Gloomy ring to those words today.

I’m not going to link to news articles on the terrorist attacks. You’ve all seen them. You know what’s going on. I found out when my wife called me to tell me that she was glad I wasn’t on the road this week, and I didn’t know what she was talking about.

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.

Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

I think (when I think about it at all), that the universe is something like a large computer (which sounds as stupid to me writing it as it probably does to you, reading it, but there it is), trying to solve the puzzle of itself, and we in turn are meant to slowly learn the things which the system has learned. We’re electrons racing around, executing small commands that encompass our whole lives. I think that there must be an entity guiding things, because while beauty can happen by accident, poetry does not. I think there must be other things like us in the universe, because it seems silly to think that a being capable of guiding creation would be restricted to only one world.

My first response to the news coverage of the attacks that happened today, was that it all sounded like the virus attacks last month. (Note: that is my reaction to the news coverage, not the news itself — the two are different things.) Pentagon targeted, New York attacked.

In my world view, I suppose they are viruses. “all decent men detest them”, after all. Or they’re programs, and I don’t want to know what problem it is there are trying to solve.

If you are the type of person who prays, pray for the guys circling DC and New York in fighter planes. You’re all smart people, you know why they’re in the air; there are still several commercial jets unaccounted for.

I’ve got pages of things I want to write about today, but I need to get this funk out of my system.