that the War on Terrorism should be won in about 60 years, at which point the American citizens would see their civil liberties returned. Obviously, only traitors, agitators, and other enemy combatants would make the outrageous claim that this war will likely last perpetually.
None have yet commented that in 60 years, there will be no one left that remembers what things were like. If they do, maybe congress will quietly apologize to them and grant some hush money to the few survivors, following the Jap Internment Apology plan. --- Better put some ice on that, NYC
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 2:08 PM -0800 on 12/10/02, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
None have yet commented that in 60 years, there will be no one left that remembers what things were like.
One of my favorite cypherpunk gedankenexperiments from the old days had to do with what could be called tradition. I hope I remember it right. I also hope there's an original source out there for this, it would be nice to know. Can't find it in google, much less the cypherpunk archives, and, generally, it's kind of hard to get the gist of a whole story like this out of google anyway... 1. Put a bunch of gorillas in a cage. 2. Put a nice stack of boxes in the cage. 3. Then, string a big bunch of bananas from the top of the cage hanging within arm's reach from the top of the stack of boxes. (3a. Okay, put the gorillas in last, or you'll never get to steps 1 and 2 :-).) 4. When the first gorilla climbs to the top of the boxes to grab the bananas, do something extremely unpleasant to all the gorillas, like, say, deluging them with icy water from sprinklers at the top of the cage, or something. Pretty soon, they stop climbing the boxes completely. 5. Then, replace the one gorilla. Watch the others physically restrain him if he tries to go for the bananas. Repeat 5 until all the gorillas have been replaced. 6. The gorillas will physically assault anyone who climbs the pyramid, and they won't know why. :-). Now, I bet this "experiment" won't yield to actual empirical testing, all mammals, including us, are either not that stupid, or, I suppose, not that smart, but you get the point.... Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 - not licensed for commercial use: www.pgp.com iQA/AwUBPfaOZsPxH8jf3ohaEQLynwCg1abG3e+mEVA9nPEEmUNECwh+pj4AnA3k PIR9BnGJOLn8TzOAahZQ8r/I =qZe5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
participants (2)
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Major Variola (ret) -
R. A. Hettinga