* A great many “dystopian” stories over the past 50 years have depicted the times leading up to “the end” as characterized by horribly crowded cities extending from sea to shining sea. Human life in the endtimes (or at least the “much later than right now” times) was a great crunching mass of seething humanity with no daylight between us.

* A report on NPR’s online news feed this morning is quoting some folks as thinking the response is over the top. (One guy was worried that it would have too much of an effect on the economy.) Which reminded me of the aftermath of the Y2K hoo-hah. I can’t count the number of times I heard – from people outside the software industry – about how all the fuss was for nothing because there were few or no ill effects from the Y2K issue. The frustrating part being the futility of pointing out to them that it wasn’t an accident, that billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours had been spent to produce that “non-event.”

* Remember what defeated the invaders in Wells’s “War of the Worlds?” I’m not sure what that means but it just reeks of irony, somehow.

DQ