We Writers..

...can sometimes come over as very much not compassionate people. Let's take this Malaysian Air plane that disappeared.

There's a part of my brain that's expressing sympathy for the passengers and their families. But it's the smaller part compared to all of the speculation and thoughts.

1. The plane vanished without a trace despite being under the eyes of modern military grade radar. It was turning, but the pilots communicated no course change. If only time displaced ships, planes, submarines, etc...weren't so horribly overdone.

2. Maybe it got blown up? But nobody's claimed responsibility (and no terrorist organization would do something like this and not crow it to the skies). It would have to have been a catastrophic explosion to cause this, and a bomb wouldn't explain that course change. (Maybe an intelligence service did it? Conspiracy theorist's wet dream there). An accidental explosion like TWA800 would have the same objections. Radar's gotten better since 1996.

3. Oh, maybe they got smited - some Islamic groups would love to blame the crash on the fact that they didn't pray before takeoff, served alcohol, and weren't properly veiling the stewardesses. And the gays caused Hurricane Katrina.

And then there's the wonderful side issue of our friend Mr. Ali and the two people on fake passports. Which were based on passports stolen a year and two years ago. Why was that not checked? But the first thing dear Mr. Ali did on hearing about the crash was contact "an intelligence service" and get them to tell Interpol these were people he'd put on the plane. Was he running drugs? Nope. He was running people. Asylum seekers (although slaves would make for a better story at some levels). It's easier to get an exit visa from Iran to go to Asia than to Europe...and I am definitely going to steal the concept of going halfway around the planet to get away from an evil regime. "We need to get off Earth. Mars is much better. But the only exit visa we can get is to Ceres..."

See.

We have this sociopathic streak that turns everything into a potential seed for a story.