Fear and black holes

Everyone is scared. All the time. We wake up and ask us: ‘Will there be water left at the end of today?’, ‘Will terrorists bomb my tube later?’, ‘Will China and Russia attack as this evening?’, ‘Could Amy Winehouse make my kids start being addicted to drugs?’, ‘Does Gordon Brown try to put the bird flu virus in our tap water?’, ‘Will Sarah Palin really become vice president?’, and so on.
But what everyone seemed to have feared the most these days was a massive black hole that would first destroy Switzerland, then Europe and then the rest of our little world.
Crazy scientists from all over Europe were gathering near Switzerland’s Geneva somewhere under the earth to build the kill-the-world machine, was what the media told us.
Yeah, whatever. Even though scientists explained that this machine would not create black holes, or at least no black holes that could be harmful to our “peaceful” planet, the public and the media seem to have been attracted by the fear. The possibility that some mad scientists could destroy the world was just too good to not be written about. Even though the danger was not real.
Yesterday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, a left-ish daily from Munich, called the Large Hadron Collider the Urknallmachine, the big-bang-machine. I liked the title and immediately thought of a funny conversation I had, the other day.
I was in a train from somewhere in Switzerland to Milan, as a probably 70-year-old man from Denmark sat opposite me and saw me reading something about the LHC in the Guardian. He looked at me and, after a while, warned me (in very bad English) of the danger of this scientific experiment.
Funny enough, he was not talking about the actual machine (“the closest men ever got to God,” as he put it) but about the damage the computer that calculated all the data could cause. The man said that to calculate all the data from the LHC, a new über-computer had to be developed.
This “super computer” is a network of many computers from all over the world. This massive system will (hopefully) be able to find out how our world came into existence. But, he said, if a hacker would hack into the system, it could be used to disconnect certain regions, maybe even an entire continent!!, from the inter-web.
See, that is something to fear, not a self-made black hole!! But then, the old man could have been a liar and not, as he claimed, a former professor from Copenhagen... Interesting story though, I think.
Schreiber

Dance, beloved populace!

G2 excelled itself last week, showing it is Britain where T2 is clearly Australia in medals table terms. Charlie Brooker’s column showed clarity and humour beyond the reaches even of these humble bloggers, well Schreiber at least!
Writing on the subject of the Olympic opening ceremony……Perhaps Mr Brooker read previous innit24 posts, urging people not to forget China’s many and deep faults. China is a developing nation, with many millions living in abject poverty in a medieval manner. The citizens have no rights that cannot immediately withdrawn at the whim of an official. The justice system is as transparent as Mr Brown’s calm façade, well that’s clearly nonsense but you see my point. I previously wrote, “Who wants to live in a country where civil servants are the most lethal people!” And I stand by this.
Mr Brooker clearly shows, big parades and shows of national unity are simply that, shows. These events do not occur in free and democratic states, the mark of such states is complete apathy.
Let’s free Tibet and continue to harass China by sending dim-witted officials (Mayors) to bumble as rudely as possible and perhaps take the rest of the Tories with him. Franklin

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE WAR

The war is over for now. This is great news for everyone. Firstly, it is great news for the people of the Caucasus (obviously!), but then, it is also good news for us people in “the west”, as the oil market will stabilise again, after going berserk in the past few days. Russia called a halt to military actions this afternoon, however, making clear that it would re-intervene, as soon as it is judge necessary. Dimitri Medvedev, who was relatively quiet during this war, declared that Georgia was sufficiently punished. This is an utterly dangerous statement, who does Mr Medvedev think he is? Is he a one person war crimes tribunal?! But instead of criticising a man, who is criticised by everyone anyway, let us have a look at what we have learned from this terrible and devastating war. 1. We noticed that despite all predictions of having reached the End of History, as many commentators predicted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, history did not quite yet come to an end. A great mind, Chrystin Freeland of the FT, actually says that instead of having reached the End of History, we have entered the New Age of Authoritarianism. I agree. For the first time since the fall of the USSR, Russia fights a war outside its own territory again. (This is true as long as you see Chechnya as Russian territory). No-one was able to do anything against this pointless bombing. Not even David Cameron’s comparison between Russia and Nazi-Germany helped much (apart from reminding Mail readers that we all have to fear a Russian Blitz). Even politicians who actually have some power (in contrast to Mr Cameron), could not do very much. Dick Cheney’s demand that Russian “aggression […] must not go unanswered,” does not really mean much. Nicolas Sarkozy, at the moment the head of the EU, might have had something to do with Russia finally agreeing to a ceasefire, but his role in all this is not quite clear yet. It is not only Russia though, that represents the New Age of Authoritarianism: we see “oil-powers” across the globe turning autocratic. This is the case in many African and Asian countries, but also in South America. We even enthusiastically watch the Olympics in a country that does not value freedom too much. 2. We learned that Mikhail Saakashvili is one of the least clever politicians around. I mean, let’s be honest, attacking a wannabe independent and Russian-backed South Ossetia and thinking that people won’t notice by the world because of the Olympics?! That’s just chuckleheaded, to say the least. Nevertheless, Mr Saakashvili was clever enough to represent himself well in the Western media. Today, people actually forget that it was he who started the war. Yes, Russia’s reaction was wrong and, no doubt, over the top, but it was Georgia that went to war with a semi-independent country that does not want to be part of an “unstable, immature, chaotic, corrupt, but hopeful” Georgia (to use the Guardian’s words). 3. We discovered that Vladimir Putin is most definitively still the macher in Russia. Dimitri Medvedev was not as prominent as his predecessor Putin during this war. There are a few more things we have learned from this terrible and unnecessary war, like how some UK papers preferred reporting about Maddy McCann, Sienna Miller, Stella McCartney and the like on their front-pages instead of the war. However, Mr Franklin and I are trying to keep the blog entries relatively short… Schreiber