Monday, October 17, 2005

Unbridled Stupidity, or Why There Is No Hope, Part 1

Many years ago, The Progressive got in trouble for publishing a rough outline about how a nuclear device is built. The article contained few of the technical particulars needed to build a real bomb, but that didn't stop the federal government from going after them.

Recently, some geniuses at the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the actual genome of the 1918 influenza virus, a virus every bit as deadly as the "bird flu" virus now being tracked through Asia and Europe, on the Internet in their GenBank database. Any terrorists out their must be drooling their faces off. Given, you cannot yet buy genetic engineering equipment at Circuit City, someone who really wants to fuck shit up good, and who has access to a posh enough corporate or university lab could conceivably drum up lots of business for funeral directors and for CNN. You can read more about it here (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/opinion/17kurzweiljoy.html?pagewanted=print).

In these times when women getting on airplanes get their grandmother's antique bone knitting needles confiscated by TSA agents, why is our government, in its infinite bureaucratic stupidity, giving the tools of our destruction away to terrorists and other miscellaneous wack-jobs for free?

(Story originally appeared in Boing Boing)