Salute to The Glitch

The Glitch. The F*up. Human Error.

A glitch is a usually short-lived fault in a system. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, and in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games, although it is applied to all types of systems including human organizations and nature. The term derives from the German glitschig, meaning 'slippery', possibly entering English through the Yiddish term glitsh. Normally, a glitch occurs once, but can also occur multiple times in a particular software.

This week alone there have been some spectacular glitches! I'd like to take the time to salute you - Glitch - you sure make it more interesting around here.

First, the oil rig explosion and spill. Dead oil riggers, massive spill. Sea food futures are shooting up, and Louisiana beach front property is falling down. Public relation folks are trying to clean this up faster and harder than the folks lowering the giant dome to capture the oil. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong on the oil rig in the first place, but I can tell you with very little doubt that I believe human error was to blame.

Two, the would-be New York SUV-Bomber. He had it all, and pissed it away because he defaulted on his mortgage. So he went to Pakistan, they said come back after you've done something. So he went back with zero hours to maybe a couple of YouTube videos for training. Filled his SUV with cow poop, some fireworks, and a propane tank from his Weber grill. He lit something, but nothing else worked out. His smoking car was reported to the police by a Muslim immigrant who loves his country -- which is irony, but for the sake of this discussion, another glitch in the Islamic take-over of the world (if you believe in such a thing).

Three, airport security glitch. We can see you naked before you get on a plane now. But for WHAT? The SUV-Bomber was ON the PLANE. Ready to go. Strapped in, thinking he had gotten away with it. If not for some last minute accident, someone actually looked at the plane manifest to the no-fly list, and ran on the plane to get this guy. Again, ran on the plane. Back in Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder and the government officials who play the role of our national leaders and National Security team were behind the podium giving out cigars and handshakes, as if they had personally bagged the caller. However, the illusion that they were ever in charge or had any plan or even knew what was going has been dissolved. By some glitch, the NSA agent happened to do his job, that hour, and prevented the bad guy from riding into the Eastern Sunrise.

Four, the Facebook security glitch. If you're not aware of this one, it does explain why Blasphemes isn't supporting the Facebook 'like' button anymore... among other reasons. Did you notice that huge gap after posts? Yeah, that was pissing me off. Goodbye. Users of FB discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations. "Jenny's a bitch."

Facebook has been making changes that essentially forced users to choose between making information about their interests available to anyone or removing it altogether. Despite Facebook closing the security hole, the breach heightened a feeling among many users that it was becoming hard to trust the service to protect their personal information... which astounds me since there's nothing - nothing at all - private about Facebook. By it's very nature, you're exposing yourself to your 'friends' and some minor relatives and folks you knew 20 years ago and haven't talked to since them... but you post your pictures of your family and kids with no regard to privacy? Anyhow, that new glitch from Facebook may be the start to their MySpace like decline.

Five, the Dow freefall then rebound. The Stock Market bungee. You know, I'd be a lot more pissed if I already hadn't lost my life savings in September 2008. It fell hard yesterday, causing computers to immediately trigger a sell off. Speculation, at first, was that everyone was concerned about Greece. No they weren't - it was a glitch. Some douche bag typed in too many zeros when trying to buy Procter and Gamble stock -- and that glitch triggered a domino effect of selling. By the time everyone figured out what was going on, they went on a buying frenzy to try to offset the losses.

Ah, the glitch, reminding us what it is to be human. We only create gods, we are not them.