The Acceleration

In Charles Stross' awesome new novel Glasshouse, which takes place app. 2700 CE, the term "Acceleration", rather than "Singularity", has been applied to the mid-20th-Century-to-mid-21st-Century exponential spike in technosocial development. This makes a great deal of sense since...well, what's happening now is an Acceleration, aimed asymptotically toward a Singularity that will always be just a bit beyond reach.

So, from here on out, Acceleration it is.

Solution to the Middle East.

I'm sick of trouble in the Middle East. So I've developed my own Final Solution for the troubles:

The West pulls right the fuck out. All business, all cultural contacts...everything. No shooting. No bombing. Just withdrawl. We pack up our things and our toys and we basically tell the entire Muslim World: "OK, you have a problem with us? Fine. We're leaving. We won't bother you anymore. Have fun!"

Sever all ties. Let them do whatever the hell they want to do. But if they attack us then, it's clearly ALL ON THEM--and we may have carte blanche to fling soime nukes around....But seriously. To hell with that entire region of the world. To hell with violence and bloodshed. The easiest way to prevent violence is to just leave people be--let them brutalize their women, obey positively Medeival social mores, and suffer through their own equivalent of the Thirty Years' War: it's their cultural problem, NOT OURS. I know there's something to be said for planetary human rights, but there's also a lot to be said for just minding our own business and letting the 2nd and 3rd World catch up on their own.

OK, discuss.