We'll Always Have Paris

Of course we want to show support, sympathy and comradeship with the the Parisians after the harrowing Friday the 13^th terror attacks. Personally, I have never used the term “Freedom Fries,” but beyond that I’ve always had great admiration for the French. Paris is where all the great artists and writers hung out a hundred years ago. While I wasn’t there at the time, it always seemed like it would be really cool.

France was the center of international diplomacy for much of the modern era. French was considered the lingua franca.

French kissing has become one of the rites of passage for young adults.

And, or course, there’s that great bread, toast and fries.

But moreover, the kind of attack that hit Paris could happen anywhere. We’re all vulnerable. It required coordination, but just conventional weapons: bombs, automatic rifles and cars. How can we possibly prevent or defend ourselves against that kind of terror?

We could rely on massive spying programs to keep tabs on everyone, but we certainly don’t want the government looking over our shoulders all the time … reading our emails, listening to our phone calls and tracking our Web surfing. We already have Google for that.

So how can we completely eliminate the threat of global terror without infringing on anyone’s rights? We’ll reveal this in a future post.

NSA Operators Are Standing By

Earth Day 2013

As far as the environment goes, we're like kids living in a candy house. It's beautiful, and it protects us, but we're going to eat it anyway. Even those of us who claim to be sensitive to environmental issues, while throwing our $5.00 Starbucks cups out the windows of our SUVs, could stand to be a little more aware.

I don't exempt myself here. In fact, the older I get, the more paper towels I seem to go through during the course of a day. Perhaps I'm a late-blooming klutz, but I prefer to think in more scientific terms. It's increasing entropy.

On the other hand, we are completely unable to comprehend any threat that's more than about an hour and a half in the future. This was demonstrated yet again last week when the U.S. Senate chose not even to vote on a gun buyer background check bill the same week that the country was in an uproar about the Boston Marathon bombing fueled by ... gunpowder!

In fact, everything we do is reactive, instead of proactive. Terrorists hijack some planes, so we start locking the cockpit door. A guy tries to blow up his shoes, so we make passengers take their shoes off at the airport. I'm convinced the underwear bomber was just a way of seeing how far we would go.

But as Pogo so eloquently said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Imagine a science fiction movie in which hostile aliens comes upon a planet where the dominant species spends most of its time converting petroleum into plastic and carbon dioxide, and then discards the plastic and releases the CO₂ into the air. No need to conquer that planet. Just wait a while.

So if we can't, as a nation or as a species, avert an environmental calamity, what can we do as individuals?  There are a few possibilities:

1) Save up to buy oceanfront property in Ohio or Nevada.

2) Take pictures of the nighttime sky, so when a younger generation says, "I loved Star Wars and Star Trek, but what the hell are stars?" you can show them.

3) Try to hasten "The Singularity," when we can endow robots with human intelligence (and then some, hopefully.)

4) Dispose of that Starbucks cup properly, so you can tell yourself you're a good person.

Revenge

Let's be brutally honest here. It's not about justice.  It's not about winning the War on Terror. Terrorism won't go away. Even Al Queda won't go away. Oil won't suddenly be plentiful and the ice caps certainly won't re-freeze.

It's about revenge. It's a feel good moment, like when Emperor Palpatine gets the shaft in Episode 6. (In the Lucas universe, every spacecraft must have one or more large shafts which lead straight to the nuclear reactor. A bomb or main character is required to fall into one of these at least once per episode.)

Of course, the elation of that moment was quickly dampened when Luke pulled off Darth Vader's helmet to reveal ... Uncle Fester! Don't believe me?  See for yourself ...

And, like Star Wars, this story doesn't begin with 9/11. There are all those weird early episodes that can't compare to the original trilogy. It began with bin Laden working in a construction business on the desert planet of Tatooine. Back then, he was a good guy, resisting the evil empire's invasion of Afghanistan, and happily hooked up with Queen AmeriDolla. But once that exploit was over, he was seduced by the dark side, and he turned on us. From then on, it was a series of more outrageous and terrifying ... uh, terrorism.  Until now.

There's nothing wrong with a good revenge yarn. But reality is still out there.