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As is always the case after a tragedy like the Rancho Santa Fe mass suicide, there will be calls for new laws, policies or actions to prevent such things from occurring in the future.
Oklahoma City means no parking near federal facilities. TWA flight 800 means interrogation about airline baggage, even though baggage had nothing to do with the explosion. Ruby Ridge, with federal sharpshooters feeling threatened, meant Waco, where they used tanks. A few postal bombs, and now you can't just put stamps on a parcel and mail it.
And so, it's safe to predict that there will be fervid and heart-felt calls for action in the wake of the 39 Heaven's Gate suicides last week. Society's response could take several forms:
· Revise the calendar for accuracy. Some of the Heaven's Gate desire to escape these earthly shells was apparently connected to the approach of the Millennium in 2001 (not the year 2000, despite what you hear from the millions of innumerates who infest our society).
Our calendar reckons 2001 as occurring 2001 years after the birth of Jesus -- that is, he was born in 1 B.C., and his first birthday came in 1 A.D.; there was no year 0. This system was introduced in the first half of the sixth century by the monk Dionysius Exiguus.
However, Dionysius probably erred in his reckoning. Current research points to 6 B.C. as the year of nativity for Jesus of Nazareth.
This means that we're actually in year 2002 A.D. The Millennium has come and gone. The world's still here. No trumpet in the sky, no battle at Armageddon, no one-world government -- just the same old routine daily grind.
So there's no point in getting excited about something that has already happened. You made it through the Millennium just fine.
· Regulate Web page developers. The Heaven's Gaters apparently financed their operations by developing World Wide Web pages for big companies at $10,000 a pop.
Naturally, this inspired media organizations like CNN, who would prefer that you bought advertising from them rather than market on the Web, to investigate the bizarre world of Web users.
Amazing discoveries emerged. Some people who get real deep into Web work get pretty weird. They lose interest in going outdoors. They keep bizarre hours. They babble an arcane dialect about TC/IP and Java.
In short, they don't have the well-rounded personalities that Americans are supposed to have, and who knows what horrors might result if your browser paused upon a Web page designed by a techno-weenie misfit.
For all I know, you could catch something.
Best that we eliminate this possible contagion by
licensing Web content providers. Part of the licensing
procedure would be a personality test that wouldn't
resemble the usual Would you rather kiss a girl, read a
book, or take underprivileged children to the zoo?
questions.
Instead, it would ask detailed technical questions about transfer protocols, event handlers and the like. Anyone who had spent the time necessary to acquire the knowledge must have a warped anti-social personality, and could not be licensed. And those who could get licensed wouldn't know enough to do anything interesting. The Web becomes safe and predictable, and Americans go back to watching TV, as CNN intended.
· No more comets. Hale-Bopp is a great spectacle, but the impressionable Heaven's Gaters saw it as a shield for a spacecraft of transcendent aliens.
Clearly, we could prevent such tragedies in the future by eliminating comets, which the ancients, in their wisdom, always perceived as a supernal symbol of impending doom.
Two elimination methods seem feasible. One is to deploy our rockets and thermonuclear warheads. The instant some amateur astronomer spots a fuzzy escapee from the Oort Cloud wandering inward past Jupiter, we nuke it into tiny harmless snowballs.
The second method seems simpler, since it requires no change from what we're doing now. Continue to add light and other pollution to the night sky, until even the full moon, let alone a comet, is no longer visible in the sodium-vapor murk.
Then no one would be able to see comets, and if no one knew one was up there, it couldn't alarm the more impressionable members of our society, whom we must protect.
Granted, there are difficulties associated with all these solutions -- adjusting the year number, licensing Web contributors, eliminating comets -- but America can do no less if we are to protect the most vulnerable elements of society from their own stupidity.
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