Slashdot Mirror
1 World Trade Center Becomes the Tallest Building In NYC
darthcamaro writes "On 9/11, terrorists took the lives of thousands of Americans — and removed a pair of icons from the New York City skyline. For the last 10+ years, The Empire State Building was the tallest building in NYC, but that changed today. 'Poking into the sky, the first column of the 100th floor of 1 World Trade Center will bring the tower to a height of 1,271 feet, making it 21 feet higher than the Empire State Building.'"
Knock Knock
Who's there?
9/11
9/11 who?
You said you'd never forget!
You mean, not forgetting the 3.000 people who died as opposed to the 100.000 who died in the shameless wars after? Fuck you.
I actually don't understand the importance of not forgetting. It seems like a nice enough thing to say, but I want a genuine justification for why it should be remembered, as opposed to mourned and then moved past? I know this sounds incredibly cynical, but I think the United States penchant for remembering tragedies and not achievements is unhealthy for the national psyche in the long run.
Why shouldn't this be forgotten?
I think it's high time we got over it.
I also think it's high time we got rid of the Patriot Act and the TSA
-- Like that would ever happen --
So go ahead shrieking "9/11 NEVER FORGET!" To remind us how we let the terrorists win.
Because they did.
Try not to feel like a criminal the next time you undress yourself at the airport while waiting in line to get your nads zapped with a healthy dose of radiation.
Yes being 21 feet taller than the tallest building in that city must have added so many huge technical challenges. Sure its impressive, but this isn't about impressive technical challenfes, its a nationalist hooray for us. Its drivel.
9/11 was a tragic event, but never forgotten? Why? what does remembering it teach us? I don't see any important lesson in it. Bad shit happens? Sometimes a few dedicated people will fuck shit up for other people?
Much more to remember is peoples terrible overreactions which continue to this very day. 9/11 was pretty forgetable compared to the backlash it caused. Compared to the massive expansion of govenrment securituy apparatus, compared to the exercises in airport security theater? Meh, 9/11 itself was just a few guys bringing some buildings down and killing a bunch of people.
There really isn't very much impressive about it, it wasn't even a repeatable strategy, as before the day was out. The ONLY reason it worked in the first place was because passengers were expecting a normal "hostage situation" hijacking, where it made sense to stay in their seats and wait for the situation to be resolved. By the end of the day the whole plan was useless to try again.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Almost 11 years to build a building. Nuts. The Empire State was built in just 2.5 years using primitive 1920s technology, and the first WTC in the same amount of time.
The original WTC was planned in 1958 and the dedication ceremony was in 1973. Groundbreaking was in 1966.
8 years planning and re-planning, 7 years building.* Roughly similar to the current WTC project.
Wikipedia: ... ...
In 1958, Rockefeller established the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA), which commissioned Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to draw up plans for revitalizing Lower Manhattan. The plans, made public in 1960, called for a World Trade Center to be built on a 13-acre (53,000 m2) site along the East River, from Old Slip to Fulton Street and between Water Street and South Street
After a year-long review of the proposal, the Port Authority formally backed the project on 11 March 1961.[11]
In March 1965, the Port Authority began acquiring property at the World Trade Center site.[72] The Ajax Wrecking and Lumber Corporation was hired for the demolition work, which began on 12 March 1966 to clear the site for construction of the World Trade Center.[73]
Groundbreaking was on 5 August 1966,
The topping out ceremony of 1 WTC (North Tower) took place on 23 December 1970, with 2 WTC's ceremony (South Tower) occurring later on 19 July 1971.[79] The first tenants moved into the North Tower in December 1970, and into the South Tower in January 1972.[91] The buildings were dedicated on 4 April 1973; Tobin, who had resigned the year before, was absent from the ceremonies.[92]
There's a difference between "remembering" and "obsessing over".
We still "remember" Pearl Harbor. We still "remember" the Alamo. We still "remember" the Boston Massacre. But I'm pretty sure very few people are still angry at Japan/Mexico/Britain, and I'm pretty sure we're not going to use them as casus belli anytime soon.
Britain still "remembers" the Gunpowder Plot. France still remembers the Bastille. Both of those events are centuries in the past, yet they are still worth *remembering*.
There's nothing wrong with *remembering* that these things happened. There *is* a problem with obsessing over it and continuing to use it as justification for everything from invasions to the TSA. For example.
PS: We *do* remember achievements (the Apollo program, etc), even some we didn't really accomplish (who single-handedly beat the Nazis? We did!).
Many of those 10,000 supported the demise of the 3k, so I'm just fine with that.
The perpetrators were mainly Saudi, they trained in Afghanistan and the US public links all this with the war in Iraq - where a shitload of innocent people died, probably all of whom had nothing to do with 9/11. And even in Afghanistan a bucketload of innocent people died.
Iraq body count
Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan
But I can't seem to find a link for a war in Saudi Arabia, or the number of civilian deaths there.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Many of those 10,000 supported the demise of the 3k, so I'm just fine with that.
That's a morally problematic stance to take. First of all, what's "many of those 10.000"? 1.000? 5.000? Let's say 5.000 for the sake of avoiding harder math. Ok, so the next step would be to take you and 16.665 like-minded individuals (plus a midget), put them in a group with 16.666 random people (plus a midget) and kill the whole group.
And I think the bluntness of the AC didn't really convey what I find to be a valid point: you should remember the ramifications. The most important lesson to learn, here, is that 9/11 didn't end with the building coming down. It resulted in much more people (including a lot of non-combatants) getting killed in two wars, an enourmous economic crisis, creation of the Patriot Act and the TSA etc. The reaction to the event was arguably worse than the attack itself, and if people forget about that and only think "honor our 3.000 and fuck the terrists", they are only fostering the kind of exploitable us v. them mentality that led to this political and economic nightmare to begin with.
First collateral damage in a warfront is usually not considered murder. Also, 86% of the civilian casualties were from those same "innocent" civilians killing each other. Considering that only 14% were actually from Americans -- in a warfront -- I would say the American military did an outstanding job of limiting civilian casualties. Terrorist/Extremists planting pressure trigger bombs in the road, and along comes a civilian does not make the US Military responsible, sorry. Go troll and FUD elsewhere.
Yet April 19th came and went without a mention. On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Building was destroyed when 4 American terrorists exploded a cargo van full of explosives. 169 people died including 19 children under the age of 6 and over 680 people were injured.
People said we shouldn't forget the Oklahoma City bombing... yet we did...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
--George Santayana
That is why. Also, I don't know what history books you read, but the US history books I studied included the achievements too. They just aren't brought up as often (and usually are associated with tragedies, since those are the times when achievements become the most significant).
But leave out the things that cast the U.S. to unfavorably, unless it is politically correct to do so (as with slavery). For example, the British burned the White House, but you'll rarely see a word in U.S. history books about the U.S. burning the houses of parliament in Canada first.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid there's been a serious misunderstanding.
"The United States of America is the most powerful nation that has ever existed on this planet. Our citizens spend more on the opening weekend of a movie than the GDP of 40% of the planet. We provide aid in the billions to countries all over the world. We have been to the moon. We can destroy any part of this earth as easily as drinking a cup of coffee.
*sips coffee*
"This was the master stroke by a group of madmen who wish to murder civilians in the name of god. We will not be going to war to punish those who have the misfortune of being near these madmen. We know who they are, we know where they are, and will will bring them to justice here in the USA to face murder charges. If they are found guilty in a court of law, they face the death penalty in New York county.
"In the meantime, we will show you what is meant by 'the most powerful nation on earth'. By the end of this year, we will rebuild those towers and your master stroke will be gone. Yes, those who were murdered are gone from this earth, and we grieve for their loss. But we are America, and we have faced tougher challenges before. You cannot attack us because we will always return, we will never forget, and we will never surrender.
Good night, everyone."
-- What he should have said, 11 September 2011
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Depends on how you measure buildings: do you count architectural spires or antenna, or just measure to the top of occupied floors? As noted in TFA, there's a lot of arguments about these factors when comparing building heights. Personally, as an engineer, I'm more interested in the height as measured by occupied floors, because the rest is just fluff. Anyone can add a mast (either non-functional, as in the case of spires, or functional, in the case of antennas) to the top of some building. In fact, some structures don't even qualify as buildings, as they're just giant antenna (such as the one in North Dakota that's the tallest structure in North America), but to me a giant antenna is nowhere near as significant an engineering accomplishment as a giant building, so the antennas slapped on top should be ignored when comparing heights.
I go by highest usable restroom. Any altitude above which I cannot relieve myself in comfort is irrelevant.
You kill 3,000 of ours, we'll kill 100,000 of yours.
When did we kill 100,000 Saudis?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Did you see the interview with the architect?
He looked like his kids had been killed, and I suppose they were. He was talking about how it was actually designed to withstand the impact of a 707, which was the biggest plane at the time. Building it to withstand a 747 would have been the equivalent of designing to withstand the impact of the Space Shuttle.
I did see that, and I thought he got the raw end of the deal.
It was designed to withstand a fully fueled 707 at 250 knots speed (maximum legal speed under 10,000 feet). This accounts for accident scenarios, airplane lost in fog, etc. Design request was partly due to a B-25 Mitchell bomber that actually hit the Empire State Building in similar conditions, impaled itself in the building.
It actually withstood the impact of a fully fueled 767 at over 300 knots speed (maximum ramming speed). It remained standing for several hours.
Neither tower toppled over immediately after impact.
In both towers, people below the impact point were able to exit, and rescue workers were able to enter and try to evacuate the injured.
Had there been enough helicopter support, it might have been possible to extract some of the people above the impact point.
It was not able to withstand the impact plus the fire, including failure of the fire pipes and the division of fire personnel between multiple damaged buildings.
Had it been an accidental impact from a cargo 707 in the fog, I doubt that the stricken tower would have been left unscathed, needing only paint, windows and new carpeting. It would have taken a partial to complete rebuild of that damaged tower, and there would undoubtedly have been deaths / entrapment for occupants.
In short, show me a building that can take the impact of a modern airliner without being completely obliterated immediately. Then show me one that is still standing after being on fire for several hours. I think the original WTC did a great job of staying upright as long as it did. A design failure would have been the top third landing on the street, while the people were still figuring out which way to run.
In fact, thinking back, the building's foundation was strong enough to withstand a truck bomb in a van, several years prior. So I personally think the designer got it right, it's just that the terrorists raised the stakes higher than ever imagined.
This is a perfect example of the root cause of everything that is wrong with the USA: supremely arrogant, utterly self-deluded, smugly imbecillic and profoundly ignorant feeling of the Universe revolving around your ass.
From what I've seen traveling around the world (something that I am sure you did not deem necessary to form your opinion) is that if anything, your numbers are actually reversed: for every naive goofus who sees USA as a potential saviour, 5 see it for what it is: a self-important empire whose distinguishing feature is hypocritical pontification about "freedom" and "democracy" while depriving anyone who has something it wants of freedom, property and frequently life all the while propping up convenient dictators and absolute monarchs (see also: Saudi Arabia) all over the world.
And your general attitude just illustrates the point gloriously.
Comedy gold. What was the last time anyone other than thieves and would-be robber barons hoping to profit from misery of their fellows actually asked you to show up and blow their country to smithereens in the name of "saving" it?
Or were you trying to be sarcastic by pointing out how USA rigged the world financial markets for its own benefit? Or more precisely for the benefit of its top 1%, who - amusingly enough - are these days busy abandoning what they sense is soon to be a rotting corpse of a has-been empire for some greener pastures...
You kill 3,000 of ours, we'll kill 100,000 of yours. Do that often enough, maybe people will learn not to fuck with us.
It's when both sides start using this logic that things get really fun.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.