"have a nice day!"

Okay, I hate to admit that Charles Krauthammer sometimes makes me think (and is even a pretty good writer . . .), but I'll do it. His most recent column, which ran in the P-G today, is about the recreation of the 1918 Spanish Flu and its possible repercussions, the idea of which plugs in to a lot I've been thinking about lately, especially in the context of the aesthetic and ideological trajectory of the band I'm in. About the advancement of science and the decisions that have to be made in short order to keep up with the quickening pace of new technology. While I'm not so much into his alarmist take on the matter and his concentration on "the bad guys" (what else could we expect?), the questions he raises are pretty fair.

The whole thing reeks of Frankensteinian what-have-we-wroughtness (which, after Dolly and the rest, we're pretty de-sensitized to), but at the same time the prospects of being able to use the newly-recreated virus to help fight similar epidemics in the future are enticing. Sometimes you have to kill it to keep it alive, sometimes you have to bring it back to life in order to kill it. Contradictions and ambivalence abound. "Have a nice day," if you will.