I’ve been listening to the radio and hearing more and more noise about the Taliban in Afghanistan… just the stories that one can find on the Taliban are enough to make one wonder…

• Photos document destruction of Afghan Buddhas – CNN, March 12, 2001
  

• Taleban move to make Afghan Hindus wear ID Badges – CNN, May 22, 2001
  

• Taliban Orders Foreign Women to Stop Driving in Afghanistan – News.com, May 31, 2001
  

• Taliban kisses goodbye to lipstick, movies – CNN, July 19, 2001
  

• Internet latest target for Taliban – CNN, August 26, 2001
  

• Afghanistan bars Web use – News.com, August 27, 2001
  

The articles mentioned above are just the tip of the ice-berg. CNN has an excellent special report on the Taliban, which is really worth looking at to get a sense of the insanity that still prevails in some parts of the world.

Their “Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” has got to be the most ridiculous form of beaurocracy that I have ever heard of. In fact it puts the word beaurocracy to shame. Because this is not just government meddling in people’s live, but it is a clear and outright suppression of basic human rights. Come on… banning the Net? How can anyone live without the Net!! …okay, bad joke, but seriously…

What is happening in Afghanistan is akin to what happened in Germany prior to the World War II. In fact, in some ways it seems even more extreme. but since Afghanistan is one of those countries whose economy has been decimated over the past 20 years of stupidity and insanity that has prevailed in that nation and therefor it has little to no impact on the global economy, you don’t hear much about it at all. There is all this talk about human rights abuse in China, but very little with regards to what is happening in Afghanistan. Because China has an impact on the global economy and Afghanistan doesn’t matter.

Unimaginable that in this day and age, things like this can still happen. But then again, if Adolf Hitler could convince so many people to follow his screwed up belief system, what’s preventing some Islamic fundamentalist in Afghanistan from doing the same?

The book I listened to over the past weekend (Vector by Robin Cooke) was a work of fiction based on Bio-terrorism. At the end of the book the authour’s note made some pointed observations about the threat of N.B.Cs – Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons. Each one has the power to literally annihilate huge masses of people, animals, plants and pretty much the immediate world around us. It’s indeed stuff that makes you sit up and wonder.

In the examples of real-life examples of bio-terrorism that the author mentioned were those initiated by followers of Rajneesh – salmonella poisoning of salad bars in Oregon which affected 751 people in 1994, infectious muffins causing dysentery in 1996 and the infamous Sarin gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan in 1995.

What is scary about Nuclear, Bilological and Chemical warfare is not the sheer power of mass destruction that it posesses, but the fact that the knowledge of these weapons of mass destruction is accessible to people who are so screwed up in their heads so as to use it for terroristic activities. Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City is said to have been incited by the FBI raid on Waco Texas. The bombing of the US embassy’s in Kenya by Islamic fundamentalist and militant group led by Osama Bin Laden. So there is more than enugh evidence of people who believe that killing others in the name of their religious or fundamentalist beliefs is justified. I shudder at the thought of any such people using biological/chemical weapons instead of the conventional methods they have employed thus far.

In a recent conversation with a friend of mine, I remember passing a remark that these days I often wonder whether Darwinism has been reversed especially when it comes to human beings. Innocent people are killed by psychopaths. The birth rate in uneducated masses is significantly higher than that amongst those who are educated.

Bilogolocal and chemical warfare is indeed a real threat and as suggested by the author in his closing note, the only prevention against such attacks is counter-intelligence. Once again information becomes the key.

One of the characters in the book had a quote something along the lines that the threat of bio-terrorism is so real that the question is not if, but when it will happen…

I recently finished listening to a novel (Vector by Robin Cook… yes, it’s fiction, but it’s based on real events that happened and extrapolates on what could happen…) in which all the pieces of the puzzle just seemed to fall into place. The book was a great, and I’ll have a full review shortly in the Rants and Raves section for it; but the thing that I wanted to address here was just the way events seem to line up.

Conicidence is a curious thing. There are so many circumstances and situations that we are presented with which very often makes us all wonder what-f that wasn’t what happened? What if you didn’t accept that job and then you wouldn’t have been in that city and then you wouldn’t have met the person you’re with and things would be completely different. Right? The different paths that our life can take based on the simple decisions we make everyday is indeed fascinating. Reminds me of those old Hardy Boys books that I used to read as a kid which allowed you to choose your own path to the ending (Make your own mystery?). I used to enjoy figuring out ways to read every possible scenario and combination! Even till today when I think of depth first searches and breadth first searches in trees, I always think of the mystery books since that’s where I figure out how to traverse a path of a tree with multiple options.

The difference is that in those book, I could always go back and take the path that was previous not chosen and then see where that would lead. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury in life though. In life we make that decision and then that’s the one we have to go with. All we can do is simply wonder, what-if we had chosen a different path. (I’ve written previously about having no regrets, I still stand firm on that, but the what-ifs of coincidence are intriguing nonetheless). In the book, the male protagonist is able to piece together the cause of somemysterious deaths based on things as far-fetched as his colleague attending a conference on veterinary medicine and coming back and relating a story about a large number of rats having mysteriously perished in the sewers recently. Now, what if his colleague hadn’t gone to the conference. Or even if he did, if he didn’t come back and relate that particular story? Things would be different.

There are those among us who believe that there is no such thing as coincidence and everything is predestined and predetermined. I don’t buy that crock one bit, but still cannot help wonder about co-incidence. What if I hadn’t come to the US for my education…. would my entire outlook, my perspective and my weltanshaaung me completely different? Our environment has such a deep impact on how we develop and how we think. And the subtle experiences (and also the not-so-subtle ones for that matter) that shape how life progresses.

What if I didn’t decide to graduate early? What if I didn’t go to CMU for my grad work? What if the professor whose course I taught had not left for the valley? What if wasn’t at the cave late that night when the person who showed up and chatted with me on my site said should start my own company and in the process gave me the entrpreneurial bug? What if I didn’t meet the person who introduced me to my first financiers? What if the guy who became my best developer had already found a summer job before I got to him!? What if I didn’t hire the people I did? What if I didn’t send that email?

Just so many questions… each one the what-ifs of coincidence. Curious.

Before I end though, I do want to emphasize that I do not have any regrets about any of it.. None at all. Because I love the randomness. I love the fact that you cannot predict what will happen. And I wouldn’t want to either. Because the surprise is what makes it interesting. It’s what makes us adapt and develop.

Life is an improv.