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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."
Apparently ISP's are allowing the installation of Carnivore. They say it's only for a few days, but we'll see how long that claim holds up...
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
The /. group is a collection of varied skills and talents. One would think that with the resources and capabilities we all have access to, what kind of information can we contribute. Sure privacy and security issues are important, but if I had the ability to retrieve any info to help, I would.
Just a thought---
I am me...I think
http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/attack_galler y.htm
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
---
eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
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.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This was written by Gordon Sinclair in 1973 at the end of the Vietnam Conflict.
You can read about it at this site, including the aftereffects of what it meant to his career - both good and bad. There's also a RealAudio copy of the recording he did of this, which is backed up by 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
As everyone knows by know, Morgan Stanley Dean Whitter occupied roughly 10% of the WTC, with some 3500 employees. There's a good article on Yahoo this morning about their offsite back strategy, and how it enabled them to start working again almost immediately.
The Post has extensive coverage of the Pentagon operations.
Best Slashdot Co
Ask why they stood! 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.
Trying to build skyscrapers aircraft-proof isn't feasible, I don't think. But building them capable of resisting that kind of trauma for at least a little while is.
This is only partly correct. Most of the Middle Eastern oil wells were actually initially exploited by the British, which is also evident from the fact that most of the area was either British protectorate or heavily influenced by the British.
The problem is that it has not and never been proved that they are actually guilty of this.
If you want to save the principles of Western civilization, how about adhering to them in the first place? Like, not bombing someone out of existence because he said he didn't like you and someone else killed a couple of thousand people in your country?
With reactions like this, you can bet that:
BTW As far as Syria is concerned, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has recently offered support to the US in combatting international terrorism. Now what, nuke 'em?
The problem is that America doesn't know what to do now. Throwing bombs around is probably not the best thing to do just because nobody can think of an alternative.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
Last night on ABC, Peter Jennings interviewed an engineer who said that the WTC had enough steel to withstand the impact...
According to him, exposing the steel to 1000F heat for an hour was what finally caused it to fail...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
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
is to once again terrorize our own citizens. from anti-communist witch-hunts to asian-american ww2 camps to the generally accepted anti-Arab anti-Islamic trends of America for more than a decade, we still have a lot to learn, it seems.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
chmod a+x /bin/laden
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?
My boyfriend is a professional structural engineer who has done a lot of work on major LA buildings. He's currently attending Berkeley for a masters in Structural Engineering and, in chatting with his professors, came to this (paraphrased):
1) Yes, the buildings did withstand the impact of the airplanes. They didn't fall immediately, did they?
2) Buildings are built to a certain fire code, in that the building won't completely catch on fire and collapse for a certain length of time (usu 1hr?). The escape routes are located generally in the four corners. Since the plane took out one of them, this means that the required escape time is now 2+ hours.
3) Jet fuel burns with a much higher temperature than normal fuel.
4) Steel expands and crystalizes under extreme heat. Since the plane(s) hit at a "centre"-ish spot, the steel tried to expand up and down, but since the steel in the "up" and "down" weren't hot and wouldn't move, the steel in the "centre" buckled.
5) Since jetfuel burns hotter, step 4 happened faster and also reduced the "buckle" time by a certain amount - when used along with the increased escape time required, means that considerably fewer people would be able to escape.
6) Since the steel buckled, the upper floors now come crashing down on to the floor immediately below. Being as that floor is not suited to hold X number of upper floors MOVING rapidly at it, it collapsed and repeat until bottom.
Therefore, it was the fire that made the buildings collapse, not the impact of the planes.
-mrsmalkav
Sure it is. Events like this open up the potential for society to give up liberties for perceived safety which probably isn't all that real. I for one worry about the future of our liberties in teh name of 'preventing another WTC'
I submit that these bastards could STILL get the weapons on board even with all the changes. No curb side checkin? LIke thats gonna make a DIFFERENCE? Its SO simple to make a weapon - just as a prisoner. Consider this:
Shaving kit - inside, one normal razor that uses a double edged blade. Blade installed, no spares. Elsewhere in your bag, a plastic or wooden handle of some kind with slot for blade, by itself or with other stuff that looks innocent. Maybe a little super glue. GO to a stall in a terminal bathroom. Take blade, insert in handle, glue in place. Slit someones throat when necessary and take over whatever vessel you're on. Think about it - you can probably come up with plenty on your own. Thats just one way and there are plenty others. These guys planned this for MONTHs as the reports of flight training indicate. You wouldn't even NEED to bring weapons with you - maybe one of your pals works IN THE TERMINAL past the checkpoints and cna give you a weapon of some kind. Banning plastic knives? OK - thats gonna help!
Face it folks - no matter WHAT happens, the only thing that could prevent something like this is sky marshals on EVERY flight in civilian clothes. And even then, they may not be able to overpower 5 guys with weapons (since shooting guns in the air is er, not a great idea)
So in short, I think our forefathers wisdom IS applicable and helpful to remind folks that we may be fooled into giving up liberties for supposed security that doesn't really exist
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Last night I saw a survivor interview that the guy ended with the statement, almost in tears, "Why can't you keep your stupid wars over there?" These events show that the war was NEVER just "over there". But if it's going to be fought with American casualties, then by God I want it fought in some desert in the middle of nowhere instead of downtown Manhattan. We have conquered dozens of nations, installed rational govenments and come home against far more organized opponents than this. We can do it again, and should. Islamic fundamentalism is just as dangerous to the world as National Socialism (Nazi) ever was. FORGET THE MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD - WE HAVE GOT TO STOP THESE GUYS COLD ***NOW*** BEFORE THEY GET NUKES. If we don't, then in ten or twenty years instaed of four jetliners it's going to be FOUR CRATERS where San Francisco, Boston, Miami and Chicago used to be, delivered by boats smuggling plutonium instead of cocaine. Yes, I know we don't have a target today and we must not go off half cocked. But when we get a target, a plan and resources ready, we must GO!
There's a reasonably good diagram of the affected areas here. (Requires shockwave) For NYC specifically, click on the NYC link on this map. The buildings down or in danger are in red. Manhattan island has been almost completely shut down from 14th Street south. That's about 1/6th of the island.
There is an interesting Ny Times article which describes a reporter's interviews with Afghanistan People.
[A] 25-year-old constable sat on the floor beneath a single dangling light bulb. His name was Muhammad Anwar. He had heard something about the attack in America but he had no idea how many were killed or what cities were involved. Indeed, it seemed unlikely that he had ever heard of New York.
"Attacks like these are not a good thing because Muslims live all over the world and Muslims may have been killed," Mr. Anwar said hesitantly. By his reckoning, Americans were enemies of Afghanistan, as were Jews and Christians. He thought about this a bit more and retracted it partially. "There must have been all kinds of people in the building, not just bad Jews but good Jews, not just bad Christians but good ones." He remembered something he had learned in his madrassa, or religious school. "It is un-Islamic to kill innocent people," he said.
The towers were designed with airplane disasters in mind: Built in the 1970s, World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City were designed to withstand normal fires and hurricane-force winds. According to some reports, engineers believed that even the impact of a Boeing 707 would not bring down the towers. (from: http://architecture.about.com/library/weekly/aa091 201a.htm)
After all, in 1945 a B-25 bomber flew into the Empire State Building, killing 13 (but not knocking down the building).
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 sentiment has been repeated over and over these past two days: "If I fall, the guy behind me will get him."
I hope that if such a day ever comes for me, I can get over my imminent death fast enough to do some good.
Nothing is more dangerous than someone who thinks they have nothing to lose.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Logically this would make sense, but religious fanaticism is not based on logic but something more like brainwashing and indoctrination.
Remember these terrorists committed their acts in the belief they were doing the right thing. Even though there is no religion that I know of that could possibly condone such barbarism - this is not about religion, religion is a victim, along with countless innocent people. In that regard, there would be no "toppled by their own people" since these fundamentalists would rather die for their beliefs/brainwash.
A conventional war in Afganistan would be very costly. Remember the invincible Russian army was decimated. The problem is that there isn't a visible standing army, but a guerilla army that hides in the towns and cities. To push for victory in this theatre would involve levelling every village and town and leave nothing standing, which would involve thousands more innocent victims.
There isn't an easy answer, but a decision must be made. Why is US/Nato nuking/destruction all of Afganistan better that Tuesday's actions? To me it is still genocide.
Concentrate on eliminating all sources of indoctrination, remove the tools for brainwashing and intolerance - remember that the freedom of choice ends when the actions are criminal, fundamentalists behind this attack have abrogated their rights. Root out the organisations responsible. There is no quick solution, only a path that needs to be travelled. Once everyone on the planet has the freedom to choose their destiny can the barricades these terrorists have created be broken down.
you are right, the region is far too unstable NOW. but companies are chomping at the bit for this. part of the US funding of the Taliban was to create stability by helping the Taliban eliminate rivals. way to go. this is what happens when the people are not given the choice of what to do, powerful corporate interests dictate the actions of american foreign policy and will presumably continue to do so because no one realy seems to give a damn, even after all this.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
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.
You cannot use diplomacy or negotiation with the forces allied against us because they have never used or responded to these mechanisms before. These forces understand what they implement - targetted destruction.
Its amazing how insipid most of the postings have been, but in the long run we are simply going to have to relearn that our safety and way of life is paid for and protected by blood, although there is probably no hope for the incessant mental masturbators posting their anthems of weakness on /.
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
If you have not yet donated blood, money, or service to the National Disaster Relief Fund, please consider doing so. I realize that request is obvious and redundant, but bear with me.
I can honestly say that the WTC, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania disasters have had a stronger effect on me than I would have ever imagined. I've been somewhat wigged out for the past two days, functioning on auto-pilot in order to get along with the business of life while I deal with feelings of horror, sadness, rage, and worst of all, helplessness.
Horror subsides - the media onslaught will always lead to de-sensitization. The images and video remain horrific, but somehow become lest horrifying through continued exposure. (I hope that makes sense...)
Sadness persists. It should. You should never be able to look back on September 11th and not feel sadness.
Helplessness is altogether different - it won't subside on its own. It requires action, and gone unchecked, can amplify every other negative emotion. This is why I finally got off my ass and donated last night. I realized that it's pointless to feel helpless, because it's so easy to help.
Give blood. If, like me, you can't give blood, give money. It's needed. If you don't have any money, go volunteer at your local blood center. If nothing else, pack an ice chest full of bottled water and hand it out to people waiting in line to donate blood! Do something. On September 11, 2002, when I ask you "What did you do to help one year ago?", I hope you have an answer that you're comfortable with.
So I've conquered helplessness. Horror will take care of itself. I welcome sadness as a sign of my own humanity.
That leaves only sweet, sweet rage.
Maybe today my sign-off poem ("they were all good people") will make more sense. I've been sending you only very short poems, but today it's something a bit longer (about a page), a poem written at least 20 years ago that seemed to come back to life today:
Making The World Safe For
Yankee, you say, thinking
you understand me, thinking
the 24-point-headline ideas
by which WE fail to understand YOU
will suffice for understanding US.
We are your problem as you are ours;
Let us understand one another.
It won't be easy. While your children starve,
Most of us are trying to loose weight.
We speak from a different part
of the palate, look with a different
openness -- some say veiledness; we have
an innocence -- or is it barbaric daze;
idealism -- some say bullying self-righteousness;
squeamishness about death and torture
if we have to see it...
I am a fat, squeamish Yankee, taught
to understand you by your T-shirt-like labels:
"Kill Me", "Pity Me", "Exploit Me", "Bribe Me",
"Enjoy Me", "Fear Me". I AM not,
CANnot be the thing you think you see,
for I am what you are: the understanding,
not what is misunderstood, which is
where I am absent from myself, and so
become what is easiest to be,
because it fits the headline script:
The Fat Greedy Satan whose crime is
to have failed to make everyone like me;
whose crime is to have dreamed well,
but not well enough; to have created a game
so good, it became the only game in town,
but not good enough to let everyone play;
so now the new game is: Destroy my game.
If all can't have it, let no one have it.
Understand us: We do not need your help
to destroy America. We need your help
to create it. It has not yet been.
Understand us, for we do not. You,
who hate us or condescend to us or toady to us,
you trap us in your sticky visions,
which, hardening, preserve us, your nightmare,
like flies in amber. We cannot be that.
Please understand us. We don't want to destroy you.
But how else can we free ourselves
from your vision?
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
poems and paintings at
www.blehert.com
"It's even sadder than you think:
They were ALL good people."
and as a final note:
Yes, of course -- you can post or forward any poem I send you. Just leave my name with it and, preferably, email and/or url. But at least the name.
Dean
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
America: The Good Neighbor.
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable
editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television
commentator. What follows is the full text of his broadcast.
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most
generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of
the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and
forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying
even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who
propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the
streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in
to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes.
Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into
discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about
the decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the
erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other
country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the
Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why
do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the
moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk
about German technocracy, and you get automobiles.
You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not
once, but several times - and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store
window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued
and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are
breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home
to spend here. When the railways of France,* Germany and India were breaking
down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the
Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned
them an old caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other
people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to
the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during
the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired
of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with
their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at
the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is
not one of those."
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 simply put it there to prevent people from reprinting my story without my permission. I just don't want it to be used in the wrong way, and this is how I thought I could protect it.
You're entitled to your own thoughts, but if you think I'm doing this for money, you are quite wrong.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
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.
Interesting reading:
- Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence
- Political Islam
Meanwhile, in Australia they are already stoning school buses with Islamic kids on them... (I have a rant about this on my home page.)Danny
[I have written 600 book reviews]
I have written over 900 book reviews
Mind your own business, and there'll be less animosity towards you in the world.
No, there will probably just as much. For every person decrying American "imperialism," there is another person decrying American "isolationism."
I'm not even going to bring up the "What about Hitler" argument. An America who "minds its own business" will be hated for the sin of not doing, of sitting in its ivory tower while people starve, for being rich and complacent while people elsewhere are killed for their race or religion, and for saying "That's not my problem" while people are brutally oppressed.
And then someone, feeling he is justified in destroying the fat, rich America, will attack us so that we do pay attention to someone's suffering. People will hate us because of who we are, not because of what we do. When will Harry Browne learn?
They have rounds that, while risky, are intended for use within the situation of being in flight at altitude. Also considering at that point if the sky marshals are overpowered, you're back to the situation on tuesday- they're going to be armed for bear and use it at the drop of a hat.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I didn't write this, I was sent it in an email, I don't know the original author. I am a muslim and I live in the US. I was born and raised in Canada with Indian background. I feel I need to help clear up what is true and what is not true with regards to Islam. Islam is a religion and a person practicing Islam is a muslim. There are five basics pillars of islam that any muslim should follow. All the guidance of what muslims should do is in the holy book called the Qu'ran or "Koran". Unfortunately, it seems that Bin Laden and others have taken religion as a vehicle to project their political hatred and motives. What he is doing, has nothing to do with Islam at all. Islam teaches people to be loving, peace giving, god fearing people. It teaches us to live with diversity, other religions, and humility. All the things that bin laden has said in the interviews and has done in the past are not words from the qu'ran but his words. And unfortunately the media and lack of real knowledge has blurred what is true and what is not. The statement by binladen that non-muslims cannot live in a muslim country is false - 100% false. India was ruled by muslims for 900 years, christians, muslims and hindus lived happily together. Same in palestine, before the partition, arab jews and arab muslims lived together for hundreds of years in peace. The main reasons for hatred and fighting the past 50 years was due more to political landscape than religion. Unfortunately, religion is a powerful tool that gets people motivated and people in power have used it as the lauch pad for fighting. Another item that binladen keeps talking about is Jihad or holy war. There is discussion of Jihad in the Qu'ran and when and why it is appropriate. It is never an offensive tactic. Jihad is only permitted when a muslim is being opppressed to practice their religion. Only real examples where Jihad may have been appropriate in recent years would be the Bosnian war where Bosnian muslims were being executed strictly based on their religion. But by no means, can a muslim country attack another country (muslim or not) as an act of Jihad. That is incorrect. the basics of islam are similar to christianity. Believe in one god. In arabic the word god is Allah. The god is the same between all three religions. jews, muslims and christians pray to the same god. That is very important to understand. But a true muslim is humble, not greedy, not arrogant and never shows jealousy. Tolerance, helping neighbours of any race, creed, or religion is the first thing. One of the five pillars of islam is to give to the poor. It's required, not a choice. As any religion or race, there are a small group of radicals that take any religion and bend it for their convenience. This seems to be the case with bin laden, saddam hussein, and others who have killed humans for their gain. None of these people will go to heaven as they believe they will. Jihad is not valid here nor does is it say to kill innocent children, parents, and siblings. Jihad only allows fighting among soliders, not civilians. Unfortunately these people are misled and doing very evil things that they will be punished for it. I'll stop rambling here..I hope this helps you guys get a better understand of what is going on. Just remember, Arab is a race..there are Arab Christians, Arab Jews and Arab muslims. At the moment radical arab muslims are causing trouble and doing things that are absolutely not tolerated in Islam at all. I hope these groups are stopped and removed. I was in NYC yesterday and I was there when it happened. I saw the second plane slam into the WTC 2. It was an experience I wish I had not witnessed. But we need to grow strong and not stereotype. best regards, a muslim in america.
"installed rational govenments"
This I think is the crux of of the matter. You haven't (and I am not being anti-American in this, Britain has made many of the same mistakes).
You gave support to Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war when your client government in the shape of the Shah was ousted.
You supported the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan (including Bin Laden, who allegedly was funded by the CIA) when it looked as though they could be a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union.
You can hardly expect the people of Chile to believe you installed rational governments when they had to put up with Pinochet for so many years.
Yes, this was an appalling crime, done by some appalling people. Some understanding of the history of the population from where the criminals came from might prevent such a crime happening again.
Maybe the uniforms should have "Knock Me Out And Take My Gun" printed on the back.
No, definitely plainclothes.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I suppose becoming a techno terrorist yourself is the remedy? Since when is terrorism condoned? Why are you targeting innocent middle eastern civilians? Terrorism is evil because it targets civilians. Trust me, you will not affect the terrorists in any way with your hacks. If you remember Bin Laden doesn't even have telephone access much less Internet.
This stupid terrorist mentality is what we have to fight both on our side and theirs. I live in the Richardson, TX (just outside of Dallas) and we have a few idiots prancing around here shooting up mosques. Fools.. no better than the damn terrorists. I feel sorry for the innocent Arab ****AMERICANS**** cuz of a witch hunt by a few ignorant trash bastards.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
- 100 Britons
- 78 Australians
- 100 Japanese
- 27 South Koreans
- 100 - 150 Mexicans
- 6 Irish
Those are the numbers given by CNN, but there have just got to be more from other nations. No Saudis, Isrealis, Chinese, or Indians are mentioned in the article, but it would seem likely that there were plenty of people around from those nations.Miko O'Sullivan
Could an airliner's skin be sufficiently toughened for Air Marshals to be able to use rubber bullets?
If not, tasers, those new infra-red stun devices the military are playing with - even a harpoon gun could be very effective against skyjackers.
A third option, that nobody seems to have mentioned - the pilots already have a "panic button" in the event of a skyjacking. This could easily also put the plane irreversibly on automatic pilot, or remote piloting, to ensure that the vehicle -could- not be used in this way, and WOULD land safely at the nearest suitable emergency runway.
There is a term, used in connection with hostile acts, and the response given. That term is "Dane Gold". It is said that in the times of King Ethelred the Unready, whenever the Danes landed a raiding fleet, King Ethelred would rather just pay them to go away. After a while, the Danes cottoned on to the fact that simply landing on a beach was an easy way to make money. And they made a lot of it.
Thus, today, when someone provides a means for a hostile force to repeatedly profit off exactly the same strategy, they are said to be paying "Dane Gold".
Provided it is even remotely possible for any terrorist organisation to use civilian aircraft as weapons against America, then America is vulnerable to paying that Dane Gold.
Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan adopted the philosophy of "the only ones paying are the other side". Often, this involved storming aircraft, with guns blazing. I, personally, have intense dislike for their hard-line attitudes. However, I'm not even going to question the fact that the legacy of their strategy was a massive reduction in such actions, in the air and at sea.
The only alternative I can see to their hardline tactics would be Air Marshals on every flight with enough disabling force to cripple any attempt, and some kind of "panic button" the pilot can use as a "last resort" to disable the controls beyond any person's ability to restore, in-flight.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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
Last night I saw something I was hoping not to see on the news -- acts of violence against Arabic/Islamic-Americans. I would hope that no one from this forum would be so narrow minded, but please people, lets not forget what happened after Columbine. I live in Colorado and know what it's like to have a community's anger directed in my direction in the aftermath of a tragedy (I was openly harassed on the streets for several weeks afterwards), and I can only imagine that it will be much worse for those in the Arabic communities of the US, as Columbine doesn't even compare to this tragedy. Please remember - it's the terrorists who were involved that are to blame, not every Arabic person out there.
There needs to be some emergency provision for this.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
You might want to check your facts first. There were almost 60,000 killed in Vitenam and 153,000 casualties. We're all saddened by the events but please don't add to the misinformation.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
I'm a Canadian, but I've been as shaken up by all this as if I were American. The horror of what happened is independent of nation -- everybody (or almost everybody) on the entire planet was hurt by this. I can't imagine what the people in New York and Washington are going through, but I know it's a horrifying thing without anything resembling rational explantion.
Here in Edmonton, all flags are flying at half mast -- not just on government buildings, but anybody who has a flag is doing the same. In the Provincial Legislature Building, there are books that people are signing to express their condolences to America and tell you that you're not alone. A moment of silence has been recommended for 10am today.
Similar things are happening around the world.
And it matters. I was talking to an Arizonan friend of mine last night. We got to talking about all the ways the world is reaching out, about how people are trying to express their shock and horror and outrage all over the world, and she cried. She told me to tell everyone I could that it matters -- the books are not being signed in vain, the half-mast flags are being seen, the sympathy is felt.
It's as important as donating to the Red Cross.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
Has anyone read Harry Browne's article?
It's here:http://www.antiwar.com/orig/browne2.html
His homepage is here:http://www.harrybrowne.org
It will take you less that 2 minutes to read.
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.
To those who are willing to be 'inconvenienced' at the aiport in order to be safe... No amount of inconveniencing will give you the safety you crave.
Repeat after me...
No amount of 'inconveniencing' will give me the safety I crave.
Repeat it over and over as a mantra until you achieve enlightenment.
I could learn martial arts well, with a bunch of buddy's, get onto the plane, kill a few people with some well placed jabs, and take control. Would you be willing to be manacled to prevent this? You can make knives quickly out of many things. Take a stiff plastic or metal box for example. Are you going to make people strip before they get on the plane? I'm sure someone more imaginative than I can come up with scenarios in which even being stripped and manacled would not be enough.
There is no security in the direction you wish to go. As Benjamin Franklin said "Those who would trade liberty for security will get and deserve neither.".
The only way to prevent these attacks is to decrease the motivation to perform them. This is done by being a nice country, and by being implacably and harshly punitive in our response to such attacks.
I will be traveling by air soon, and I intend to make up some leaflets to distribute at the airport about this. It's either that, or get upset at being patted down and create a scene. I think the leaflet approach to venting my frustrations is much more constructive.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"No curb side checkin? LIke thats gonna make a DIFFERENCE? Its SO simple to make a weapon - just as a prisoner. Consider this:"
[snip]
Consider THIS: A few weeks ago I was at the airport and went to one of those fancy restaurants you can eat in near the terminals (I don't recall the name right now). I ordered steak, and guess what? They gave me a nice large KNIFE to cut it with. This restaurant was AFTER THE SECURITY CHECKPOINT. Chew on that for a while.
Islamic fundamentalism is just as dangerous to the world as National Socialism (Nazi) ever was.
Be careful -- there may be truth in what you say, but it can be misinterpreted.
This is a good place to point out that Islamic leaders around the world have condemned the attack as inhuman and un-islamic. American Islamic leaders in particular have directed their followers to donate blood, money, to volunteer in the emergency response and to assist law enforcement in any way they can. It is also very likely that some of the victims of this crime were muslims themselves.
The US press has not picked up on this yet, but the foreign press (e.g. The London times) is starting to to report the beginning of a wave of hate crimes in America against Muslims. I even heard one congressinal pinhead libelling Islam as a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion. These developments are disgraceful and unworthy.
The real division is not between religions, but between people who believe there can be civilized coexistence between people who have different viewpoints, and those who believe that one side can only enjoy freedom at the expense of the other. Osama bin Laden is one of the latter, and he deivides into two camps: the Christian/Jewish side and the Muslim side. People spreading religious or ethnic hatred are, in effect agreeing with him and doing his work; their personal feelings towards him are simply petty tribalism.
Make no mistake: America was targeted because we are a free, open and pluralistic society where muslims can coexist peacefully with christians, jews and even atheists. This marks us out for special hatred,and with good reason: our success and preeminence in the world shows that all ideologies of intolerance preaching freedom for one viewpoint through the oppression of others are lies.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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!"
A common type is lead powder/granules compressed into a bullet shape. WHen it hits a hard object, they generally dont penetrate, soft object get the full force and can be quite leathal as i understand. Were commonly used in old carnival games with shooting at wood sucks, wouldnt penetrate, wouldnt ricochet, and the powder wwas easily gatherd up and used again.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
When this happened, I had a lot of thoughts going through my head... but found it difficult to clearly say what I felt...
So I will leave that to someone esle (who is much more qualified to do so):
>Subject: It Doesn't Have to Be Like This
>Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 13:14:00 -0400
Death, Downtown
Dear friends,
I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City.
My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade Center.
I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live.
It was a sick, horrible, frightening day.
On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was timed to occur at the same moment.)
I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live... a fluke, a mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but for the grace of...
Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America. I like my illusions. I walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons through an x-ray machine, and I know all will be well.
Here's a short list of my experiences lately with airport security:
* At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at boarding everyone. The counter can't find my seat. So I am told to just "go ahead and get on" -- without a ticket!
* At Detroit Metro Airport, I don't want to put the lunch I just bought at the deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass through the metal detector, I hand the sack to the guard through the space between the detector and the x-ray machine. I tell him "It's just a sandwich." He believes me and doesn't bother to check. The sack has gone through neither security device.
* At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of luggage, but decide to catch a later plane. The first plane leaves without me, but with my bag -- no one knowing what is in it.
* Back in Detroit, I take my time getting off the commuter plane. By the time I have come down its stairs, the bus that takes the passengers to the terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on the tarmac, free to wander wherever I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down a pick-up truck and an airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way to the terminal.
* I have brought knives, razors; and once, my traveling companion brought a hammer and chisel. No one stopped us. Of course,
I have gotten away with all of this because the airlines consider my safety SO important, they pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is what my life is worth -- less than the cost of an oil change.
Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) receives around $15,000 a year in annual pay.
That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands. Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year. There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps -- and he was eligible!
Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is. So spare me the talk about all the precautions the airlines and the FAA is taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned about one thing -- the bottom line and the profit margin.
Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to penetrate airport security on the same morning at 3 different airports and pull off this heinous act? My only response is -- that's all?
Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the "terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on planet earth -- Osama bin Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn't add up.
Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?
Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED to want to kill themselves today?
Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause -- but FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know. What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden!
Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!
Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques against us.
We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the 1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me. Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers!
We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our day one single bit.
We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause.
Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted by a guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of ex-military guys who hated the federal government.
From the first minutes of today's events, I never heard that possibility suggested. Why is that?
Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better foils. A key ingredient in getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy is the all-important race card. It's much easier to get us to hate when the object of our hatred doesn't look like us.
Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling for more money for the military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't want to hear any more talk about more money for education or health care -- we should have only one priority: our self-defense.
Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes?
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all.
The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of "God Bless America." They're not a bad group of singers!
Yes, God, please do bless us.
Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!
Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity...
Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in.
It doesn't have to be like this...
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
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/
If the federal government could get advanced warning of future attacks, and save lives-- why not enforce Carnivores permanently on ISPs?
...
Carnivore, and Echelon were first predicated on fears of terrorist activity-- fears that were dismissed by civil libertarians as somewhat vacuous in the past.
...
For one, I believe that the arguments against Carnivore and Echelon were less predicated on the lack of a threat, but on how they were being used (or could be used in the absence of any oversight and surpervision). Carnivore, for instance (leaving Echelon, in whatever degree it actually exists aside), has problems in its wide reaching grasp, and I believe that less people have a problem with it existing as a properly implimented "wire tapping device" (needing to get a court order, etc.), than with the fact that it seemed to collect data outside the scope of what it should be looking for (ie. collecting data on people outside the scope of the court order neccessary for a Wiretap to be put in place).
As far as physical barriers, yes it is a sad fact that more of them will probably be created. That is unfortunately the case when you have the sad reality of what happened to contend with.
I am also willing to be that we will return to the 70's when there was an armed U.S. Marshal on all commerical airflights. Surprise, we aren't safe. These are conditions that have only existed in states under seige such as Israel (it is stardard policy for all ElAl flights to include at least one trained marksman).
If you caught most of the news coverage on the first day (and I think most people did), you might remember pictures of Palestinians dancing in the streets and celebrating the attack. Iraq also had people dancing in the streets, and the latest reports from the FBI are that the terrorists had passports from the United Arab Emerates, and Egypt, and that the rogue Saudi financer Osama Bin Ladin, who is still being hiddin in Afghanistan is behind this, and people wonder why there is no stability in the Middle-East and why there is no peace?
The latest estimates from the FBI are that the attacks may have been in the planning for up to 18 months. I'm still waiting for a second attack as I sit in the shadow of the Empire State Building writing this, and will probably go home soon since while we have a Net link, we have no phones (my wife slightly further up town has phones but no net), and we aren't expected to get service till Monday since there are so many other priorities and emergencies being taken care of.
I apologize for the ranting but I'll try to get back to topic...
Opposition to the growth of surveillance should pursist. It is sad that we may have a growing need for more invasive options, but there must (or at least SHOULD) be ways to balance even that against the current justifiable (as you say and I agree) fears.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I completely agree. I've been trying to explain this point to my husband. Not all people who are in a country that harbors terrorists are involved. For instance, people want to get rid of Afghanistan and are mad at the Taliban for supporting Bin Laden. Well what about the people that have nothing to do with the Taliban and in fact loathe them but can't do anything about it because they are powerless to do so? They shouldn't be destroyed because they live in the same country as a terrorist. My husband keeps telling me, if you're going after something and things get in the way its perfectly acceptable to mow them down on the way there. How terrible. What's more loss of lives of innocent people going to do to help? He says it will be a detterent. I say that a bloodbath will not be a deterrent but everybody will just get more pissed at the terrible things the US are doing.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
And like the articles also said, once the weight of the upper floors started to come down, it took out the floor support beams that also kept the outer skeleton in place.
The steel only buckled right around the fire, but once those supports were removed, the skeleton was then able to buckle and move in ways that buildings shouldn't.
Also, on the escape time, the fire from the fuel probably made passage from the above floors through the escape routes nigh impossible. So pretty much if you were above the point of impact, you were in trouble. After the first impact, they had people from around the 90th floor calling on cel phones talking about the heat and smoke, saying "We're fucking dieing up here".
But yes, the fire is the cause, hence the choosing of planes heading across the country from a "local" airport - LOTS of fuel.
I've probably fired about 100 rounds of Glaser ammo over the years at the range, and I've never had a single round fragment in the barrel. It is more succeptable to damage than traditional ammo (particuarly oil contamination) and it does degrade with age, so it needs to be handled carefully and replaced frequently. (That explains why I've shot so much of it even though it's insanely expensive). For more info, read the FAQ [safetyslug.com].
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Oh, come on... and I suppose that 200-year-old document (your vaunted constitution) is irrelevant to modern discussions too?
Christ, by paying a little more attention to its own constitution, America could have avoided such things as the DMCA (this *is* Slashdot, after all)... and more on topic - could have avoided contributing to the creation of bin Laden, Pinochet and the like.
Sorry, this turned into a flame. But I think Franklin's statement is right on the money right now as the US and the rest of the world seeks a new balance between safety and liberty.
<sarcasm> Or perhaps you'd rather just turn the whole thing over to the Director of the CIA. He can tell us what freedoms will be allowed to persist in the post-WTC era. </sarcasm>
What happens when you find out god doesn't exist?
Lowmag.net
A second debris site, 6 to 8 miles from the original crash site of the Somerset county plane has been found. This does not jive with what we know now.
The thinking now is that an A) explosive device went off on the plane or B) we shot it down. Dont be so horrified by this second possibility. Its better than it crashing into another populated building. Read the article. Its amazing.
This is a touchy topic, so stop reading here if speculation about the legal implications will bother you.
Time and again, I hear politicians from the mayor of NY to congress to the president refering to this as an act of war (see the president's most recent remarks).
There's a problem with this. If this was an act of war, it cannot, by definition be a federal crime, no?
What's more, if this was an act of war, anyone we "capture" is a prisoner of war, and we must obey the terms of the Geneva Convention and other international treaties. They will have to be re-patriated after the conflict, or brought before an international court for war crimes, NOT tried for federal crimes in the U.S.
Now, I can see the attack on the WTC being called out as a war crime, but if we treat this as an act of war, the Pentagon was a valid military target, and the attack on that building was legal (the point could even be made that Bin Laden had made it quite clear that he had declared war on the U.S. before the attack, unlike the Japanese who had tried but failed to do so before Pearl Harbor). The use of a commercial airline to do it is obviously not acceptable, but I'm not sure how much weight that will carry in a war crimes tribunal.
What I'm trying to say is that we've painted ourselves a very restrictive map here. There's no such thing as "murder" in the criminal sense in an act of war. There's only international treaty on the rules of war.
Now, I'm not a lawyer (I hate the acronym), and I could be wildly off-base here, but is this just short-sightedness or have we decided that the support that we get from the international community as a result of an act of war outweighs our desire to bring these criminals (soldiers?) to trial? Or, are we just planning to ignore international law, and bring anyone we capture to trial anyway?
CNN has been known on many occasions to get the news wrong, or fabricate stories (Wolf Blitzer).
However, this time, they are reporting the truth. www.haaretzdaily.com , one of Israel's better independent newspapers also reported this story, and took photos on site, from the past few days, not 1991.
The story at Indymedia was posted by a Brazilian. I think I'll trust sources in Israel instead of someone in South America, Thank You very much.
Idiots.
Liberty in your lifetime
A terrific book that talks about the collision of the B-29 against the Empire State Building is Mario Salvadoris "Why Buildings Fall Down", it's a terrific book.
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
From: http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/showtell/story/ 0,23008,3347294,00.html
The New York American Red Cross is in dire need of technology equipment and services. The field workers and sites have little, if any, means of communication and the central office is processing way too much on completely paper systems. Your help in acquiring these resources would be greatly appreciated.
If you can help, please contact:
Joe Leo, Assistant Director, Business Applications, IT
American Red Cross in Greater New York
phone: 212.875.2409
email: jleo@arcgny.org
150 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10023
PLEASE NOTE: His email is slammed, so don't resend your messages over and over again.
Following is the list of equipment that the Red Cross needs for its field workers and expanded Emergency Operations Centers. It also needs certified Citrix engineers and Microsoft-certified consultants.
40 IBM computers and laptops (with NICs)
Monitors (with desktops)
Any storage solutions
25 10/100 hubs (8+ Ports)
100 Cat5 cables (All lengths)
50 power strips
Any IBM-compatible memory
Any 3Com wireless NIC cards and LAN products
30 desktop-size UPSs
15 LaserJet printers (HP 1100 or faster) and printer supplies
20 external Zip drives and disks
Any diskettes and R/W CDs
5 external CD burners
5 duplex document scanners
25 extension cords
any colored tie wraps
any Velcro cable wraps
50 Citrix client licenses
12 PCMCIA LAN cards for IBM P20 ThinkPads, preferably 3Com (in addition to those in the new PCs)
50 Microsoft Exchange CALs
35 Microsoft SQL CALs
50 Microsoft Office Professional licenses
15 PC Anywhere licenses
DSL lines
PDAs with wireless capacity and service
Nextel cellphones and service
Thanks in advance for your generous assistance. Any donation will help greatly.
Steel (and Iron for that matter) have a number of differenty possible crystal structures, which vary widely in the strentgh, maleability and brittleness. The rusting rate also changes, but that is not interesting in this context, but it is for the design of blades and tooling. The oldest way to change the crystal structure of iron or steel is to heat it up to a certain temperature, then cool it in a controlled way. Fast cooling leads to a hard brittle structure, slower cooling leads to a more malleable structure. Heat the surface and cool it quickly and you've got case-hardened metal in hand. The key thing to remember is (as any blacksmith has experienced at some time or other) iron gets brittle before it gets to the cherry red stage.
I assume that there was both heat-related sag and a brittle region beyond that as you moved farther from the hottest flames. So, it is possible that the metal did, in fact, get brittle and snap in the heat, along with the sagging, leading to a sudden pancake type collapse.
Who would have thought that you needed to plan for hundreds or thousands of gallons of aircraft fuel when sizing fire supression gear in a tower?
As reported in today's WashPost Style Section, The Coup has changed the artwork.
Call it my contrarian nature, but amidst all the usual self-centered-libertarian-police-state-paranoia, I feel compelled to point out that loss of privacy is not necessarily loss of liberty. Nowhere is it guaranteed even in the US constitution; never has it been established that privacy actually produces a freer society; and in practice the idea that you can actually have privacy is a total myth. David Brin makes a good case in his for all of this and more in his controversial The Transparent Society (chapter one available here). His core arguement is for complete transparency - that all citizens should be allowed to observe the activities of individuals, government, and business - rather than the alternative of those having the power to do so using surveillance to their private advantage. While you'll almost certainly have objections, it's well worth consideration, and it's always worth it to look at things from an alternative perspective.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Well, again we meet speculations, speculations and speculations on why WTC collapsed. Well, a previous /. news had a much better link on the whys of the towers going down the way they did. Apart of technicities and maybes let's put a clear point on this story:
The towers went down because they should have done that.
Yes it is horrible that thousands of lifes died on it. But just imagine what would have happened if the tower's security would me made more on standing up and not on falling down. Note that these two objectives cannot be equally achieved in the same level. If one makes a construction stronghold, then it would risk to see things falling from 400 meters over God knows where. On the contrary, if one would make a structure that easily falls down under the first serious weakness, then forget about strenghts.
The people who built WTC made a marvelous construction and we could see it in the way it went down. And be thankful to them for that. If not, just imagine that tower flying down over people who were hundreds of meters away. Imagine the HUGE fire that could break down in lower Manhattan. Note that, under the circumstances of the tragedy, a larger distribution of fire could easily create what is known to some experts as "fire front".
Fire fronts are things that usually remind tales of nuclear wars. But they are real and they happened. They happened in Roterdam in 1940. They were also the cause of the horrible destruction of Dresden in the end of the war. Fire fronts are fires that come up due to large temperatures and streets creating aerodynamical high-speed air currents. In fact, when the second tower went down I was really afraid that we could have got that thing. However the very local fall managed to cut the chances for fire to create a large surface, the main condition for a fire front.
So instead of blaming constructors and think on securities, shoulds, shouldn'ts, maybes and whatifs, maybe you should stop a little and thank those guys for having made a real secure construction. When they did that, no one could even imagine that hijacked airplanes would stuck fullspeed on the construction... Thank God that even after that the "critical fire plan" worked and we didn't have half Manhattan turned into a oven.
There have been Islamic mosques attacked in the US by vigilantees. Two incidents in my metro area today.
r ie s2/469307_mosque.html
r ie s2/469117_mosque12e.html
http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/sto
http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/sto
I promised an Islamic friend at work that if there begin to be efforts to profile Islamic/Arabic members of the population(as there was during WW2 with the Japanese population, and some of them even sent off to camps) that at least myself and my household would vehemntly protest to anyone who would listen and a few who wouldn't.
I fear this is just the beginning.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
On second thought, it is worth my time: there is value in pointing out poor reasoning whereever it exusts, so be prepared to see your post ripped post to shreds by very simple logical arguments, instead of the drivel you seem to spout so easily...
1st example: you state your opinion that "religion is a method of brainwashing." I think it would be quite a bit more accurate to state that "religion as a whole is believing that there are higher powers than mortal mankind", and that "any given religion is a attempt by people to put rational language to that belief." By the way, the belief in some kind of God seems to be a core part of most people's world view, although not yours. At least in my case, coercion was not been part of the process that led me to be a believer.
You continue: "Yet everyday we pass buildings built by those who are essentially cultists. These buildings a meeting halls for people who believe an internally inconsistent set of beliefs that culminates in an omnipotent being creating the entire universe, for humanity, specifically their fellow believers, who then gets petulent when his tiny creations don't worship in the exact ways specified..." Does it occur to you that people may have an internally and externally consistent beliefs, and that many people (myself included) do not believe God to be petulant in any way shape or form, else that being would not be a God whom we could believe in.
By the way, being in a particular type of building (specifically a church) does not define a person as being a cultist any more than saying that using a computer automagically makes a person a technologist or being in a automobile car automagically makes a person into a race car driver. Since our country has laws based on a the U.S. Constitution, you are free to disbelieve, but I am also free to believe, and practice my beliefs so long as they remain within the constraints of societal law. Most "cults" do not remain within those constraints.
Again, I quote from your post: "A bunch of sick people acting in direct contrast to what a rational view of reality would suggest is NOT something we should sit back and accept as normal." Oops.. You just committed another logical fallacy by excluding the possibility that rational people can also be religious, another logical fallacy, like saying "the sky is blue, my eyes are blue, therefore anyone whose eye's aren't blue can't possibly see the sky..."
It is just as much brainwashing and dishonest indoctrination to to insist that our educational systems teach that atheism is somehow more rational and therefore "good", "right", or "normal" than religious belief, is it not? I think most people who know me would say that I am at least as intelligent and rational as the next person, and I can easily be proven to be a useful member of society, even though I believe in God.
You continue "This indoctrination hurts us all by raising people unable to cope with reality without retreating into their fantasy world. It raises people who act in a manner that is insane when viewed by someone who hasn't been similarly brainwashed." Hmm. I wonder what you would say if you were trapped in the WTC explosions and I was the only person who could help you get down the stairs and told you that it was my "God-given duty to help you get out of the building alive." Would you so glibly accuse me of retreating into fantasy then? True beliefs don't allow a retreat-- they obligate the owner of those beliefs to act.
I guess my point is that people who promote terrorism by mingling religion in with it are sick, not every person who believes in any religion, anywhere.
Contrary to your own beliefs (which are guaranteed to be at least partially false on the basis of logic: you can't disprove the existence of God, can you?), hatred is the enemy of all people, not religion. Seeking to control or make a profit by taking advantage of others is the enemy of all people, and I will readily and sadly acknowledge that many so-called churches and preachers are so corrupted that they fail in their essential mission: teaching people to co-operate peacefully in lifting their fellow man. This one message is the essence and goal of almost every major and minor religious system of thought.
So if you don't mind, I'll try to become a better person based on my beliefs, and work with and teach my family and friends who are like minded to be good people, and you? All I can suggest is that if you want to preach atheism, you at least learn to do a better, more logical job of it.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
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.
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.
not a big surprise, but more trains & cars have been added.
sulli
RTFJ.