Doomsday Machine or Waste of Money?

A year after last year's accident, the Large Hadron Collider is getting close to being operational again.

http://user.web.cern.ch/user/news/2009/091109.html

Now, before it does go fully operational, I want to put out my prediction that the doomsday scenarios are wrong. I read them all: black holes, strangelets, exotic matter... the only one that ever seemed credible to me was the possibility of making a microscopic black hole that would suck in more and more matter and eventually the entire planet... leaving our moon orbiting a black hole that once was the Earth. (Which is an interesting mental image.)

But without going into the messy details (and I'm no physicist) I don't find that threat credible having read that cosmic rays are at this very moment bombarding the Earth with as much energy as the proton beams of the LHC will when it is fully operational... In a nutshell, if these kinds of particle collisions made dangerous black holes, we wouldn't be here right now.

So why do some people believe the LHC will destroy us all?

First, consider the scale of the project. It is huge. This cannot be understated. The Large Hadron Collider is the single largest, most complex structure ever built. It has taken a generation to construct: they started digging the tunnels in 1983. It is one of the Wonders of the Modern World. Looking at the size of it, I think I know the sort of awe the pyramids inspired in the ancients who constructed them.


It is truly a collossal machine. Using levels of energy never before created by humanity. Powerful enough that last year's incident, cutting through the scientific jargon, took place because the collider's own magnets tore it apart!

And it is not just a machine: it is an experiment. And when it is finally switched on at full power... no one knows exactly what will happen.

That's the problem. For those folks who fear that science is running amok, that technology is advancing too fast, that modern life is changing things too much... this is the sum of all their fears.

For those who believe normal, everyday modern technology is already running amok, the LHC must be pure technological terror. How could the smartest scientists in the world build the largest machine ever, a monstrosity that dwarfs anything ever built before, and not know what will happen when it's switched on?

Put in those terms it's reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein with his hand on the switch, about to wake up his monster. So yes, I can understand the fear.

In fact, my biggest worry about the LHC is much the same: that it is pushing the limits of technology too far.

But my fear isn't that the Large Hadron Collider could turn out to be the "doomsday machine"... my fear is that the Large Hadron Collider will turn out to be a Large Waste of Money. Given the enormous forces and energies the LHC is dealing with, the way the entire ring is designed to go through a sort of juggling act to constantly keep the forces acting on it exactly the same on all sides so it doesn't tear itself apart (sort of like a soap bubble), I think the LHC is a much bigger threat to itself than the world... as last year's incident amply demonstrates.

The repairs over the last year were as rushed as they could be. But the design itself was unchanged. It's very possible the LHC might not work in it's current form. It might break down again, and have to be taken off-line for years to be modified. And even then, the supercollider might be just beyond the grasp of this century's technology. In that case, the LHC would never quite work right... leaving the physics community tinkering with the thing for decades until it is finally scrapped in faliure... a faliure costing billions of euros.

I don't fear for the world... I fear for the LHC.

Crumbling America

I watched the "Crumbling America" program on the History Channel recently, which was about the neglected infrastructure such as collapsing bridges and levees. (Which is being replayed this saturday and I highly recommend, as it is an issue not getting enough press.)

http://www.history.com/shows.do?episodeId=452430&action=detail

During the program it was said the electrical grid is also in need of repairs, and the number $1.5 trillion was floated out, to keep the grid running by 2030. If this isn't taken care of, basically, forget about internet, electric lighting, A/C, subways, hospitals, runnning water, or anything else from modern life. Now, if my figures are correct, we just paid that much money on the Stimulus Package. Combine that with my last entry on solar power and the Bailout Bill, and we just spent enough money on "bailouts" to have unlimited renewable energy for the next century. We threw $2 trillion into a money pit of an economy and have nothing to show for it, when we could have converted the whole power grid to solar & repaired all power lines and transformers in the country. It's not a pie-in-the-sky dream, that much money would have gotten it done. That's how much $2 trillion is worth.

We Could Have Had Solar Power...

...for 1/4 the cost of the bailout!
In this month's National Geographic magazine article on solar power, a professor floated out the cost of $400 billion to build enough solar arrays in the desert of the American southwest to meet this country's energy needs. For reference, we just spent $700 billion on the recent bailout, and roughly $1.5 trillion on the economic stimulus package. Which comes to over 2 trillion dollars.

I'm not against spending large sums of money. I'm just against wasting it.

"This is not moral decay, but ethical growth."

A homophobe posts a sarcastic rant in his LJ over the a TV station including a gay character in their new season's proposed programming. Then gets so swamped by opposing comments he deletes the comments and then the whole journal. Not a noteworthy occurence per se.

But one blog post in response to the rant is so eloquent, I am simply in awe of it. It doesn't just smackdown the homophobe, it doesn't just one-up his sarcasm with subtler sarcasm of its own; it explains ethics based on tolerance and empathy, and the elusiveness of morality based on cultural norms, far better than I have ever been able to. Things I felt to be my guiding principles, but was never quite able to articulate, were finally spelled out by someone.

Archive of the now deleted rant. (Some might find it offensive; I find it strangely entertaining.)

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:xah9iGUp6NUJ:johncwright.livejournal.com/269139.html%3Fthread%3D8339283+/search%3Fhl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DL4h%26q%3Dhttp://johncwright.livejournal.com/269139.html%2Bsite:johncwright.livejournal.com%2B&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Screencap of deleted rant.

http://pics.livejournal.com/krylonman/pic/00002cb7

The awesome reply.

http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2009/08/open-letter-to-john-c-wright.html#links

A Short Role-Playing Game (Part II)

Yesterday, August 9th, was the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, 3 days after the bombing of Hiroshima.

My goal here was to try to spark some thought about the bomings in a different way. I stripped away all the historical details because most people seem to have already made up their minds about the morality of the atomic bombings. In effect, I tried to put readers into the shoes of President Harry Truman, finding himself the Commander-In-Chief of the war effort after the death of FDR, and not having the intuitive knowledge the general public has nowadays about what an atomic bomb is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
I have seen, time and again, a tendency to judge the United States's use of the atomic bomb on Japan with Cold War or post-Cold War ethics. Since this is the weapon that looms over our heads at all hours, and could annihilate us all in WWIII, then how dare the Americans use it... over 55 years ago, that is. In 1945 the atomic bomb was a band-new weapon... no one, including the scientists who invented it, really knew what to expect from it... the idea of "radiation" was abstract to US war planners, the spectre of nuclear fallout not known about until the weapon was used. The world, and the United States government, didn't really get the idea of just how terrible an atomic bomb was until the fifties, after the bombings and their aftereffects had years to sink into people's minds.

I have also seen a strange, vindictive mixing of past and present. It goes something like "You Americans are warmongers! The United States is the only country to use the atomic bomb in wartime!" What a wonderful injection of a past war into the present, as if something that was done in the desperate days of WWII actually happened yesterday, and somehow me and every other American alive today supported it. I could go on, but in principle, I don't believe that anyone alive today should be held responsible for something their ancestors did generations ago. In this case, Harry Truman and all the WWII generals who ordered the bombing are no longer around. The ones to blame are already dead.

In answer to my own question, I decided if I were in Truman's shoes, I would have dropped the bomb. Yes, it is an awful incident taken by itself, but in the middle of the most destructive war the world has ever seen, the bombing of a city or two to ash wasn't that unusual... many of Europe's cities had been obliterated by conventional methods. There was already an effort to destroy every last Japanese city by incendiary bombs, and now comes along a bigger bomb to do it that much quicker... of course I would use it! If I'd heard any scientists talk of radiation, I think I would have actually considered it a bonus since it increases the weapon's killing power.

In a strange way, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did save lives. It has been estimated that 1 million American soldiers and perhaps 12 million Japanese lives would have been lost in the invasion of Japan. One could think of the sacrifice of the nearly 200,000 civilians in those cities as a "fair exchange" for the millions of lives saved when Japan surrendered. The Japanese military leaders were willing to fight to the last man, literally, when they knew they would take many American lives with them... but waiting to be incinerated by bombs from far away was another matter.

Of course, I'm not saying I'd advocate using such a weapon now... far from it. I was born into a world faced with in the dread of WWIII and fallout poisoning the world... and find, for example, the short-fused nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan a cause for worry: the US and the Soviet Union had 20 minutes, as the ICBM flies, to talk things over... India and Pakistan have just 8, though that's a whole other story.

But I'm just not presumptuous enough to say I'd have known better if I'd been part of the war planning back then, when the atomic bomb was some strange new weapon.

A Short Role-Playing Game (Part I)

This is a sort of morality question... there'll be a couple days before the "answer" is revealed. (Yes, I know that with these sorts of morality questions there are no right or wrong answers per se, only different opinions. I just want you to think about this, and please comment.)

Imagine you have just become the new leader of a powerful modern country... at war. Picture this with whatever images come to mind.

Your enemy is another modern country, with weapons and military technology on par with your own... sometimes even surpassing yours. The enemy is also ruthless... they started the war, and have been known to treat prisoners of war, and the population of captured cities, with terrible atrocities. Nevertheless, the soldiers of the enemy nation are as dedicated to their cause as yours, and sometimes fight to the last man. Millions have died on both sides.

Fortunately, your side has been winning. After years of fighting, the enemy has been beaten back to their home country... but still refuses to negotiate a cease-fire. Your generals now estimate that the final battle in the enemy's homeland will kill millions more than all the previous fighting, on both sides.

One more thing. Since the beginning of the war, your country's scientists have been secretly working on a new unconventional weapon, capable of devestating huge areas while your soldiers could remain out of harm's way. It has finally been completed.

Would you use this new weapon? Or continue to fight on with conventional forces?

How To Change The World (In 1 Easy Step!)

Somewhere between this essay,

http://www.visi.com/~phantos/essays.html

and this podcast video,

http://freakrevolution.com/2009/04/07/the-monkeysphere/
(yes, she explodes onscreen and is a bit annoying to listen to, but trust me, it's worth it.)

is an idea that could change the world...

In my own words:

Being a minority, or outcast, and not getting in people's faces about it never did a minority group or outcast any good. Especially if you have say, a sexual orientation, or a religion, or a lifestyle, or even the odd hobby outside the mainstream. This doesn't necessarily mean being confrontational, or shouting about your private life from the rooftops, but it means not hiding. Not hiding who you are, just because you're afraid of what someone might say to you because they might get offended if they knew exactly who you really were. (And that's a lot of "mights" and "ifs".)

If you have a secret like this, and let slip to all your friends and even half of them remain friends with you... then you just might have gained a few allies who will support your rights when the time comes... but would have chosen otherwise out of ignorance! What's the alternative? Staying in the closet, shivering with fear over what others might think, until the day comes everything you hold dear is made illegal... because you never took the time to try and educate those around you... to help them understand you. The real you. All for what? The preservation of some average lifestyle that's about as accurate a reflection of real life as the .4th of a child in the average family of 2.4 children?

In my experience, finally overcoming the fear of what the illusive "mainstream" people might think, and being openly yourself, will only attract like-minded people. Yes, you will have a bit less friends, but the friends you make will be friends not with a fake person you project in order to "fit in", but friends with you. The real you. Those who are actually offended by you personally will generally be out of your life before you can hear much of anything from them anyway.

Live like you're a hated freak, and you will be hated. Live like your beliefs and lifestyle are no big deal... and they'll be accepted.

In other words, come out the closet and be yourself and you'll eventually change the world...

National Health Care

Ok. It looks like Obama is really serious about national health care, given that he just had a 1-hour televised Q & A session about it. Instead of recognizing his own good ideas, such as ending our wars in the Middle East, or develloping renewable energy, he has to go gung-ho on a bad idea.

Yes, I'm going to admit that my views are colored by the example of Canada. Living in the Detroit area, I'm right next to it. I even have some friends there. They're really big on alternative medicine and herbal supplements, because they don't dare get sick; they know they wouldn't be cared for. Their mother is slowly losing her ability to walk, and cannot get knee replacement surgery because the cut-off age is 55.

Now, I know painting a horror story out of an example of one family is the oldest trick in the book when it comes to persuasive arguments, but this isn't a worst-case horror story. It's what a typical Canadian family has to go through with their country's national health care. (It's also me being up front and honest about my personal reasons for disliking the Canadian system.)

Now, I know not all countries' national health care systems are the same, and that Canada is one of the worst, but still... it's hard for me to be persuaded it would be a good idea to devellop the same kind of system when people there are constantly heading across the border into America to get medical treatment here. If anything, the Canadians should be trying to remodel their dysfunctional health care system after ours.

I'm not saying health care in America is perfect. But I don't think it needs to have the guts ripped out of it. I'd much rather see an overhaul of the existing system. I'd like to see an attempt made to fix the current system before writing it off as a lost cause. At least in this private health care system people are allowed to choose their own doctors, and when all else fails, pay out of pocket for medical procedures; two things many national health care systems (such as Canada's) don't allow.

Yes, I have heard that there are some national health care systems in European countries that work well, such as France, but this isn't a European country. National health care might very well be a good idea in theory, but given the track record of the United States government, would you trust it to run your health care?

Kill the Doctors!

Every time I even start to think about maybe listening to the pro-lifers, one of them has to do something like this:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/31/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html?iref=newssearch

Information on the shooter here
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/02/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html?iref=newssearch

Now the flakey Bible-based reasoning on the "pro-life" side would be reason enough for me to take the pro-choice side, but things like this are the icing on the cake. What's their logic: "We think life is so precious we're going to kill people?" And the icing on the cake of this particular killing is the fact it was done in the doctor's own church during a service! Apparently even acts of sacriledge on top of murder are justified in the name of "pro-life".

Think of the Children!

Over and over again, I have seen the idea that while willing, consenting adults are permitted to participate in any sort of "alternative" lifestyle imaginable, children should not be subjected to it.

For example, children should not be adopted by gay couples, or had by lesbians, because they will grow up "confused." Apparently, without one parent of each gender, children will automatically grow up well... into homosexuals. (Because we all know no one with heterosexual parents ever grew up gay.)

Or perhaps, if there are three, four, or more adults in a polyamorous relationship, they shouldn't dare raise children in that environment. Isn't it obvious that children who had grandparents, aunts or uncles, frequently helping the parents raise the kids are going to grow up "confused" as to who their real parents are? After all, it would be cruel for a kid to have more than two family members looking after them.

Or maybe, there's a seemingly normal two-parent family, but the parents just happen to believe in some non-mainstream nature-worshipping Pagan religion; or worse, not believe in any religion at all and are atheists. Under no circumstances should those parents expose their children to their unorthodox beliefs, because all Children should be raised as Christians, no matter the beliefs of the parents.

Yes, implicit in all of these arguments, is the belief that every child should be raised as a straight, conservative Christian, no matter the beliefs of their parents. Those are irrelivant and should never under any circumstances be passed on to their children.

In case you didn't get the idea alrady, I find this highly offensive. It's not as if conservative two-parent families are always perfect. Far from it. Examples of child abuse by straight, conservative Christian parents can always be found. It's also not as if children raised by straight conservative Christian parents always grow up sharing their values. any gay, lesbian, polyamorous, Neopagan, or atheist folks had their roots in conservative families. (Though there are no hard and fast numbers, such things have happened and are happening this very moment.)

Let's for a moment, strip away the complicated words and deceptive terminology and see what we're talking about in words the children themselves might understand...

Children shouldn't be taught men can love other men, and women can love other women. (We should hate those who love the wrong way!)

Children shouldn't be taught to love nature. (We should hate wilderness!)

Children shouldn't be taught to think for themselves. (Scientists and professors are bad people!)

And children shouldn't be taught they can love more than one person. (We should hate those who love too much!)

Just think of what a horrible world we would have if the next generation grew up believing in those terrible ideas!

Gay Marriage In Iowa

Here's a bit of good news. In a move similar to California's supreme court, Iowa's supreme court legalized gay marriage.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090403/ap_on_re_us/iowa_gay_marriage

Even better: unlike California it's not going to be overturned by consitutional amendment anytime soon.

"Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, a Democrat, said state lawmakers were unlikely to consider gay marriage legislation in this legislative session, which is expected to end within weeks. Gronstal also said he's "not inclined" to propose a constitutional amendment during next year's session."

I was left scratching my head how such a conservative state would do something so progressive, but the article also explains that "Iowa has a history of being in the forefront on social issues. It was among the first states to legalize interracial marriage and to allow married women to own property. It was also the first state to admit a woman to the bar to practice law and was a leader in school desegregation."

The Biggest Threat to the Modern World

It's a bit ranty, but this pretty much sums up my feelings... (and I won't spoil the punchline)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qB5w7IYgJ4&feature=related

I will, add, though, that I don't believe military force is necessarily the solution (as this video seems to imply). I still think a diplomatic solution is possible, if BOTH sides are willing to compromise, back off the "us versus them" mentality, and settle for less than world domination.

Even Moderate Muslems Behead People...

A Muslem man who created a cable TV station with the aim of showing people there were reasonable, moderate Muslems out there beheaded his wife for filing for divorce.

Ahhh... the irony here is rich and juicy!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29189095/

"Honor killings" are actually nothing new among the Muslem community in the US and Canada... this one only made the national news because of the man's high profile. (It's quite common for fathers to kill their daughters for not wearing the head scarf when they reach that "rebelleous teenager" phase... it just doesn't get much media attention.) I can only hope this raises awareness of the practice so something will be done to put a stop to it.

Copyright "Censorship"

I have come to the opinion that companies are shooting themselves in the foot with this strict, draconian enforcement of copyrights online. By "companies", I mean ALL media companies: music, TV, motion picture, video games, ect. They all make forced deletion of ANYthing that they believe violates their copyright, (or harrass/threaten posters until they "voluntarily" remove their content). This has the same effect as "censorship" of anything copyrighted.

I think that they're losing more in publicity than they're gaining in sales. I actually "shop" for music on youtube... it beats 30 second samples of music from amazon or similar sites. The videos that got me to buy CDs by certain obscure bands: gone. The videos that made Supreme Commander look so awesome I bought it: gone. In some cases, I no longer remember the names of the bands or songs I was looking at on youtube. That's lost sales, right there. So, in my mind, allowing content to be leaked is as good or better than a trailer. But, of course, in the eyes of the companies, I'm just a twisted anti-captialist marxist thieving internet pirate... just like every other one of their customers.

I'm starting to seriously wonder... how long can one treat their customer base like vermin and stay in business? In the case of the media companies, might not be as long as they think...

"Music sales fell to their lowest level in at least 10 years..."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/18/technology/music.php

"...14.5% fall in overall DVD sales last year."
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc2009024_458580.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech

Big Brother is now a reality in the UK

Looks the the UK is wasting no time slipping into a totalitarian state.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439604.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084

Now, at this point, I know many readers out there are thinking "They're only spying on criminals, doing illegal things." Unfortunately that "I'm honest, so I have nothing to hide" mentality is a trap.

Now, what specifically could carry sentences of 3 or more years that could be on someone's computer? Perhaps this has something to do with the UK's recent ban on "extreme pornography".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7364475.stm

Yes, there are arguments on both sides of the issue, but it seems to be only a short step between that and banning other types of pornography, if not other types of expression, from the internet. And this is assuming everyone in the British government has the best of intentions and only bans things that are legitimately illegal... and doesn't use these new self-granted powers to attack free speech or criticism of the government.

Oops! There goes an entire internet archive!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/14/demon_muzzles_wayback_machine/

So now that they've proven their heavy-handed draconian intentions, who's next? How many private citizens will be jailed for private possession of pornography even if they just keep it to themselves? Prior to recent years, only fundamentalist theocracies such as Iran had "morality police." Now modern democracies such as Britain can boast that wonderful distinction as well.

I have another reason for disliking this policy. I consider this an invasion of not just personal privacy, but home and property. My internet-age sensibilities are that a PC, and its contents are someone's personal property. I have no protest if the authorities were to procure a warrant to sieze and search my PC. But this is searching without a warrant by using spyware! Something that is, by definition illegal.

So, the message here is: hacking is ok if the government does it? Malware is by definition illegal, unless it's government malware? The hypocricy of this double-standard sickens me.

This is one time I'm very glad to be living "across the pond" from the Brits. No matter how bad the threats to personal liberty have been in the US, things seem to be slipping into Orwell's police state over there ten times faster. I can only hope other countries don't take a page from Britain's draconian internet bans, and that it remains an isolated example.

Remember: In the Information Wars, don't worry about what you can see... worry about what you can no longer see.

"Choice" is a loaded word now?

Why do I think most conservatives are nutjobs? Because they are. This speaks for itself...

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2009/01/pro-life_group_up_in_arms_over.php

Surveilance

Today I overheard a discussion about politics. Now, mostly it was about how the US economy is tanking, and how bad a president Bush has been (thank gods he'll be gone soon!) and other relatively rational opinions. Except then I heard "I don't get what all the fuss about the Patriot Act is all about. I don't have any problem with them listening in on my telephone conversations or reading my emails. If I say something I shouldn't, then I should be locked up."

Well, now I'm going to put my two cents in on what all the fuss about the government spying on US citizens is all about.

It's easy to think "Well, I'm a decent, law-abiding person, so if the government or police or FBI were to start listening in on me, I've got nothing to hide." This is the founding philosophy behind sites like myspace and livejournal, and also reality TV. But it's a terrible trap to fall into. There seems to be this growing sense in recent years that "privacy" is some archaic, out-modeled social idea left over from the Victorian Age, right alongside segregation and eugenics. People who, like me, still consider personal privacy an important right are becoming fewer and fewer in number.

We are treading on thin ice here. Sure, you may think your lifestyle and opinions are perfectly normal, but there is a huge variety of things that while seemingly normal, someone is going to be offended over. For starters, spending any amount of time in close quarters with some friend you thought you knew well (such as a sleepover or camping trip) will reveal that there is a huge range of preferences in personal hygene, including practices that will most likely offend you. It's not too far a stretch of the imagination that some of your routine personal cleaning will offend somebody. Then, of course, there are the parts of one's lifestyle generally best left unsaid: politics, religion, sexual orientation.

I highly doubt you could find 10 members of some minority lifestyle or opinion, 10 gays, 10 neopagans, 10 transexuals, 10 Ralph Nader supporters, ect, who would agree it's a great idea to have "nothing to hide" to the point they would think it a good idea to let their boss and coworkers know such details about their private lives. Now imagine that we had this wonderful "transparent society" where due to surveilance the government knew such details about everyone, including you.

Just stop for a minute, poke around google or youtube or something, and think it over. If you don't get chills up your spine, you are both naieve, and already standing in line to become one of big brother's sheep.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there will always be a person who would be offended by your lifestyle, and your beliefs. Maybe some prudish public servant on the other side of the cameras would find one of your kinks an offensive "perversion" worthy of stamping out. Nothing like sexual preferences to raise somebody's ire. Maybe some zealot of [insert religion here] would see your faith (or lack thereof) as an "abomination" that should never be practiced. After all, religion is just such a great starter of flame wars, (and real ones!)

More to the point, do you really want the government to know everything that you say all the time? Who among us can honesty say they didn't, at one time or another, blurt out in an angry moment how this or that person should die?

I will put myself on the spot here and say that, while I'm not the perfect model of citizenship, I do vote, and have not commited any crimes beyond a few traffic tickets. And yet, I have, in private, throughout my life, advocated horrible fates to some people. In high school, me and my friends used to draw cartoons of kids and teachers we didn't like meeting horrible ends. Even now, some of my professors end up in the margins of my homework and notebooks, always about to suffer a terrible fate. I have, in anger, advocated the destruction of certain countries, and death to certain groups of people. (Most notably nuking Islamic countries, drowning large numbers of lawyers, hanging terrorists and pirates, and the like.) And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

None of this I ever meant seriously. But if there was a government surveilance program listening in at all times, would they know that? If the people running it had the (lack of) sense of humor of, say, airport security workers, I daresay I would (gods forbid) be in jail already for some "terrorist plot".

Just stop for a minute and think about your own private conversations and tell me you have never, ever, wished death or suffering on somebody. Even if it was just for a moment in a fit of anger. Then tell me with a straight face you would like Homeland Security agents listening in on that, all the time.

Think it over.

The Day the Future Died...

The new year has come and gone, and like everybody else, I've gotten a bit reflective with the change in calendar.

It seems like back in the 90s, everyone in the industrialized world was aglow with the notion of progress, technology, and a brighter future. Magazine articles and TV programming was awash in futurism. For many people in the modern world, the biggest issues facing the world were the social problems we were going to run into from future technologies. Advances, problems and solutions in nanotechnology, genetics, AI, the internet, were on the tip of everyone's tongue. Down to Earth folks who never talked about "pie in the sky" dreams were suddenly striking up conversations about future technology.

And then suddenly, as the change of millenium came and went, the notions of boundless technology, of improving our lives through science, of progress, and a better world withered and died. Almost overnight, we stopped caring about any of that "future" shit and started worrying about terrorist attacks, environmental decay, and poverty. And when the future does come up in the popular sci-fi, it is dark, (in many cases literally dark, as a matter of artistic style), and riddled with grim conflict. And I think I know the exact moment our outlook as a world changed...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Dg2eEhB30
*conspiracy theorists take note: at 2:25 you can see the steel buckling INWARDS on its own*

This act struck deep into the soul of the Western world. Progress got a bloody nose when the tallest buildings in the world were destroyed. Some, even in America, began to question our own actions and policies and seemed to take the criticisms of Western society from the Islamists to heart. And all the world's dialogue shifted, from worrying about problems from out own progress per se, to worrying about terrorism, war, and environmental decay. And in that respect, I believe the terrorists WERE successful in spreading a blanket of fear, and spreading their message.

I think this shift in our dialogue as a society could very well cause problems in the future. We have largely stopped talking about the potential pros, cons, and dangers of genetics, nanotechnology, cloning, the social impact of the web, and other emerging technologies. And we may very well find ourselves blindsided by issues from those technologies in the future. In other worlds, if we're not careful, our new vision of a dark future may very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.