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More WTC News
Current WTC happenings: The FBI is searching ISPs with FISA warrants. Architects and civil engineers are starting to speculate on why the towers collapsed. Pictures: NASA, a powerful photoessay, newspaper headlines. Current investigation news: LA Times, NY Times, CNN. They're finally starting to mention casualty figures. Finally, bjb writes: "It isn't the hollywood blockbuster of a story, but I'm a daily reader of Slashdot, and I was on the 38th floor of the WTC 1 building when the first plane hit. Oh, and I was reading Slashdot at the time. You can read about my experience here. It was originally an email that I sent out to friends and family, but I was asked by NPR's Talk of the Nation to make it a web page."
There is another good article on the collapse at NewScientist.com
I was very much impressed with the way the buildings withstood that kind of impact long enough for some people to escape. The loss of life if they had gone immediately, or had toppled sideways just doesn't bear thinking about.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
They are in need of computers, supplies and human techs. If you can please help. Some of us can't donate blood. But we can donate our extra computers and supplies.
r y/ 0,23008,3347294,00.html
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/showtell/sto
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eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
Structural steel starts to melt at 800 degrees
F. Fires from jet fuel raise temperatures to
around 1500 degrees F. It was in the Sept. 12
issue of The Wall Street Journal now currently
available without registration or subscription
at:
The Wall Street Journal
Apparently, for the vast majority of buildings in the USA, an impact by an aircraft, similar to what happened, would take them down almost instantly. The construction of these buildings saved lives.
There are many articles in New Scientist Magazine on many related subjects to this event, including one that discusses the buildings in some detail.
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Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
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"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Last night on the news I heard the estimate of up to 20,000 dead in this attack. People were comparing this to the attack on Pearl Harbor, with a mere fraction of that many dead. People, if this count turns out to be accurate, this isn't anything like Pearl Harbor, except metaphorically, it is on line with the ENTIRE Vietnam War. The number of projected causualties is on par with the total number of US causualties throughout that conflict 30+ years ago.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
i know of a request by the government for the hacker community to relinquish any information it has. should we, err, the hacker community do anything activly against Bin Laden?
-teknopurge
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The Post has extensive coverage of the Pentagon operations.
Best Slashdot Co
CNN and other news sites report that the FBI searched the Florida house belonging to two brothers believed to have played a part in the events of 9/11/01. A search on Google for one of the brothers - Ameer Bukhari - shows that he died exactly one year before on 9/11/00 in a plane crash.
I posted that info to various places, and in the time its taken me to type this far into my message, CNN has changed their story - now saying that FBI believe that one of the brother may have died before Tuesday.
Either Carnivore is good, or the new media have just learned about Google.
http://www.rotten.com/news/articles/coup-cover-300 .jpg
This is not a joke. It appeared in the current issue of Wired magazine, which was on newsstands before this all happened. I guess it's just one of those odd coincidences.
dinner: it's what's for beer
My heart is lifted by the care and the concern shown by the /. community. But as we are nerds in seek of news, I would like to see us come up with some possible solutions. Here's mine:
... it has my face on it ... my baggage tags, again, with my face on it.
... and with checks against known terrorist lists (only) ... may be enough to stop a wide-scale terrorist attack like the one we saw.
Back in 1995, I was the lead programmer for INSPass, the INS Passenger Accelerated Service System. Essentially, an individual trades the convenience of getting through customs for giving up their hand geometry on a card that is verified at a kiosk.
Now I read that there are going to be long lines at the airport. A wonderful place for a repeat of the terrorist disasters in Rome and Athens back in the mid-80's. And when it gets really, really busy, an excellent place for a bad guy to get waived through the lined on a frustrating day or by an airline employee who doesn't know what a fake driver's license looks like.
What I would like to see is some sort of voluntary program, offered by either the FAA or the airlines themselves where smart cards are issued. On them, is my face. On the chip, my fingerprint and othe biographic information. I sign up some other time than a day I'm travelling. I agree to have my information checked against known terrorists lists (only)
When I go the airport, I go to a kiosk where I hold the card up to my face to an attendant, who watches me I insert the card and verify my fingerprint, when I'm issued a ticket
No, this is not foolproof. And some will still want to go through the old-fashioned line. And that's fine. But if enough people paticipate, it will take the work load off of those having to do identification the old fashioned way
I hate giving up personal freedoms. But here is one case I'm willing to make an exception.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Or are we just going to target the Arab
terrorist organizations?
Hi there. I'm sure many peple won't read this because it was posted so late in this discussion, but I thought you might like a quick word from some of the ER's I've been in today down here. (Columbia, NYU, and Vincent's). Tragically, everyone is really just standing around waiting for live people to come in, and there seems to be a general lack of this. Every now and then a fire fighter comes in, but is generally stable at this stage - likely incidental damage.
Yesterday, one of the firemen was brought in - in his mid fourties, I would suppose. He had a brother and 3 sons who were all firefighters; one of the latter was not accounted for all day yesterday. He himself had gotten caught in the first collapse, had gotten out and went in the second building and was then caught in that collapse and received some blows of debris into his back, for which he was being treated. It's that kind of bravery from the very salt of the earth which makes me so proud to be an American. God bless to all. K
Yeah... I've been wondering if some sort of "emergency slide" would be more effective at getting people out in a hurry... I picture something like the spiral slides in a waterpark, located in the central space of the building. Probably with some sort of mechanism to keep everyone on the slide moving at the same speed (wouldn't have to be powered; a simple harness attached to a cable to provide resistance would probably do the trick)... 'Course, this wouldn't have helped people above the impact site, but I can't help but think that with some design work that an idea like this could make a dent in the length of time it takes to evacuate such large buildings. And I don't think there'd be much of a barrier to handicapped people using such a system either, although I could be wrong on that one.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
There are several stories around about the terrorist attacks, what the net has to do with the trail for clues, and what we're looking at in the future. To start, news.com has a story about searches conducted at ISP's. Earthlink was reportedly served with an FISA warrant, which an Earthlink representative called "equivalent to a wiretap." The only people allowed to request an FISA warrant are the directors of the CIA and FBI, and the secretaries of state and defense. All but one of the 7,539 FISA warrant applications since 1978 have been approved. According to the ACLU, not one instance can be found where the target of a FISA warrant was allowed to review the initial warrant application, as it is granted by a secret panel of seven federal judges. Msnbc has more information about the FBI and its searches, with AOL, Yahoo, and Earthlink confirming that they've been cooperating, and Microsoft only saying they "regularly work with law enforcement." Wired has more detail about "a major network service provider" saying that the FBI showed up on Tuesday "with a couple of Carnivores, requesting permission to place them in our core, along with offers to actually pay for circuits and costs." The most troubling quote, from the same anonymous source, is "I know that they are getting a lot of 'OKs' because they made it a point to mention that they would only be covering our core for a few days, while their 'main boxes were being set up at the Tier 1 carriers' -- scary." An anonymous engineer at Hotmail indicated they "are cooperating with their expedited requests for information about a few specific accounts." Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich made a commentary (RealAudio only) on last night's Marketplace on NPR about terrorism and the future of privacy. He closes with a few chilling sentences. "To gain back more of our security, we will give up more of our privacy. We'll do it gladly, if that's the price we have to pay to counter terror. The willing loss of our privacy is likely to be one of the major consequences of the horror that occured September 11th, 2001."
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Aside from letting the military take care of military matters, I'll tell you what we should do.
We should mow our lawns. We should go out to eat. We should sit on the porch with a beer. We should travel across the country. When the planes are back in the air, we should fly somewhere.
The terrorists don't have any real hope of getting the U.S. to say "Sorry. We'll stop doing the things that make you angry." They have no defined goal toward which they are working. They have a vague goal of defeating us. Because of this, they know they won't gain anything substantial by performing these acts.
The one thing they can accomplish, is to get us to drastically change our way of life. They can frighten us into not travelling about our own country the way we used to. They can get us to hide in our homes, to quit going to our sporting events, movies, etc.
That's their one spoil of war: our lifestyle. And that's not a spoil the military can get back for us. We have to do that. We have to refuse to give it to them.
The perception, even among ourselves, is that American culture is sometimes shallow. Hopefully, we will prove through this time that it only appears so because we refuse to surrender it to such people as would try to take it from us.
We need to go to our baseball games. We need to go buy a bunch of things we don't need from Walmart. We need to take our SUV's out to the lake for a picnic, or to go camping. We need to be ourselves. If we become somebody else, anybody else, we surrender.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Notice how the towers fell straight down, instead of toppling over and taking out nearby buildings.
My girlfriend is a civil engineering student, and they discussed the attacks in her Structural Engineering class yesterday. Apparently, the guys who designed the towers should be very proud. In a worst-case scenario, fires would (as they did) cause the steel structures to melt. The towers were designed so that, in that worst-case scenario, they would implode straight down instead of falling over.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Not to mention how American political involvement has continually exacerbated the problems over there.
Your premise is correct, but your conslusion is not. If it were not for the US involvment Israel surely would have pushed the Palestinians into the sea long ago. Remember that these people are not even welcome in any of the Arab nations surrounding Israel. In spite of their terroism Israel is pressured by the US to make concessions to them.
If you want to make this about Israel, consider this: If it were shown that this attack was perpetrated by a terrorist cell of Native Americans would you be in favor of now giving them back Oklahoma to prevent future attacks? How would you feel if the UN was pressuring this decision?
Note: I have nothing against Native Americans, however their history in this country has several parallels to the history of the Palestinians in Israel.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
I can only get to one of the two sites describing why the towers collapsed. It didn't offer the same reasons that the BBC's web site has been carrying for a couple of days: they claim that the temperatures exceeded 800 degrees of Celsius of melted the steel cores. Hindsight always clearer, but they also ask: why weren't the resucuers pulled out after a certain length of time, especially after the first tower collapsed?
Interestingly, only one of the two towers was insured as collapse of them both was unconceivable.
I swear, if I ever work in a tall building like the towers I am going to learn to base jump. I'm going to keep a parachute under my desk in the event this (or even just a bad fire) ever happens to me.
One of the better suggestions I've seen (for those folks who're on the black hat side) is to hack into the systems of these terrorists (yes, they do use the Internet). One of the reasons why Osama Bin Laden is a successful terrorist (even if he is not responsible for this particular incident) is because he has large amounts of money. I'm pretty sure he doesn't keep it at home, so it's probably in some bank account. I'd love to see some hackers get into that bank account and not only trace who he's been paying what to (I think we can do it better than the CIA), but maybe just making his money go away. It's much harder to pay for effective terrorists if you don't have the money...
T.
yes they are not buliding right now, but for mid-east to pakistan (and india) oil pipelines, afghanistan is a prime location. if it wasn't for their fascist government and current long-running civil wars.
-sam
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/dis play.php3?article_id=6946
In the English language edition of Ha'Aretz today there is a short piece from an engineer who talks about the contruction of Israeli tall buildings. Basically concrete is more fire resistant and cheaper than steel. The downside is that it takes twice as long to build compared to steel.
Also as anyone who has ever been to the top of the WTC towers knows - the towers would sway up to a foot in high winds, twisting actually. I'm dubious one could make a concrete structure that could sway w/o breaking. The other problem with very tall buildings which WTC attempted to solve is the problem of elevators. Queueing theory and engineers at Otis Elevator will tell that buildings that tall get consumed by elevator shafts which makes the building a financial mistake. WTC had an open floor design with each floor of nearly an acre of unobstructed space ~200x200 feet. That is why the buildings were held up by their outside walls and why there were express elevators and elevators that started at high floors.
mean to add to the media saturation but here is a link to some hi-res photos of the downtown area. Looks like some sort of bizarre sci fi movie.
Why is it even now people think we can live with them? If they left us alone we would leave them alone. Its not their faith that is the problem it's the culture of hate and their belief that they are right and every one else is wrong. How can anybody support a society that treats their women the way the Middle Eastern country's do. They are a culture of fanatics just like the Japan of world war two. I am not talking about killing them all I'm talking about forcing them to live with others in PEACE. Japan in WWII was convinced that they were a divine race and everyone else was wrong. It took the blood of many people from many countries to force them to live with us in peace and they do to this day. So should we nuke them? I would say no but we should force them in to unconditional surrender and put a stable democratic government with freedom for all religions in place. We should never tolerate or appease a people that have no respect for others. The taliban and other Islamic cults are butchers that mutilated women professionals such as doctors and schoolteachers. But they hide behind their religion. It is not the Muslim religion that is at fault it is the culture of fear that they have created. Don't let them use their religion to justify their actions.
The towers were not designed to be *completely* evacuated in any situation. In case of fire, the plan was to only evacuate the fire floor, the floor above it, and three floors below.
Infrastructure for a timely evacuation of 20-30 thousand people would look a *lot* different than a staircase two persons wide.
Marko Karppinen
There needs to be some emergency provision for this.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Freedom isn't free. We must all be willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in defense of Liberty. Any enemy, foreign or domestic, who attempts to deprive us of our freedom and liberty deserves no mercy.
Freedom and security are inversely proportionate to one another: whenever you increase security, you by necessity sacrifice freedom. Preserving our collective freedom, for ourselves and our children, is more important than any one person's life.
"You cannot enslave a free man; the worst you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
From the Guardian: Anti-Islamic sentiment has turned to violence in pockets across the world following Tuesday's terrorist attacks, despite the fact that no group has claimed responsibility or been officially blamed. A Molotov cocktail was thrown at an Arab-American community centre in Chicago, a firebomb was hurled at a mosque in Montreal, and in Australia, aggressors threw stones and bottles at a busload of Muslim schoolchildren. In New York, a 75-year-old drunken man tried to run over a Pakistani woman in a shopping mall parking lot. He then followed her into a shop and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country". In Illinois 300 protesters, some waving American flags, tried to march on a mosque in this south-west Chicago suburb last night. Three demonstrators were arrested as police worked to keep the crowds away from the Muslim place of worship. "I'm proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have," said 19-year-old Colin Zaremba, who marched with the group. Tamara Alfson, an American working at the Kuwait embassy in Washington, spent yesterday counselling frightened Kuwaiti students attending schools across the United States. "Some of them have already been harassed," she said. In a show of patriotism, 45 people from Tampa, Florida's Islamic community yesterday registered to donate blood and 30 members of the Muslim Students Association at the University of South Florida signed up. Abu Nahidian, director of the Manassas mosque in Virginia, said his congregation has been the target of insults and hate messages left on the office answering machine. "We have some recordings in our tapes that say, 'We hate you so-and-so Muslims and we hope you die'," he said. Several other incidents were reported in Canada, where five school children with Arabic-sounding names were assaulted in Oakville, Ontario. In Australia, the school bus attack took place in Brisbane. In Sydney, a Lebanese church was daubed with swastikas and an attempt was made to burn it down. Queensland state's Islamic council chairman, Sultan Deen, said public outrage over the attacks had also led to abusive phone calls to mosques. "It is very disturbing. They are saying things like: 'You will be held responsible' and 'We'll get you,'" Mr Deen said. An Islamic group in Singapore today urged people not to lay blame too quickly for the terrorist attacks. "The process of scapegoating started immediately after the crashes," the Muslim community organisation Fateha said in a statement. "We note, with terrible unease, the way Arabs and Muslims are treated in America, before any real evidence has been established on the perpetrators of this horrendous crime," the statement said.
1. Maybe they didn't know it was intending to crash...just fly over. Also, is it wise to hit a plane witha missle when its currently over a heavily populated area? I think the wreckage of a plane exploding midair over residental areas would be alot more damage then letting it crash into the pentagon.
2. The terrorist supposedly told the passengers they also had a bomb. It seems that for the 3 planes that hit the passengers probably didn't know they were going on a crash course, and were told they would not be harmed. Given that they were probably hoping for the best. Supposedly the 4th plane crashed in PA b/c the passengers DID find out they would be screwed either way.
AFAIK the current five pillars of Islam (Faith, Prayer, Zakat, Fasting and Pilgramage) were originally six - the sixth being war. Depends upon how moderate a person you ask. The real nutters think that this is cool - in fact dying in battle, you go to heaven and get something like 70 virgins to have your way with (doesn't say whether they swallow).
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
I, for one, think enough is enough. If these tanks were filled with foam, there is a good chance the momentum of the things would have carried the fuel tanks out the other side of the building and the buildings would not have fallen. They fell because of fire; and fuel cells greatly minimize fire.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
The politicians are very rational, if you understand their goals. People on /. are generally thinking along the lines of either:
what can we do to genuinely fix the situation ?
or:
what can we do to make ourselves feel better ?(revenge, nukes, blabla)
The politicians (who drive media discourse) are naturally thinking along the lines of:
how can we make the most of the situation ?
The answer to this is to use it to increase American corporate/military dominance of the world. The politicians are just doing their jobs, ie, they're doing what they're paid for, and most of their pay comes from corporate interests.
So, there are several ways to exploit the situation:
1. Increase corporate welfare, ie payment from taxpayers to corporations (also known as defense spending, and foreign aid). It's irrelevent that the missile defense shield will do nothing to protect Americans and will escalate the arms race - that's not the point. In fact, it's great if India, Pakistan, China and Russia respond by increasing their defense spending because (a) we can sell them weapons and (b) it justifies further increases in American defense spending.
2. Clamp down on civil liberties (corporations are not well served by a free and connected society so, you need to stamp out encryption, anonymous speech, decrease the basic ability for people to talk to each other, unionise, complain about GA crops, demand health care, or any other nonsense)
3. Strengthen America's position as "leader of the free world", or to put it another way, tighten one's grip on foreign countries. Any country with an unpleasant tendancy to not bow down to US interests, is told to show subservience or face punitive military action. It's a good time to demand subservience because there will be far less domestic opposition to bombing the hell out of them should anyone disagree.
4. Silence your detractors. Anybody who disagrees with you at a time like this is obviously "unAmerican" "unpatriotic" and "bowing down to terrorism".
The only bad thing is that people might wonder why this happened, you mustn't let people think about that in a meaningful way.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I agree that no matter what changes happen to airport security, it will not prevent this type of action. anything can be a weapon. i also agree that there should be sky marshals on every flight. but i also think another defense is to lock down the cockpits and train pilots NEVER to open the door in these situations. supposedly cockpit doors are locked and the terrorists lured the pilots out by killing passengers and flight attendents (god that is horrible). as awful as that is, control of the planes should NEVER be given over- no matter what.
of course, we can figure out exactly how to defend against this specific type of attack, but it might never happen again. there could already be thousands of evil, sub-human people living among us planning the next form of attack.
on a different note, i was vehemently opposed to carnivore until 9/11/2001. if carnivore could have helped prevent this from happening, i support it. i have no electronic communication that i need to hide that badly from snoopers. i already assume all of my phone calls and emails can be picked up anyway. big deal.
i also think we have a perfect example of a use for GPS, and face recognition technology. why wasn't it discovered instantly that these flights were off course? perhaps GPS could have helped alert us. i can also accept face recognition technology at places as high-profile as airports.
also, why do we have to wait for black boxes before we know what was said in the cockpit? why aren't we streaming live audio, perhaps video from every plane to mass storage facilities somewhere? we wouldn't even need to hold on to the tapes for more than a few days at a time.
again, most of this addresses the flight hijacking scenario, which may not ever be attempted in this way again. these are just a few of my thoughts. i feel more patriotism for my amazing country than ever before in my life. my heart, thoughts, and prayers are with everyone hit by this tragedy. America will stay strong, and we all know it. God Bless America.
The fact that any building was capable of taking a direct impact from a jetliner with a full load of fuel and then stand for over an hour (and allow lots of
people to get out) is remarkable! We need to make sure we keep building them like that.
But we also need to come up with methods of rapid evacuation of large towers.
Here's an interesting repercussion I never thought of. I was in the coffee shop this morning, and there were two Ku Klux Klan guys at the next table talking about how the membership was through the roof, and that they couldn't keep up.
I almost cried.
I post this realizing that it may be lost in a sea of posts. I post it more out of the hope for some sort of closure than anything else. I apologize for some of the randomness that may follow.
My PATH train arrived in the trade center from NJ at approximately the same time that the first plane struck Tower 1 (the North Tower). We exited the train as normal and as we rode the escalators/walked the stairs from the track level to the next, the clanging of fire alarms could now be heard in what I knew were the parking garages of the B1/B2 level. There was a smell of smoke beginning to become apparent. As we rode the escalators to the next level (known as the concourse) we could hear people yelling and I thought it was strange that there were so few people around. Usually, I think of this time as a complex dance of people trying to get from point A to B.
I didn't exactly follow the crowd of people that they were shuffling out the side of building 5 (on the same side of building 1 where the first plane had made initial entry). Instead I looped around to my regular exit that would be on the east side of building 5 (near the Borders book store). The World Trade Towers have been a target for some time. Several times I have inconvenienced by false bomb threats. This simply seemed like another false alarm. The Port Authority employees that I saw had a look of urgency in their eyes. I went up another set of escalators and I was queued up behind about four or five people waiting to go through the revolving doors when I saw the first of the debris on the ground outside the doors. A terrible feeling was beginning in my gut.
I went outside throught the doors and as I did debris was still falling around me. A female police office was yelling to run from across the street and I jogged across, still unaware of the urgency of the situation. When I crossed the street, I turned for the first time and saw the extent of the damage. People was crying and several were stunned, speechless. I was among them. I saw paper flowing from the building along with the smoke and flames. I realized these were people's offices and not generator or utility rooms. My heart sank. My stomach knotted. I called my father.
My father just retired from the PA. He narrowly missed being blown up in the first attack in 93 on the building. His office was on the B2 level at the time. He was down the hall from the people that were killed. I told him to turn on the television. Immediately, he tried to assess where the damage was and how he could be of assistance. My father had turned down a job with Cantor Fitz that would have put him right above that first inferno. I stood staring at the building for a few minutes until I just had to leave. It was not my place to be there. Emergency crews were arriving and I was in the way. I disconnected from my father and started to walk down Fulton St. when I heard the second plane hit. It is a sound I will not forget, a sound I hear in my sleep. The ground shook, buildings rattled and several people ran screaming.
Later, I was in an office at work and happened to be looking out the window when they bowed inwards several inches. People on the street began running and within a minute, you could not see more than a few inches outside. Building 2 had collapsed.
I have had an overwhelming sense of sadness for the past few days, an MSNBC article describes it as a symptom of PTSD. I feel sad and lucky at the same time. I don't know. The man who assumed my father's position when he retired is lost in the rubble. He exited the building and then as part of his responsibility, led a group of firemen back into the building at their request. A colleague of his was on top of building 5, resetting the radios and was the last to hear from him. Shortly afterwards, 2 collapsed and then 1.
As lucky as I was, I know serveral were not. Please pray for those that are lost.
> Now that planes have been used themselves as weapons, and the passengers with them, I doubt there will be a high-jacking where they're aren't people like Glick and Barret, who are among the few passangers who apparently made sure that flight 93 crashed in PA woods, and not a national landmark.
The telly news this morning gave out a bit more detail about one of those guy's calls to his wife on the cell phone. He actually called her 4 different times. By the third one the WTC had already been hit twice, and his wife said that when she told him about hit he got really thoughtful and asked a lot of probing questions.
The next time he called, it was a simple "Three of us are going to do something."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This may be considered a troll, but I'll ask this anyways...
Let me preface this by saying _I_ have travelled across the US a _number_ of times with laptops, briefcases, etc., so I've experienced enough of this to know of what I suggest.
Someone at work suggested the notion of why not eliminate carry-on luggage altogether? Want to take something with you, check it ALL in. Think about this. We travellers are USED to this CONVENIENCE, but there is NO GOD given RIGHT under the Constitution to have carry on luggage. We've just had this feature available for as long as I can remember, but it's just a convenience. This would solve 90% the "well, someone could fashion a weapon of xyz" arguments.
It would also eliminate all the adult babies whaa whaa whaa crying they can't take their jaccuzzi or whatever on board and then tying everyone else up as they try to cram it in the overhead bins...
Speaking of adult babies, we should be dealing with air rage more harshly than we have been in the past. It's bad enough that airlines try to make things safe for us to fly, then to have someone threaten crew and passengers because the airline crew weren't serving drinks yet. For all those who say air rage is justified becuase of the crappy airline service, guess what? _YOU_ are not the only ones who get stuck on an airplane for 4 hours waiting to take off, plane cancelled, etc. Don't see me spouting off at some airline attendant.
I am firmly of the opinion that we will want and need every willing back, every strong hand in friendship, every erg and dyne of support we can get in this conflict.
This is not a conflict that calls for a measured, careful response.
This is a conflict that calls for an overwhelming, careful response, and a continued commitment.
The enemy has billed this as a war of cultural annihilation. Either they remove us, or we will remove them.
They have defined the goals of the conflict. The enemy is just as vulnerable to these objectives as we are. More so, in fact. The enemy builds his force on ignorance, on the Big Lie.
The enemy's greatest fear is that the prosperity of the West will seduce the generation after this one. That the memories of old blood feuds will fade when presented with McDonald's and computers and cheap cell phones. Every call they make to recruit is against the decadence of the West destroying their way of life.
This should be our stated objective. To destroy their way of life. Never forget this; this is their stated objective against us.
After we punish the enemy with bombs, with bullets, we must salt the soil that the twisted tree of intolerance and fanaticism takes root in. We must change the hearts and minds of the young.
We salt them with small computers. With internet access. With a telephone in every village. With juvenile novels and encyclopedias translated into Arabic. With teachers who speak their language, and who teach them to use these tools to answer questions for themselves. Yes, some of those teachers will be killed. They are soldiers in this war as much as anyone who puts on a beret or takes up a gun, and we will make martyrs of them for the world.
No tyrant can long survive with an informed and educated populace.
The organizations they declaim as the mouthpieces of the US shall be USED as the mouthpieces of the west. We tell their children that there is a life beyond substistence farming and blood feuds. We tell their wives and daughters that there is a life where they are valued as individuals and people in their own right, not as mutilated chattel.
We give them the tools of bilateral communication, rather than unilateral indoctrination. We give them the internet. We declare a great work, of making sure that every corner of this globe has access to fast internet access. Not just the US. Not just Europe. The world.
They will see pornography sites. They will also see sites discussing engineering, and simple improvements to agriculture. Some may even see this mailing list. The curiousity of children will be piqued, and their questions answered. With each question asked, and each answer given, we slowly wean them away from the culture of intolerance.
They'll be able to ask questions without censure or censoring, and get answers they might not otherwise have.
I would sooner carpet bomb with Gameboys and Pokemon, and an Arabic translation of Monopoly or Delta V, than FAEs and nuclear explosives. The adults are beyond our reach. The young MUST be reached so that 20 years from now, the thought of piloting a captured airliner into an office building full of innocent bystanders meets with truly universal horror.
I fear, in the haste for vengeance, that the nature of this conflict will be forgotten. Make no bones about it -- this is a culture war. It can only end with a declaration on the order of Cartago Delendo Est.
We cannot win this war with bombs or bullets, although we can accelerate its prosecution by those means. We can only win this war through a generational conflict; we must win the war in the hearts and minds of the children growing up in the Middle East now.
Winning that longer war will be costlier and less immediately gratifying than cluster bombs and Fuel Air Explosives, and "killing the bastards and everyone that helped them.", but it is a war that all of us can participate in.
If you are an author, or someone who creates media, contact your publisher about translating your works into Arabic. Someone in the DoD is in charge of outbound propaganda; we should find who that person is, and give them the munitions to win this war.
Bin-Ladin has declared this a culture war.
Let's show him what a culture war TRULY looks like. Let's send in Shakespeare. And Heinlein. And Harlequin Romances, Pokemon and The Simpsons.
Would it make sense to make a standard operating procedure that if a hijacking seems immenent, even highly possible, the crew should dump almost all the fuel... leave just enough for getting the nearest landable airport. This procedure might inhibit the ability of terrorists to obtain flying bombs.
Miko O'Sullivan
To: IBM Colleagues
From: L.V. Gerstner, Jr.
Subject: Update on Tuesday's Events
Dear Colleague:
I want to update you on where we are and what we've done since Tuesday's
tragic events.
First, and most important, we have accounted for all but a handful of our IBM
colleagues who might have been in New York City or Washington, D.C., when
the terrorists struck. Of course, we will not stop until we have accounted for
every one of our people. I know each of us is hoping and praying for a good
outcome.
Sadly, as we have reported on w3, we received confirmation on Wednesday
that one of our colleagues was aboard one of the hijacked airliners. I know
all of us are deeply grieved by this news. In addition, we have been learning
of IBMers whose family members were killed or injured. Moments ago, I
heard from an IBM colleague whose daughter was also on one of the hijacked
planes.
Words fail to convey my sadness when I hear such devastating news, but on
behalf of all IBMers worldwide, I wish to express our condolences to the
family and friends of all those who have lost loved ones.
Let me update you on what we are doing to help customers. You may be
surprised to learn that more than 1,200 IBM customers were located in the
World Trade Center or within a two-block radius. Hundreds of them have
contacted us since Tuesday morning. Currently, we're managing or have
already resolved 20 full-blown emergency situations. We're rolling in large
servers, thousands of ThinkPads and workstations; we're providing thousands
of square feet of data center capacity; re-creating data processing
environments that were destroyed; and relocating customers' operations to
IBM facilities. In addition, we are helping various disaster relief organizations
with IBM products and assistance. Thousands of our colleagues are on the
case, and the work proceeds around the clock.
I continue to receive hundreds of notes from IBMers all over the world. I trust
you understand that I cannot respond to each of them, but I want you to
know that I read every one. I have been deeply moved by the outpouring of
concern and, most of all, your compassionate offers to help in any way
possible.
There are plenty of opportunities for individuals to help. Those of you who
have offered your time and skills may yet be called on, so stand by. Many
have asked if we're going to run blood drives at IBM facilities. We have been
in contact with the Red Cross and have been advised that the best way to
provide blood is to donate it at the local community level. As it happens,
several IBM locations in the U.S. were planning blood drives this week and
next. These will proceed.
A number of relief funds have been established by government and volunteer
agencies, and I know from your notes IBMers will be extraordinarily generous,
as you have been in a number of prior national emergencies. We will provide
on w3 information on ways individuals can contribute.
A special fund, called The September 11th Fund, has been established in New
York City by various organizations, including the United Way. This fund will
deliver financial services and assistance to those who were affected by
Tuesday's catastrophe. IBM has pledged $5 million in cash, technology and
technical assistance to this fund. This is in addition to the uncountable
product and human assistance IBM is providing to other agencies and
organizations to help them manage through the crisis.
As I wrote to you on Tuesday, the most important thing any of us can do is
take care of the job at hand and keep IBM moving forward. I ask you to
remain focused on your customers, your job -- wherever you are in the world
-- and trust that the local teams in New York and Washington, D.C., will
reach out for all the additional assistance they need.
Your concern and self-sacrificing spirit make me so proud of our company and
of each other. Let's stay focused, and stay together.
I think the fact that it was primarily NGOs responsible (Non-Government Operatives) means that it was in fact NOT an act of war. The "Act of War" is rhetorical bullshit, and basically means that the gloves are off, and somebody is going to get fucked up, and the normal boundries that protect people will not protect these individuals.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA used to have such a slide around the back. Alas, even when I saw it as a child in the 70's, it had been closed down for safety reasons. It looked very much like a funhouse slide as it looped its way down from the top floor. There was an entry on each floor, which even though they were pointed the right direction would seem to be a potential injury and sticking point.
A more flexible system is something like this. Not that I'd want to drop 110 floors in one of these, but that would beat the alternatives.
Both these have the same problem that stairs do: someone who's incapacitated or wheelchair bound is going to need help using them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/international/13 AFGH.html
was particularly brutal I thought. 2 quotes that really stood out for me:
"If there are Americans clamoring to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, they ought to know that this nation does not have so far to go"
and
"He had not thought much about an American retaliation against Afghanistan. When he did consider it, standing in a ramshackle collection of stalls, he shrugged and said: "Americans are powerful and can do anything they like without us stopping them.""
These aren't a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongering Arabs. They are a bunch of poor downtrodden regular people who are RULED by a totalitarian dictatorship.
These people don't want to go to war with america. (Though many of them remember just exactly who it was that funded the Taliban's original rise to power.)
They don't like the Taliban any more than you or I do. In fact, I don't think it is a stretch to say that the average Afghanistani HATES the Taliban. The problem of course is that if they say it, they'll be shot...
It's time that America stepped up to the plate and took some responsibility for it's actions.
Remove the Taliban from power. Do it swiftly, do it decisively, and do it brutally if that is required. But for god's sake: don't go to war with Afghanistan.
When it's all said and done, America needs to stick around, and REBUILD the damn country. Just like it did with Japan.
If that seems like an overly imperialistic idea, then that's because it is. But it would give the people of Afghanistan 3 fundamental things that they sure as hell don't have now:
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
... and the Japanese General Staff at Okinawa ... Iwo Jima ... etc.
utter rubbish