I was browsing at Half-Priced Books a few days ago and this title jumped out at me: Directive 51 by John Barnes:
Heather O'Grainne is the Assistant Secretary in the Office of Future Threat Assessment, investigating rumors surrounding something called "Daybreak." The group is diverse and radical, and its members have only one thing in common-their hatred for the "Big System" and their desire to take it down. Now, seemingly random events simultaneously occurring around the world are in fact connected as part of Daybreak's plan to destroy modern civilization-a plan that will eliminate America's top government personnel, leaving the nation no choice but to implement its emergency contingency program...Directive 51.As usual, I side with the terrorists. It’s a real thing. Not the book, but the directive:
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20, sometimes called simply "Executive Directive 51" for short), created and signed by United States President George W. Bush on May 4, 2007, is a Presidential Directive which claims power to execute procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency". Such an emergency is construed as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."51 is 3x17, the sacred death day of Osiris and the god of all that is good and green, and of course he’s married to Isis, the earth, Gaia, Terra. Our Homeland, Mom! GWB famously declared a “war on terra” and apparently he was serious. He was also a "Christian".
It makes me wonder if perhaps Osiris has his own “Directive 51” in place, for just such an emergency. He might even call it “Operation Daybreak”. When the most wicked and destructive force on the planet calls itself good, you just know it will manifest a worthy opponent, that’s the way dualism works. I’m in the process of throwing away my “turn the other cheek” bullshit. Yea, I know, not very Buddha nature of me. But fuck it. If Gaia dies, we all die, and the gods, even Jeebus, only live through us:
He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way. He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart! You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.I’ve decided to embrace my inner Abaddon. In this age, good guys wear black. I mean, not that I’m about to to go postal or something. But... something’s in the air. No more goody two shoes.
"You don't know the power of the dark side"
1 comment:
By some eerie "coincidence" Stuart Staniford had this up about 10 days ago- Morning Singularity Watch:
http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/06/morning-singularity-watch.html
"Apologists for proceeding as rapidly as possible to a singularity like to claim that there's nothing to worry about because we'll use all this fantastic AI to integrate with and augment human intelligence and make being human more and more fun and fantastic. But whenever you look at actual trends on making humans better/healthier/smarter etc, you see very modest progress and/or diminishing returns, while the progress of the machines is much faster. To me, that suggests the main symptom of the approach to the singularity will be to render a larger and larger fraction of the human population unemployable. And that's been going on for a few decades now..."
...
"... creating intelligence that can duplicate more and more of human's mental capabilities is fundamentally different than all other prior technological progress. Why? Because, once that is accomplished, we have nothing left to offer the economy in the way of productivity. It won't need us. I have no idea what will happen as a result, but I wonder if we'll just go crazy before we get there."
Worth digging into the comments a bit also.
Post a Comment