As IF Times

link Expert: Security Checkpoints Near Soft Targets May Soon Become The Norm « CBS New York.

So for almost 10 years, the West has had to be extra vigilant for any signs of ongoing terror activity in their daily lives.  All kinds of cumbersome and debatable programs and techniques were implemented at airports and other public transportation hubs by government ‘experts’ purportedly to keep everyone safe.  All of this was necessary since the mastermind of the 9-11 terror attacks was still at large and could be plotting mayhem anywhere and at any minute.  People were told to go about living their normal lives in defiance of the terrorists, but just in case, keep looking over their shoulders and suspect everyone.  Even 6 year old girls and frail grandmothers could not be ruled out as pawns in the diabolical methods of the terrorists.  A whole new workforce of government employees was created to molest, harass and humiliate us…..in order to ensure our safety.

Well, now the 9-11 mastermind has apparently been killed. Yet somehow, the experts exhort us to be even more vigilant and sensitive to possible retaliatory attacks by Bin Laden’s fans.  !!!  So, were we better off with him at large plotting the west’s destruction when he was alive, or now with his lackeys pursuing revenge after his death?   As of now, it seems like a lose/lose scenario. 

This sounds vaguely familiar…oh I know where I’ve heard this before!  Global warming!  People may recall the earnest bleats that a decade of supposedly increasing average temperatures, over the earth’s life of over 10 million years, was convincing evidence of global warming.  Over the past year or more however, the climate has never been cooler with snowfall and cold temperatures setting low records all over the place.  The Global Warming crew see this as EVIDENCE of global warming, or as they now call it, climate change.  So now we have to redouble our efforts to fight this man caused disaster.

In the case of the terror alerts, how about we recognize that the West will always be targets for our way of life and for our conspicuous affluence.  Unless there is technology to inspect every stick of gum, every lining of every jacket and every stitch of bulky underwear and the contents of every single car on the planet, we will be subject to the efforts of the people that hate the west.   Pretending to live normal lives while inside a plastic bubble is institutionalized lunacy.  Unlike Western culture which attempts to be inclusive and tolerant of variant peoples, Middle Eastern culture is still largely stuck in the mindset of edicts created thousands of years ago with no revision.  In a famous poem, The Ballad of East and West,  Rudyard Kipling concluded as much. 

Classic wisdom it seems.  As time goes on, people may want to cast some skeptical eyes upon the on-going ‘security’ regimes imposed upon them.  Like the global warming scam, someone benefits and it’s not the public.  It’s easy to project the hysteria that will be fanned by a concerned government so that all kinds of security measures will be imposed upon the helpless people.  We’ll have people who are armed and “protecting’ us and the rest who are dependant on their presence.  Years ago,  Ronald Reagan stated that the most dangerous words ever uttered were, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help”.  If TSA practices are what we can expect as government continues to “help” us,  I think we’d be better off looking after ourselves.

link Director James Cameron says BP turned down help offer – Yahoo! News.

Why doesn’t someone just listen to this guy?  He’s obviously convinced that his ability to create fake characters and make believe worlds has also conferred upon him  the powers to do real life things.  In fact, if I may be so bold, I can suggest a way in which Cameron can easily fix the Gulf leak.  Invent an avatar that can swim to depths of a mile underwater and bring along numerous rolls of Mighty Fix It, that silicon product that’s being hawked on network TV.  Once the cartoon, oops, the avatar wraps up the opening in the pipe, tada!

Of course, this wouldn’t be interesting entertainment.  You’d have to script a love interest as well, so other cartoons would have to be written in before the actual fix can occur. In line with what happens in the movies, this should all be resolved in about two and half hours.

At sea level, pressure on a body is about 14 psi.  In water, according to calculations, pressure at about 1 mile beneath the ocean’s surface is about 2400 psi, enough to crush any human being without sufficient body fat to withstand the enormous forces, except perhaps Michael Moore.  Cameron would have to design an especially rigorous cartoon in order to survive these great depths.  This may not be as easy as it sounds, since there are logistics involved.  Will the cartoon be a male or a female character? Will it be a white, blue, or some indistinguishable amalgam of ethnic make up?  Will they have 4 fingers or only 3 as per most cartoons? Would they be able to handle the rolls of Mighty Fix It with only 3 fingers?

Another possibility is to employ creatures that are already capable of moving at those depths.  Why not enlist  whales or giant squids to help plug the pipeline ala Flipper?  If only serving to give rides down to the leak site for the cartoons, or at least to hold the flashlights, these creatures can be of great help.  All of this may be moot however, because the ultimate solution is to create a time machine which would allow us to go back and cancel the leak in the first place.  All these solutions are possible…in his fermenting head. 

Sadly for us, Cameron happens to live in the real world, not the make believe planet that he seems to inhabit with many of the Hollywood delusional set.  For many of these people, reality is something the regular folk have to deal with.  They live in a world of fawning agents and adoring fans, leading their fantasy lives  in the fake worlds they populate.  And that’s all fine.  In order for these people to be ‘good’ at pretending to be other people, I suppose they have to buy into the fantasy completely.  For most of them however, having to deal with the realities of a world where things don’t get tied up neatly in 2 hours is a huge shock and they are probably wholly unprepared for those results. 

The only person who came out of the hollywood miasma with any vision was Ronald Reagan and he was successful because his ideas were rooted in reality and common sense, ideas  which stood him far apart from the elitist Hollywood crowd.  However, for every one of him you have an ocean of fantasy life entertainers who purport to have solutions to society’s ills, people with no real life experience.   The truly sad part is, they can actually convince some of the public to believe them.  The first few lines of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody sums this up for me:

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide

No escape from reality…..

These people are entertainers.  They have decided to sidestep an education in hard sciences, math, physics or  engineering in order to capitalize on their skills at make believe.  Can you imagine in any other culture or time when the rulers would take the advice of the court jesters for military or economic guidance? Picture the scene circa 1491 or so in Spain.  Chris Columbus is asking for dough to explore for a path to the west indies by ship.  “Oh wait”, the Queen exclaims, “let me consult with my juggler.”  Or imagine if you wound up at a bar in the seedy side of town surrounded by hostiles.  Would you want 120 pound  Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz to come in and “heyyy” the thugs away?  As if.

Getting back to Cameron, talented as he is and with intents that are undoubtedly sincere, let’s just keep his fantasies on the screen and away from real life before he makes us all blue.