From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Jan 01 2002 - 20:18:46 MST
At 10:33 PM 12/31/01 -0800, Robert wrote:
>Well, according to the news here in Seattle, you folks can't
>see the Harbor for the trees -- due to some apparent problems
>getting the anarchists to stop setting fires faster than you
>can put them out...
The word you're looking for, Robert, isn't `anarchist': it's `psychotic' or
`pitiful obsessive'.
It's the customary paradox, really: on the one hand, all these wonderful,
joyous explosions of light at New Year's Eve, witnessed by a million happy
revellers; on the other a few mind-damaged creeps running around in the
dark setting fires that have destroyed vast national parks in a few days
and threaten homes in some of the most beautiful parts of Sydney.
Didn't take a passenger jet and a tall building, or even a hateful
ideology; natural abundance, annual climatic cycles, a box of matches, and
the thrill of *having a really big effect for the first time in your
worthless life and seeing the human ants rush about*.
And that's what we'll confront when MNT goes mainstream. Once again, I find
myself driven to the awful conclusion that I know the explanation for the
Fermi silence in the heavens.
Damien Broderick
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