George Orwell’s book 1984 ends with, “Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache…He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” The phrase “Big Brother” has been thrown around for so long as a symbol of gray government totalitarianism that the real Big Brother has surfaced from a direction that Orwell wouldn’t have guessed.

“That’s what parents are for!” This has become the one-size-fits-all answer to any complaint about further erosion of public standards of decency. The general tone behind it is, “We didn’t have kids (or don’t care about them), so let us party like we want and you stay home and protect them. If you didn’t want to do that then you shouldn’t have had kids.” I’m getting tired of it and the premise that somehow they are only my kids. They’re yours too. They are members of the next generation and they will be in power when your power is waning. Do you care yet?

The Atlantic has an article by Walter Kirn called “The Autumn of the Multitaskers”, which came to my attention via Slashdot, posted under the title “Multitasking Makes You Stupid and Slow”. I found myself wincing in several places, as I am one of those multitaskers, albeit not as pathological as the cases he describes.

Here’s a way to start off the new year: read the most dangerous ideas of some of the most interesting minds in the world. Be careful; this is a huge web page (about 125 pages printed out), and is addictive to boot. I spent most of last weekend reading it and I’m still not done.

Tonight I lost a strategy game to a computer in a horrible, demoralizing way, reminding me of another edge that machines have over us: absolute stamina.

Namely, child molestation. Glancing over a recent Dear Prudence column in the local paper, I encountered the most astonishing exchange.

Here, for your consideration, is an article about the growing popularity of Iraq’s friendly neighborhood serial killers. This sadistic ritual videotaping and broadcasting of intimate, gruesome cruelty is becoming Iraq’s second most popular export (their filthy oil being their first), and the murderers wielding the knives are Iraq’s new celebrities.

It’s three years to the day, today, since the 9/11/2001 attacks on the US. As I grow older, I will, along with the rest of my generation, be able to tell anyone who asks exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news. I have nothing really new to add to an experience that the whole nation shared, just my own particular memories.

What’s more frightening: that we humans will lay waste to the world, or that the world will go on quietly without us?

OK, this really doesn’t merit an entry in the “Spooksville” category, but I’m going to put it here because I’m feeling a bit unsettled and afraid after my abnormally pleasant experience at McDonald’s today.

Does anyone remember, back shortly after 9/11, when historians and pundits were wondering whether the world could get back on track to relative peace, or whether we were in for a giant clash of civilizations? Does anyone wonder anymore what it turned out to be?

OK, folks, it's time to face the end of the Age of Antibiotics. We gave Infectious Disease a kick in the groin about a hundred years ago but he's not down for the count. No, according the Gospel of Darwin, that which isn't exterminated gets totally pumped up and comes back with a chip on its shoulder.

...but fear itself. Great quote. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it in 1933, to inspire Americans to rally against the entropy of the Great Depression. He was speaking against "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." You can read his whole speech if you like, over at Bartleby's. I thought this quote would be a good way to start out this blog category, where I whimper about things that, well, fill me with nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.