Uh-oh

In the past couple weeks, despite the mid-Atlantic, inland location of my home, I've experienced an earthquake and been grazed by Hurricane Irene. As I type, Tropical Storm Lee is headed my way. I've taken to jokingly wondering when the locusts will come --

And yesterday, I noticed grasshoppers in my yard and garage. 

It's enough to render current events quite scary. 

In this morning's Computerworld: "Hackers steal SSL certificates for CIA, MI6, Mossad." With the stolen certificates, the perps had the ability to launch "man in the middle" attacks, impersonating the named intel agencies, Google, and Facebook, among notworthy organizations. Without details, the above article says Iran is implicated.

Iran is closer than ever to having atomic bombs. From yesterday's New York Times, see, "Iran Has New Equipment to Speed the Production of Nuclear Fuel, Panel Is Told." One wonders where the International Atomic Energy Agency has been. Had it not been for the Stuxnet virus (reference, my January post Cyber war), how much closer would Iran be today to having its own nukes? Iran, whose president regularly raves about destroying Israel ...

Not surprisingly, someone might want to launch a preemptive strike against Iran. Four days ago, President Sarkozy offered that prediction/warning.  See the Google News translation of the Agence France-Presse article "Iranian nuclear bid could provoke attack: Sarkozy."

Meanwhile, robotic warfare moves ever closer. From IEEE Spectrum (August 2011 issue), see, "Autonomous Robots in the Fog of War." (Perhaps I'd be happier if I hadn't watched Terminator movies two nights in a row.)

And either more or less cosmic, depending on how literal you wish to be ...

• after the space-shuttle fleet was retired/grounded in July (see my July post National navel-gazing), 
• after (from the Associated Press, on August 24th) "Russian supply ship for space station crashes,"
• comes word, care of Spaceflight Now, that "Space station could be abandoned in November" (though the fine print indicates this evacuation would -- in theory -- be temporary).

Why evacuate the just completed ISS?  It turns out that (a) the failed upper stage of the cargo-ship launcher is also used for crewed Soyuz modules, (b) the emergency evacuation capsules at the ISS have a fairly short shelf life, and (c) with the shuttle grounded, Soyuz launchers and capsules are the only human-rated space systems around.

Is the apocalypse, or even the hackpocalypse, upon us? Probably not.  We, are, however, living the proverbial Chinese curse of interesting times.