...more recent posts
The talking moose has lost his mind. And he seemed sort of reasonable. Let's get a grip on ourselves. Here's a little tip if you're having trouble being human: you should never want to go to war.
I kept singing this song in my head as I was walking around today. Seems like a good one to be humming. Maybe I can put it in your head:
Make love and not war! 'Cause we don't need no trouble.
What we need is love (love)
To guide and protect us on. (on)
If you hope good down from above, (love)
Help the weak if you are strong now. (love)
We don't need no trouble;
What we need is love. Oh, no!
We don't need - we don't need - no more trouble!
Lord knows, we don't need no trouble!
(We don't need) We don't need trouble (no more trouble) -
no more trouble - no more trouble!
Seek happiness! (...) Oh, ...!
Come on, you all and speak of love. (...) Oh, yeah!
We don't need no trouble;
What we need is love, now. (What we need is love!)
("No More Trouble" by Bob Marley from the album "Catch a Fire" - complete lyrics here.)
People gathered in Union Square today in the wake of the World Trade Center disaster. Everybody wants to say something about what happened.
For the few people who read this page, get ready to start reading lots about decentralization. This whole episode has made a few things clear. One is that we need a different telecommunications infrastructure, and it has to be radically decentralized. (Try this Google search for "ad hoc mobile wireless" for an idea.) The NYC cellphone system was not up to the task (although it didn't go down entirely which was nice.) If there had been more panic (like, say, if there had been credible rumors of biological agents on the planes) it would have been necessary to have better communications. We know horrible things can happen. Being prepared with the proper communications technology will make a big difference in the aftermath. The blogging community did a good job, but there's more we can do with some better planning. I can relate to what Dave Winer is saying: "While all this is going on I'm getting tons of ideas for how the software can work better to link people together in time of crisis. It's also a time of great opportunity. Keep your eyes and ears open, observe, and share what you learn."
When Bush says "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these attacks and those who harbor them," does he include those who armed and trained the attackers? If he does, and Bin Laden turns out to be involved, doesn't that put the U.S. in a tricky situation, since the CIA armed and trained him when they needed a pawn to use against the USSR in Afganistan? If we don't critique ourselves we lose.
Added a series of stills from video footage of the second tower collapse.
Well, I guess it's turning out to be a little more complex than I had imagined. Probably not just anyone with a knife could have done this attack. Still, I think it was about as much damage as you could wreck with a conventional (non nuke; non bio/chemical) attack, and it was carried out with only small knives and box cutters. So there is a distrubing disconnect between the level of technology employed, and the scale of the damage. And I think my fear still stands that this is a difficult attack to defend against short of completely seperating the cabin from the cockpit. There'd be some restroom issues to work out but it still seems reasonable to do. Watching those towers come down was so sad. I don't want anything like that to happen again.
I think the best argument I've heard against a repeat occurrence is that other people on planes that are being hijacked in the future will probably not just sit around. I guess what seems to have happened with the fourth plane (where some of the passengers may have rushed the hijackers and forced the plane down in Pennsylvania) would probably happen in any future attempts. And I guess that's always where our real saftey comes from. Not from "officials" or "the government" (although so many of them are doing a great job right now) but just from the mass of reasonable people out there in the world. I think we're all a little wiser as to the stakes, and I think it would be hard to get us in the same way again.
Winds have completely shifted this morning. They will shift again this evening and blow everything south, but for now we are in the cloud. I know it's not healthy, but we are staying in doors with all windows shut. I thought about leaving, but I think I have to stay. Not for any particular reason, but just because this is where I live. Despite the horror, life in New York City does go on. AKA will be open for business tonight. Come on by.
One new picture added to the World Trade Center photos. Also, I fixed the issue that was preventing some versions of IE on the Mac from seeing the photos. I'll fix all other pictures on the site over the next few days.
My amazement continues. What a perfect attack. Beautiful really, if it wasn't so horrible. So simple and such complete destruction. News reports keep speculating about the masterminds behind the plot and how only a few terrorist groups in the world have the capabilities to pull something like that off, yet there appears to be no evidence to back that up. The reality, and the elegance of the attack, was that almost anyone could do it. The whole thing might have cost just a few thousand dollars. The damage is certainly well into the billions. Maybe trillions? That's some return on investment. And then on top of that, there seems to be no way to defend against it.
Assuming that the public will not stand for mandatory strip searches of all airline passengers I can only think of one thing to do. Airplanes should be reconfigured so that the cockpit is seperate from the cabin. No doors, and reinforced thick steel walls seperating the two areas. Not a locked door - no door. These planes can still be attacked. They can be blown up with bombs. Passengers can be killed. But the plane itself cannot be commandeered in mid flight by a passenger and turned into a guided missle. This seems like a simple to implement step that will almost completely take away the possibility of this sort of disaster (I guess the plane could be taken over on the ground while the attackers could still get into the cockpit section from the outside, but that seems orders of magnitude harder for the attackers.)
Without this measure, it's hard to imagine this won't happen again. And again. And again. A few hundred bucks for a couple of tickets, and a few ceramic knives is all it takes to bomb the pentagon or knock down the World Trade Center? (Well, plus that willing to die part.) This is not acceptible. Tougher security checks at airports are not going to matter. Moving naval battle groups into New York harbor is not going to matter. Star Wars or any other crazy high tech solution will not matter. We must try to make peace, and in the mean time we have to make it impossible for people to easily get their hands on giant flying bombs.
[I'm posting more WTC related stuff in the comments below]