This is what they say. This is the breathless abandon that accompanies each tale of discovery and terror, pain and glory across the vast and troubled worlds of science and tech, politics and warfare, love and sex and death, oh my.
"This changes everything," they say. This revelation, that amazing gizmo, this startling new way of seeing things, that flaccid terrorist's imbecilic underwear bomb that now means anyone can be freely groped at the airport. Baby, the terrorists won long ago. Haven't you seen the news?
This box just arrived. Let's see what we've got.
2) Winner, most deliriously misleading headline of the year: "NASA finds new life form." OMG you guys! NASA! New life form! Maybe some crazy soil sample came back from Omega X-19 containing some pulsing blue alien microbes! Perhaps they found the living, conscious source of dark matter! Wait, what? They only found an odd microorganism in creepy ol' Mono Lake in California? A place where any tourist with a $95 Canon P&S could tell you bizarre things certainly must live? Oh.
Do not misunderstand. The discovery of an uncanny new organism that rearranges the six common ingredients for "normal" life -- carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur -- and instead munches arsenic for a living and it's not Dick Cheney? Well, that opens up all sorts of fascinating possibilities for what might be out there. Yes, gods of science, "this changes everything." But we're just not yet exactly sure how.
It would be lovely to think one idea could do it. But this has always been the impossible dream of empires on the verge of collapse: that somewhere in the maelstrom of wanton discoveries lies a wild new technology, a stupendous magic bullet that seven billion bipeds pray will soon absolve us of our unchecked gluttony, cure the vicious cancer we've inflicted on ourselves and make everything right with the world. Sure. As Jesus used to say, good luck with that.
Here's a teaser about Wikileaks:
-- Wikileaks is one unprecedented, stunningly detailed explanation of just how the global diplomatic sausage gets made.
And lo, it is vile sausage indeed. This is the biggest revelation of all, the thing that changes everything: What we're learning is, this meat is more rancid, disrespectful, abusive, cruel, barbarian and childish than anyone wanted to imagine. No wonder world governments and whimpering doltbuckets like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee want this Assange guy dead.
Truly, the banality of global political evil has never been this exposed. Hell, even the Vatican is condemning Wikileaks over revelations about its own pathetic sex scandals in Ireland. In my book, that alone makes Julian Assange a goddamn saint.
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