The State of the Onion 9
by Larry Wall
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Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
You know, if I were going to name an evil programming language, I certainly wouldn't name it after a snake. Python! Run away, run away.
When I was young I actually preferred Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Now "THRUSH," that's is a decent name for an evil organization.
Oh, and then there's Get Smart.
Unlike James Bond, it's highly realistic. I can believe in an evil organization with a name like "KAOS." After we're done with the James Bond series, I plan to show my kids Get Smart. I want to make sure my kids score high on intelligence tests. Ba dump bump.
I'm a child of the Cold War. We didn't go quite as far as to build a bomb shelter, but we actually thought about it before deciding our house would probably burn up anyway. Back then people thought you could win a nuclear war, or at least try real hard not to lose one. Eventually we all figured out that imperfect knowledge was a feature, and so we settled on a national policy of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, though they couldn't bring themselves to call it the FUD doctrine, so they called it MAD instead. Probably because they read too much MAD magazine. Hmm, that puts a whole new twist on the "Spy vs. Spy" comics.
Anyway, as a child of the Cold War, I know that seeing a mushroom cloud is a good thing, since it means you haven't been vaporized just yet. Sort of the same principle that you should never be scared of thunder, since the shocking part is already over with. Or more subtly, if you live under the flight path of several airports, like me, you're always wondering if the Blue Angels going 100 feet overhead are going to run into your house. But as soon as you hear the Doppler shift dropping in pitch, you know that they're probably going to miss your house, because if they were on a collision course with your house, the pitch would stay the same until impact. As I said, that's one's subtle.
