Living On The Edge
This is not the first time that I have encountered ideas about something best described as inevitability. But events of late and a documentary I recently watched made me realise that even though inevitability is far grander and far closer than I thought, that it is both general and intensely personal, there exists an equally strong foe that counters and overcomes it completely. Interest in technology, science, history and engineering has always, from a very young age, made me aware of the destructive power that the weapons of late twentieth century have bestowed upon man. And I realised later that this power does not rest in the hands of the best of men, but in most cases, in the hands of politicians, demagogues, deluded autocrats and weak wavering democrats. Momentous is the realisation that a small glitch, an incorrect reading or result of a computer system, and a weak and panicking mind in charge of acting may combine anywhere in the world even today to deliver that first irr...