Intelligence vs stupidity, knowledge vs ignorance - some slightly random, paradoxically related ruminations: -- Someone I read made the observation that the risk and danger posed to civilization by scientific/technological advances increases proportional to their speed and the inability of humans to manage them. -- The human mind requires knowledge and preparation in order to act intelligently. Without some acquaintanceship with an environment, with a circumstance, with the character or the measure or the nature of things - with reality - responding to an event or circumstance is almost impossible because the mind doesn't "know where to go", which direction to turn or what steps to take that will be successful or get you out of harm's way. -- Einstein quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." The powers-that-be in high places think they should have all the information - or aim to possess all your base - and thereby control it and everyone and all events, for the common good. They overlook the resourceful imagination. I don't think the terrorists were all that smart; I think they exploited all the loopholes made available from the limited imagination of those who are expecting only complicity to enforced standardization of behavior, who are expecting to identify danger only from stereotypical images. As is plainly and painfully apparent, they don't know how to distinguish a dangerous nail clipper from sharp fingernail. -- The blades of a fan when it is running seem to going in one direction, but when it slows down you can see they have actually been going the other way. In life it can be confusing to identify which is the cause or the effect, the antecedent or the consequence, and what to expect from events based on their apparent intent. The free world seems to be teeter-tottering, gyrating, seemingly going now one way, now the other, on how much "civil liberty" will be allowed to individuals, fearing the liberty of criminals. There are many lessons from history which some can still remember about what happens when things go one way - into totalitarianism - but there is much influence against going the other way, toward "individualism". It could just spin faster and faster "out of control". -- The means to achieving privacy are but one aspect of living a normal life amidst a growing ability to be too close together, to be too much in view by others. Privacy is a way to achieve or maintain separateness in the milieu, but not simply distance - a separateness that one can control at one's own discretion, regardless of who would vote for allowances to intrude upon it, regardless of where one is residing or who has been elected to make official decisions on the matter. It is a control which could be engaged regardless of who might be "out" of control, as well, for it is the case that one lives not only with controllers, but with the controlled, who also can make a free and moral existence impossible, and against whom one must also protect oneself. -- There used to be a lot of discussions on the cpunks and elsewhere about autonomous zones, the cyberspace existing nowhere and everywhere, individuals, strangers, far away yet always near in the immediacy of their contacts, a nation existing only by its connectivities, using cash managed independently, outside "the law"; the cyberanarchy independent of nation-states which would retard civilization, contrary to the purpose of their creation. Living like cyber-nomads, traveling over the globe, while yet physically going nowhere. Isn't it interesting that OB-L and his supposed followers actually have been living that kind of life, yet not in total dependence on all the high-tech gear. They, in contrast to the high-techies in the upperspace underground, have been surviving as low-lifes on the mountainous ground, true nomads expanding over the globe, while planning on sending everyone to the Netherworld. -- Try to get back to normal. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. And leave your butter knife at home. .. Blanc