With great power comes great responsibility. We must bear this in mind as Nepali researchers take rapid strides in the field of science, technology and reflexology.

After all, we are now a nation capable of producing test-tube babies at labs on Putali Sadak, so we have to ask ourselves: do we have adequate security safeguards to prevent miscreants from nabbing our scientists in broad daylight as they stop for a snack at the sekuwa shop at the Dilli Bazar intersection?

What is to prevent international terrorists from selling them (the scientists, not the sekuwas) to rogue states? And are we prepared for the nightmare scenario of our labs running out of test tubes? The short answer to all these questions is: How should we know?

Even so, we must use the current global war on terror to reassess other domestic lacunae in our security situation. For instance, there are serious questions about the vulnerability of our biogas reactors nationwide. We have not done enough to stop the proliferation of fissile materials in our strategic stockpiles of cowdung. And we therefore can't be sure that our weapons-grade bull manure will not fall into the hands of Saddam Hussain.

These are issues that every technologically-advanced nation like ours must ask as we learn to get out of the clutches of the axis of evil.

But help is at hand, and we can now rest easy. Lower alert level to Amber Two. There are reliable reports in today's edition of the Daily Bugle that Spiderman has finally arrived in Kathmandu to take care of our law and order situation. We can't trust humans with crime control in this city anymore, that is why we have subcontracted the job to a private sector mutant arachnid which doesn't need the stairs to walk up buildings, and can shoot a chewing gum-like substance from his wrists to incapacitate crooks. Spidey has his work cut out for him in Kathmandu, and he can start with:

. Cleaning the city of crime first means cleaning it of garbage. And it is in this direction that Spiderman's attention will be initially focussed. Before you throw the laundry out with the laundromat on the heads of unsuspecting passersby on the street below from your balcony in Asan, glance around to make sure Spidey is not looking.

. Next, our friendly neighbourhood Spiderman will turn his attention to the power-hungry, putrescent, anarcho-syndicalist Green Goblins in Singha Darbar, entangle them in his worldwide web, and restore the nation to its past glory.

. Then he will give special lessons in upward mobility at the Nepal Mountaineering Association's climbing school in Manang on the art of walking on walls.

. But before he does any of that, Spiderman must first untangle the traffic snarl near the Nepal Bar Association so that an urgent consignment of test tubes can be rushed to
Putali Sadak.