Tomorrow is Armageddon for the hackers behind the MSBlaster Worm. I wonder if they're claiming credit for the Northeast's cascading power failure. This is a signal that our spending on everything besides infrastructure is going to catch up with us.

Change of Subject:

It has finally become clear why I'll never be Glenn Reynolds. I just don't find a lot of the same things interesting. When I was in college (BYU 1972), I created an imaginary student club called The Young Apathetics of BYU. It was just a reason to mock all the little notices on the bulletin boards about this or that group having a meeting. Mine read, "This month's meeting of the Young Apathetics of BYU has been cancelled due to lack of interest." I love that kind of humor, the kind that takes a tick to realize that it doesn't make sense. I think of it as Moebius humor, in the spirit of the "This statement is false," eternal logic loop, or the "For information on how to keep a moron busy forever, read the other side," printed on both sides of a card.

I thought back then that apathy was just part of parodying life, but, now I find that it's more--a state of clarity, a recognition that few things really matter as much as most of those yelling about them think they do. Glenn is a professor, so I suppose he should be forgiven for thinking that Academia is significant. He's also a lawyer, as am I, a profession in which overexcitement and interminable righteous indignation are professional hazards. He seems to have those under pretty good control, I suppose, but the libertarian position that he and so many of those to whom he links endorse seems awfully simplistic and, at a time like this, self-contradictory. I find it pretty hard, for example, to get too worried about the loss of civil liberties when there are people around who have murdered thousands of Americans and caused huge damage to our economy.