So if you've seen Minority Report you might remember that scene where John Anderton (Tom Cruise) explains to Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) the metaphysics of Pre-Crime: how they "stop the future" from happening after the three precognitives see how it will unfold. You know the scene, the one where Cruise throws a ball on the desk towards Farrell, who catches it before it falls to the ground. As Cruise explains, following the chain of cause and effect, the ball would have fallen to the floor. It is Farrell's intervention what "stops" that from happening.

A neat metaphor to start wondering about the dichotomy between "destiny" and "free will," dontcha think?

But that may be a subject for some other time. Today's Sunday, and even the Maker knows better than to work on this day.

My brother is freaked out by severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

Oh, yeah, the war is a terrible thing, no doubt. But to his way of thinking, in the end it's people who are behind the bombs and guns, and they can be stopped at some point, maybe even reasoned with.

How do you reason with a deadly virus?

How good he hasn't read Stephen King's The Stand. That book's killer strain, nicknamed "Captain Trips," is an extremely noxious, military-made relative to the flu. (SARS, however, is a coronavirus related to the common cold.) The name "Captain Trips" is due to the fast rate with which it goes worldwide, infecting the population; kind of what the World Health Organization is trying to prevent by issuing travel advisories against visiting Asia, where the first cases were reported.

A cure? Not yet, buddy. And forget about wearing a surgical mask to avoid infection.

But enough about the doom 'n' gloom. Though some cases of SARS have already been detected US of A-wise, the infection hasn't spread uncontrollably. As of April 2, 708 cases were detected in Hong Kong, of which only 16 proved deadly. (The figures I have for the total population in Hong Kong are 7 million people, which makes 0.01% of the population being infected.) I'd say the chances of controlling the disease favor us.

Once that becomes evident, my brother will probably go back to complaining about the war.