Roughly, because old people die and young people take over. Changing hearts and minds is very difficult, but replacing them is only natural. In the US old attitudes towards race and sexuality have changed to a large degree not because old racists and homophobes changed, but because their more open-minded children took over. In Sri Lanka and all over, this is just the natural way of change.

This is what I hear about Duminda Silva, MP thug, now in hospital after a gunfight. THIS IS ALL HEARSAY. From somewhat informed people, but still. From what I hear, Duminda walked over, hit Bharata and told his bodyguards to shoot. My guess would be that it was more of a melee with seven stories, coming out, so who knows. Either way, Bharata was riddled with bullets and Duminda got three in the head. One of Duminda’s guys was later found with like 16 weapons, including T-56s, an automatic weapon that no civilian can carry and which can’t even be concealed.

MP Duminda Silva was far from a clean politician, but I wish him recovery. It seems that he’s been shot in the head. Former MP Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra has been killed, along with two others. It’s unclear why this happened. There were threats on Bharatha’s life in February, supposedly from the underworld. I don’t know how Duminda Silva was involved.

I remember coming home and seeing the box for a Macintosh LC III in the house. I was so excited. I grew up on Apple, hacking and breaking them as much as you could, trying to crack the security on the boxes at school. Today I was driving when I heard that Steve Jobs had died. I had to stop in the middle of the lane. He was a true genius, on the historical scale. Can you imagine how he could have changed the world had he lived a little more?

People have said that war should have no civilian casualties. Rather than change the frame, the Sri Lanka government responded and said ‘there were no civilian casualties’. This was dumb. They’re only now starting to admit that civilians did die. That’s a start. I was watching the government’s response to Channel 4′s Killing Fields, Lies Agreed Upon. It sucks just as much, only in the opposite direction.

Sri Lanka had 2,515 fatal accidents last year and 1,102 so far in 2011. Any accident is a bad scene, but in Sri Lankan they’re quite often horrific. People walk literally on the road and lorries and buses overtake blind. Everyone drives a bit mad and madness ensues. The Sunday Times has a good breakdown of stats on car accidents vs. vehicles registered, but they never get to the emergent point. Who causes a disproportionate share of accidents? It seems to be the buses. And lorries.

I’ve been reading Dune, which is pretty cool, but one thing strikes me. A lot of our pop culture heroes are basically terrorists or, at best, vigilantes. Take this example from the Galactic Empire Times: “Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday” (GET). If you look at from another side, all of these movie heroes are quite tainted by their killing and quite easily spun in the other direction.

Death is something we try to avoid, mainly by hiding it in plain sight. From childhood we watch superheroes and movie stars inflict great violence in an atmosphere where no one really dies, or those that die deserve it. The fifty nameless henchmen just get sprayed with gunfire or roundhouse kicks and lie down. Perhaps they get up, or perhaps not. I’ve often wondered whether those henchmen had families. Perhaps it was just a job.

Ah, Bin Laden. He hit the military and financial centers of America and verily, years later, they did collapse. If any point market the decline of the American empire, that would be it. I suppose he would have had a point, if he hadn’t sent thousands of human beings to a fiery death. In the end, the protesters of the Arab spring made a much more compelling point, including one that had the benefit of improving their lives rather than leading to some end times scenario and a pleasurable death. A friend of mine said Bin Laden was his hero. Everyone on Facebook was shocked. I get his point, but I think it’s not the point.

The first time I met Lasantha Wickremetunge he was already dead. Like many important people in my life – Kurt Cobain, for example – I discovered him after he was dead. I first saw Lasantha in a coffin, turning the corner from Kirimandala Mawatha onto a crowded Baseline Road. I saw future MP Harsha de Silva walking near the railing and we walked together for a while, exchanging the spoken version of a dejected shrug. I remember the crowd at Kanatte Cemetary. It stretched round the block. Last Saturday, I went to his gravesite again, unfashionably late, this time as a Sunday Leader employee. I saw MP Eran Wickramaratne walking out, and the young editorial staff still around the grave. It wasn’t a massive turnout like before. I know that Lasantha is lost. Sometimes I wonder if he lost.