>>And of course there was that thing about at any moment the whole world might blow up <
>
>It still can. I don't see any great change there, except the multiplication of capable players, and the politics that increases the chance of one of them getting sufficiently PO'd at some point.
Naw, you need physically big countries to pull off the Mutually Assured Distruction thing. North Korea is about one MIRV worth <g> USSR was a little more formidable. Imagine there is sub parked pretty much full-time in the Sea of Japan so it wouldn't even be a long shot.
I was on UT in 99 but my aha moment was when Lisa Slater and I used to exchange messages on CIS ( pre internet ) about 5 times a day. I knew when we started she lived in Santa Rosa, CA and one day in a message I said "Boy you guys are having a hot summer" and she said "No, it's winter - I moved to New Zealand a couple months ago" <g> It had just never come up - or been any kind of factor in our communication.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
