If you're feeling a little too optimistic today...

It's always the gotchas that getcha.

My wife is the single most self-reliant, sensible, capable creature I have ever met. Throw a crisis at her and she defuses it in mid-air and sets it gently on the ground, without taking her eyes off other incoming crises. Occasionally she'll whip an arm out and snag one coming up from behind--something I hadn't even considered, but which she had expected and planned for, timing its exact moment of arrival and disarming it on the fly. I don't know how she does it. Me, I just kind of bumble through life, sparing little thought for the future until it's the present (which is probably the biggest reason I like my life boring). Eva and boredom do not mix well. Remove too much stress too fast from her life (such as, for instance, on vacation) and like as not she'll actually get sick. That's another thing I find incredible about her...she can work thirty hours of overtime a week for a couple of months without her body going into meltdown...then, when the pressure's off, only then does she allow herself to fall ill.
As I've probably mentioned a few dozen times, Eva is a Lister. She makes lists of the lists she has to make. (I refuse to consider the possibility that somewhere there exists a list of list of lists...) I'm convinced it keeps her sane. We differ here, too. Until just recently, I shunned lists, preferring to keep everything in my head. Better to risk forgetting the odd thing than actually be confronted with concrete physical proof of the sheer volume of crap I have to accomplish today. Besides, must I really waste time writing out stuff I have to do when I could be doing it?
Unfortunately, my workload has outstripped my memory capacity, and lists are becoming essential. So I have gotten into the habit of scribbling up a daily to-do list first thing...and it has helped, it really has. I don't forget things any more, but even more importantly, it allows me to focus on each individual task and examine it from multiple angles. I'll probably never be as good at this as someone like my Eva, who undoubtedly planned a seven-bank-shot out of her mother's womb...but I'm getting better.

This thought has been floating around in my head lately as I digest yet more dystopian science fiction (Aftermath by Charles Sheffield) and am confronted with dystopian reality everywhere I look.
Aftermath concerns the struggle for survival on Earth following Alpha Centauri going supernova. The first order effects posited by Sheffield (and backed by hard science, as far as I've been able to research) are absolutely horrific weather patterns (strongly reminiscient of the sorts of things the climate change doomologists are shrieking)...and, much more devastating, a huge electromagnetic pulse that wipes out virtually every piece of electronics on earth. (Did I mention this is 2026, and everything's electronic?)
Thoughts...while there are ways to protect computers from an EMP (Faraday cages), a sufficiently large cage is hellishly expensive. And boy, have we as a society ever put all our eggs in one silicon basket. Break the basket, and we'd be just so much yolk on the ground in short order. It makes you (or at least, me) wonder: does backup exist any more? Have we just blithely bumbled forward, ever more dependent on computers, without any thought as to what we might do if they all failed?
Eva's got a list...of course she does. Reasonably close to our door, we have a "scram box" containing many of the things we'd need if it ever became necessary to get the hell out of here in a hurry. Many people might consider this paranoia, but I consider it prudent. (Of course, in the event of an electromagnetic pulse the car's not going anywhere. I haven't asked her, but I bet she's got a backup plan in place there, too.)
Anyway, here I am reading this nasty, nasty vision of a world-that-might-be, and I take a break and go blogrolling and the world-that-is rises up and bitch-slaps me.
My friend Peter just wrote about the rapidly dwindling bee population. Now, before I read his blog, I would have told you the only good bee is a dead bee, and if it could somehow take out a bunch of wasps and scorpions as it expired, so much the better. I have an irrational hatred of all stinging insects: my ultimate nightmare would be a swarm of yellowjackets arrowing in on me. Hence I'd heard about the approaching extinction of bees, and actually cheered.
Yeah, I'm nearsighted--almost legally blind in one eye, and occasionally beyond blind in both mental eyes. I had forgotten, of course, that bees serve several vital purposes beyond tormenting me. Like honey production. Or...pollination of crops.
Bees die, plants die, animals die, we die. The progression is simple and inexorable.

In a world where viruses out of Africa threaten to wipe us out every so often...where weathermen have taken to predicting the economy (with nothing whatever positive to say about it, of course)...where nations are still rattling all manner of sabres at each other...I bet there aren't many people who saw our downfall looming in the extinction of the lowly bumblebee.

And what's causing this depopulation? Scientists aren't sure, but some are beginning to suspect it might be cell phones.

I further bet nobody saw that coming. I mean, there's convincing evidence that cell phones, used to excess (which is the only way teenagers and business execs know how to use anything), cause all manner of interesting effects. Things like tumours and lost brain cells and maybe dementia. But that's all down the road, see, and right now I gotta take this call.
Suppose that cell phones are, in fact, wiping out our bees...our plants...our animals...ourselves? Albert Einstein said without the bee, we'd have four years to live.

Four years.

Better text all your friends.