GROOM LAKE, NV – Why does your electronic medical record (EMR) function sooooo poorly? Are ignorance, negligence, and terrible design the answer? Can intrusive government meddling and the general forces of chaos really explain the gross unsuitability of these systems for patient care? Sure, thermodynamics specifies that all systems tend toward entropy, but the odds of so great a magnitude of disorder and nonsense arising in one system are 10-19.
You may see in these systems the hand, not of an Intelligent Designer, but of a Malignant Genius, some sort of cosmic Dr. Evil, but until now there has been no confirmation of a malevolent conspiracy behind these products. Researchers from University of New Mexico at Roswell have finally traced the origins of our EMRs and the cybertracks lead directly through Area 51 to the far reaches of the galaxy.
It is well known that an infusion of technology from ancient aliens brought about the sudden burst of human ingenuity that began ten thousand years ago and transformed, in a historical accelerated junctional heartbeat, a bunch of smelly, grunting mastodon stabbers into makers of the iPhone. Sure, the aliens built the Giza Pyramids, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu; they introduced writing, painting and music. Everybody knows all that.
But you may not know that aliens, after liberally seeding our species with art and science as a grand experiment (approved by their IRB), feel today, unsurprisingly, heartbroken with the results of their study. So, they have decided to sacrifice our kind, write up the findings, and publish the report in the New Galaxy Journal of Medicine.
But how to get rid of us? Turns out the aliens-are-invading-Earth movies have it all wrong. Aliens don’t need to bring a 98-acre ship halfway across the galaxy to cast a menacing shadow over some innocently bustling city. They don’t need to power up the great Disintegrator Beam. Why destroy Earth itself, the canyons of Utah, the giant Sequoia tree, the indigo bunting, corn on the cob?
No, what’s needed is a subtler form of destruction surgically-targeted at the entirety of human culture. The Stuxnet boys had it right. A modest amount of cunningly incompetent software inserted into a sensitive industry can bring an entire civilization to its knees. Truly bad programming is its own Disintegrator Beam, and stupidity alone cannot explain its origins.
