CAN WE HANDLE THE TRUTH?

Human beings are never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.

- Laurens van der Post.

I swear. Usually at the news. Sometimes when I think of Mankind, I get the mental image of a six year old sitting behind the wheel of his father's car, his head barely above the dashboard, his tiny feet almost, but nt quite, reaching the petals -- with whose functions he is vaguely familiar. Hey, Dad, don't sweat it. I know what I'm doing. Yeah, right. How many times have we heard those exact words from politicians all down through history?

But with Mankind, the engine is running, and the child is just about to engage the gear shift. Now, what exactly does D and R stand for?

Plagued by breakdowns, shut down for months, CERN's atom smasher is being scheduled for restart : at three times the speeds it had formerly attained, staying at those speeds from 18 to 24 months -- you know when it broke down all those times at much slower accelerations. All to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang {just the term I want to hear concerning a 16 mile collider with a nasty habit of breaking down.}

I may be hazy on all the details of quantum physics. But I am quite fluent in Murphy's Law. I've seen the wonderfulness that followed when even scientific professionals ignored that law.

I'm all for advancements in science. As a child with double pneumonia, I was saved from death by some of those advancements. The cynic in me just notes that every breakthrough in science has been perverted for the military. And when said research is centered on re-creating the conditions of something called ... The Big Bang. Yeah, you get the idea.

Besides you all know the old fable of the frog and the scorpion -- and how well it turned out for the frog -- and for the scorpion for that matter.

Scientists are hot in the pursuit of the secrets of the universe in Geneva. I can hear the universe using the voice of Jack Nicholson : "You can't handle the truth." And seeing the mess we've made of things with those secrets of the atom we have uncovered, the universe might just have a point.

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I think there's a new lawman coming on TV that is in the vein of my character, Capt. Samuel McCord