Tag Archives: 9-11
Twenty years ago today I was at work, and the world was largely as it had always been: sometimes difficult, sometimes easy, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful. As it had always been.
As I worked at my desk I slowly became aware of a general level of commotion coming from our “TV area” (an area nearby where we sometimes met for meetings). The commotion continued, but I knew we had no meetings scheduled that morning. Eventually I got up to see what was going on.
As I approached, it was apparent that most of the department was there; a couple of the guys were standing in the doorway. I rounded the corner and looked in and saw the TV screen just in time to see (a replay of) the second tower falling.
That was my first contact with 9/11. Seeing the second tower fall.
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7 Comments | tags: 9-11, Anniversary | posted in Life
It’s one of those days you remember better than any birthday or wedding. Those were planned; these hit you suddenly, stunning your mind, breaking your heart. “The shuttle blew up!” “The Towers fell!”
The impact was even greater if you saw it happen in real-time. If you watched the shuttle launches. If you caught the breaking news before the second tower was hit. Saw the second plane, realized at that moment, “This is no accident!”
Even if you saw it after, you saw it; saw it as an attack.
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5 Comments | tags: 9-11, Earth, emotional mind, human mind, humanity, making movies, media, moon, rational mind, rational thought, Sun, Venus, war movies | posted in Life, Politics, Society, TV
So now we have 12/2 to go along with 9/11. And while the death and injury this time isn’t of the magnitude it was 14 years ago, the hysteria seems to be greater. Only five days after the tragedy, the leading Republican candidate engages in a form of hate speech not seen in mainstream American politics since Joe McCarthy.
To say that I’m appalled doesn’t begin to describe it. That people cheer on and support this blustering carnival barker speaks directly to the decline of real American values and principles. Trump is a childish clown seeing how much he can get away with.
It’s the people who follow him that scare the crap out of me. The ignorance and lack of critical thought is — as I have long said — very dangerous.
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46 Comments | tags: 12/2, 9-11, Anyone But Trump, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, Dick Cheney, Donald Sterling, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, Joe McCarthy, Leon Wieseltier, Marco Rubio, politicians, Republican Party, social change, social issues, social media, Ted Cruz, terrorism, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Opinion, Politics
Well, it’s that time of year when WordPress generates our Annual Report and we find out how many sold-out Sydney Opera House performances we earned. My first full year (2012) as a blogger I didn’t even rate one! That year visitors were compared to Mt. Everest climbers, and I’m sure there was no intended connection with oxygen deprivation.
This year — identically to last year — I managed to fill the House “about” five times. That’s page views; I’m up just shy of 500 views from last year (not quite a 4% increase). Visitors is another matter. Over 2,000 more visitors stopped by this year (a 140% increase).
But I really wanted to write about the posts…
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17 Comments | tags: 2013, 2014, 9-11, blog, blogger, blogging, Laurel Coppock, Leon Wieseltier, Mr. DeMille, NCIS, NCIS:New Orleans, Rick O'Shay, Stan Lynde, Toyota Jan | posted in Writing
Two long posts to represent the fallen Towers, WTC1 & WTC2. One shorter post to represent WTC7. Many of the surrounding buildings were damaged by the collapse of the Two Towers. The 22-story WTC3, which was adjacent to both was destroyed. Three nearby nine-story buildings, WTC4, WTC5 and WTC6 were all badly damaged.
Some find it odd that WTC7, which was the furthest, was seemingly not seriously damaged, but then fell on its own nearly seven hours later. As I wrote in the first post today, many of the conspiracy crazies focus on WTC7 as the actual primary target.
As if that made any sense at all. Destroying 316 stories worth of buildings (not to mention nearly 3000 Americans) to take out one office containing supposedly damaging documents? Seems like merely starting a weekend fire in an office a floor or two below would do the trick, if you wanted to not draw attention to the real target. It’s hard to imagine anyone coming up with such a plan. The phrase “utterly idiotic” comes to mind.
In this last post, I want to touch on some details.
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9 Comments | tags: 9-11 | posted in Life, Science
So what did happen on 9/11? How did two airplane crashes bring down two 110-story skyscrapers? How did the collapse of WTC2 and WTC1 also cause the collapse of WTC7? What exactly happened?
If the answers to those questions interest you, keep reading.
In the sibling post I wrote about the conspiracy crazies who believe the Towers and WTC7 were brought down deliberately by our government using explosives.
A somewhat less utterly preposterous theory suggests it was American and/or Israeli agents the flew the planes. In some versions the passengers were off-loaded and vanished somehow, in others they were captives. (Which ignores the air-to-ground phone calls made by some of those passengers. Melissa Etheridge has a heart-breaking song about one such case.)
But here’s what the NIST scientific analysis of the events found.
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3 Comments | tags: 9-11, NIST | posted in Science
Eleven years ago today a world-changing event occurred. A year ago, on the ten-year dark anniversary, I wrote a post about how we’d changed, about how profoundly our view of the world changed.
Today, at the eleven-year mark I want to write about something else. I want to write about how some people believe it was more than what it was. I want to write about how some people believe we did this to ourselves. About how some believe that our own government was behind the sudden, terrifying, mass murder of nearly 3000 Americans.
I want to write about conspiracy crazies.
And make no mistake, that is exactly what they are: crazy.
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8 Comments | tags: 9-11 | posted in Science
Do you all know the Gallagher bit about the Crazy English Language?
B.O.M.B. … “b-ah-m!”
T.O.M.B. … “t-ah-m?” … no T.O.M.B. “t-oo-m”
C.O.M.B. … “c-oo-m?” … no C.O.M.B. “c-oh-m”
P.O.M.B. … “p-oh-m?” … no P.O.E.M. “p-oh-m”
H.O.E.M. … “h-oh-m?” … no H.O.M.E. “h-oh-m”
S.O.M.E. … “s-oh-m?” … no S.O.M.E. “s-uh-m”
N.O.M.E. … “n-uh-m?” … no N.U.M.B. “n-uh-m”
This will make more sense when you get to the end of this Special Edition of Brain Bubbles.
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11 Comments | tags: 11, 11:11, 42, 9-11, Gallagher, poetry, teddy bear | posted in Brain Bubble
Ten years ago today I was at work, and the world was largely as it had always been: sometimes difficult, sometimes easy, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful. As it had always been.
As I worked at my desk I slowly became aware of a general level of commotion coming from our “TV area” (an area nearby where we sometimes met for meetings). The commotion continued, but I knew we had no meetings scheduled that morning. Eventually I got up to see what was going on.
As I approached, it was apparent that most of the department was there; a couple of the guys were standing in the doorway. I rounded the corner and looked in and saw the TV screen just in time to see (a replay of) the second tower falling.
That was my first contact with 9/11. Seeing the second tower fall.
Continue reading
4 Comments | tags: 9-11, Anniversary | posted in Life
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