The Itsy-Bitsy Bang...

Well, once again the voices predicting destruction and doom were proven wrong.

Not that anyone is really surprised.

I'm speaking of that thing they turned on this morning - the 17-mile long particle accelerator somewhere under the alps, or someplace in Europe. The doomsayers wasted no time rolling out the end of the world sandwich boards, predicting the creation of a slew of teensy-weensy black holes that would join together and annihiliate us all by the end of the day. Others decided that all these particles banging together would create a monster explosion by lunchtime and blow us all up.

No such luck. Afraid we'll all still have to get out of bed tomorrow and go to work.

Better luck next time.

Lemme tell you, all you religious fanatics and grade-8-science-class-dropouts: the TRUTH is, the only black holes are IN YOUR BRAINS.

Or what passes for your brains.

Throughout human history, every single time anyone has had an idea, has wanted to try something out, the forces of ignorance and fear have united in a superstitious chorus of "No No No! Leave well enough alone! Don't learn to use fire - someone will get burned! Don't build tall buildings, they'll fall on us! Don't ride a horse, it will trample us! Don't use electricity, it'll give us all cancer! Don't sail out of sight of land - you'll fall off the earth! Don't go into space, up the mountain, under the ocean, or even around the block... Don't make medical advances - it's terrifying! All the things that can go wrong! No, we'll be content to sit in the dark shivering, dying in childbirth, starving, huddled together for warmth in our cave of ignorance, praying to whatever god or gods we think we have to appease, rather than get off our collective butts and LEARN something...."

These fearmongers have been with us forever - human beings are an incredibly superstitious species. And by and large, they're not a problem. Not till somebody gives them a microphone, space in the paper, time on the evening news, or they reproduce to the point where there are actually more of these idiots than there is of sensible, normal, sane people.

One has only to watch a teenager attempt to make Kraft dinner to realize how fragile a thing knowledge and scientific understanding is. How unlimited the scope of human ignorance is. How close to disaster we really live, should we fail to teach our children that knowledge and learning are GOOD for them.

The particle accelerator started up somewhere in Europe this morning while the rest of the would slept like a baby. As it should have. Hello, you idiots out there, the particles they are accelerating are REALLY REALLY SMALL! News flash - it wouldn't rock your bottle of Coke, much less your world.

Today, the world is just as safe, and just as scary, as it was yesterday. As it will be tomorrow. There are no monsters except human monsters. No devils but human devils. No angels but human angels. No gods but human gods.

There may or may not have been a big bang. There probably won't be an armageddon, an ending to the universe, no matter how scared people are or how noisy they get. There may or may not be limits to the universe and our understanding of it.

Unfortunately for us all, there is no limit to human stupidity.