23 NOV, 2005 - 1440 CST The item below is distilled from a message relayed to me via my son. It is humorous. However, it's also an accurate metaphorical description of the Internet. Happy Thanksgiving Holidays to all of you and your families. 73 - Dick, W9GIG ========================================================================= I saw it again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know JACK about the net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a bad metaphor. Yes, but what if the metaphor ran in the other direction? Suppose our Interstate highway system was like the Internet... Whoa! Severe craziness. A highway thousands of lanes wide. Most with potholes. Privately operated toll bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. 237 On-ramps at every intersection. No markers or signs. Want to get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions. Ad hoc traffic laws. Drivers in some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 AM and 9:00 PM. Others would just shoot you without a trial. AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of Ebola victims and multiple toilets spewing out on the road behind it. Its occupants throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home. Some are 2.5 horsepower lawn mower engines with a top speed of 9 miles an hour. Others burn nitroglycerine and idle at 120. There are no license tags. World War II Army Air Corps bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks fitted with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the KRUD Traffic Watch helicopter. Little kids on a tricycles with squirt guns filled with hydrochloric acid. And there are no off-ramps! Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system.