Random thought theater today . . .

First of all, a follow-up on my depressing rant from Friday. No, I don’t feel any better. I feel worse, actually. My kids are too damn cute to grow up in a radioactive world. They don’t need third arms!

But, I was considering humanity and its capacity for destruction and creation. It seems we have an odd dichotomy. We discover an amazing technology and we try to figure out how to use it to destroy things. I’m waiting for the day when we can use a calculator to kill people.

Technology should be used to make our lives better. Easier. It should answer questions and open new doors. It should raise questions. It should entice and engage the intellect. Instead, if we don’t use it to download porn, create first person shooters (the only kind of video game I’m good at. Should I be concerned?) or, to use the most over-used phrase of the last decade, “weapons of mass destruction.”

How do we exactly define “mass destruction.” At one time incendiary devices, like dynamite could cause mass destruction. Look at Dresden during WWII. Not a single weapon of mass destruction used there. Yet, the city was leveled and hundreds of thousands of people died. Whose idea was it to improve upon the science behind that? “Hey George? These gazillion megaton bombs are cool, but we need more!”

Where does mass destruction begin? This whole war on terrorism started with commercial airliners. Are they weapons of mass destruction? No . . . I guess not, so 3,000 isn’t the magic number.

Cruise missiles, clearly aren’t, since we use them regularly. It seems weapons inspectors and politicos focus on germ warfare, biological warfare and gas canisters. But . . . it doesn’t seem that nerve gas can kill more than a cruise missile. Maybe it’ll kill slowly . . . but, mass destruction?

It seems to be human nature to want to kill as many people as possible.

I've always said the most dangerous discovery man ever made was fire. When it was discovered, people used it for warmth, comfort and to make their meat taste a little better. Eventually someone discovered that fire burned people and could be used to extort their will out of others. Then it was discovered that homes could be willingly destroyed with it. Luckily, it sat dormant for many years. One day man discovered he could contain the fires in a little capsule that propelled metal into other bodies. But even that was not enough. Man needed to kill on grand scales. So, he captured the power of fire in a cylinder and dropped it on others. Many hundreds could be killed that way. But even that was not enough. Man eventually figured out the power in the energy of fire. He split that power and was able to discover that he could kill hundreds of thousands at one time, and poison their land to boot.

So what is mass destruction? Mass murder usually involves more than two people, so shouldn’t we hold weapons to that criterion?

Hell, a person could probably only kill one other person with their hands in a reasonable amount of time, so all weapons cause mass destruction. Plus, if you look at the lifecycle of any weapon, over time . . . mass destruction.

For that matter, why does mass destruction involve death? Could we not also include bulldozers, cars, wrecking balls and two-year-olds as weapons of mass destruction?

Can’t you see it? Our enemies send a gaggle of irritable two-year olds to invade us. We take pity and take them in. Within a year, the two-year olds have torn our favorite books, taken our CDs out and scratched them all and put their lunch in the VCR because it looked hungry.