preventive
psychiatry" had been adopted by the medical profession, the massacre
at Virginia Tech *may never have occurred*, and millions of victims
of deadly diseases killed by them because diagnosis came too late may
have been spared from premature death.

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