7/21/2003 ·  8/ 6/2003
 5/29/2003 ·  7/18/2003
 4/25/2003 ·  5/28/2003
 3/24/2003 ·  4/24/2003
 3/ 1/2003 ·  3/21/2003
 1/28/2003 ·  2/28/2003
11/30/2002 ·  1/23/2003
11/ 1/2002 · 11/29/2002
 9/23/2002 · 10/30/2002
 9/ 5/2002 ·  9/20/2002
 8/10/2002 ·  9/ 4/2002
 7/24/2002 ·  8/ 9/2002
 6/27/2002 ·  7/23/2002
 6/ 3/2002 ·  6/25/2002
 4/24/2002 ·  5/31/2002
 4/ 1/2002 ·  4/23/2002
 3/ 1/2002 ·  3/31/2002
 2/10/2002 ·  2/28/2002
 1/22/2002 ·  2/ 9/2002
 1/ 3/2002 ·  1/16/2002
12/16/2001 ·  1/ 2/2002
12/ 2/2001 · 12/15/2001
11/ 1/2001 · 11/29/2001
10/16/2001 · 10/31/2001
 9/23/2001 · 10/13/2001
 9/11/2001 ·  9/22/2001
 7/29/2001 ·  9/10/2001
 7/ 2/2001 ·  7/28/2001
 5/29/2001 ·  6/30/2001
 5/ 1/2001 ·  5/21/2001
 4/ 8/2001 ·  4/29/2001
 3/25/2001 ·  4/ 7/2001
 3/11/2001 ·  3/24/2001
 3/ 4/2001 ·  3/10/2001
 2/18/2001 ·  3/ 3/2001
 2/ 4/2001 ·  2/17/2001
 1/23/2001 ·  2/ 2/2001
 1/ 1/2001 ·  1/22/2001
12/18/2000 · 12/31/2000
11/30/2000 · 12/ 7/2000
11/ 6/2000 · 11/28/2000
10/29/2000 · 11/ 5/2000
10/11/2000 · 10/19/2000
10/ 1/2000 · 10/ 9/2000
 9/24/2000 ·  9/30/2000
 9/15/2000 ·  9/22/2000
 9/ 7/2000 ·  9/13/2000

As the dust continues to settle, it seems that an acquaintance of mine, Jon Schlissel, died on September 11. He worked on the 87th floor of tower 2.

Click for full size
Here we are at the March on Washington in 2000. Left to right: Jon Schlissel, me, Greg, George, and Shep.

Frank Lloyd Wright's mile-high skyscraper "The Illinois," designed in 1959.

A lot of people have recently re-discovered the American flag. Here are some references on its handling:

• U.S. code on conduct during hoisting, lowering or passing of flag
• U.S. code on respect for the flag, such as "The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery" and "The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever" and "No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform."
• U.S. code on time and occasions for display
• U.S. code on position and manner of display
especially "The flag should not be draped over the hood, top, sides, or back of a vehicle or of a railroad train or a boat"
• All U.S. code references on the flag
• List of flag links available from our printing friends in Pueblo, Colorado.

Trying to do my patriotic, capitalistic, selfish duty I've gone searching the web for cheap airfares. Hearing tales of planes flying two-thirds empty, I am eager to show the Bin Ladens of the world that I am not terrorized, especially if I get a cheap weekend in Palm Springs out of the deal. Yes, patriotism can be sweet right now for Americans. Do the right thing for your country and find yourself drinking cheap wine in a sunny place, or toodling around the Orlando entertainment region, or reveling in secret pleasures in dark places in Amsterdam or San Francisco. On the other hand, think what patriotism means to Bin Laden's buddies: another day or two in a damp, cold camp somewhere in the most god-forsaken mountains in the most god-forsaken country on earth. Come on Osama, cry "uncle" and your grandchildren will be able to enjoy Disney World with all the rest of us, and you get a special flight to Leavenworth, Kansas.

But anyway, my point is that I'm not finding the airlines holding up their end of the bargain. I mean, why does Northwest think I would pay over $1000 to risk my life and fly on a nearly empty plane just to land in Ontario, California? I'm thinking patriotism should cost me only $200-$300 for a round-trip to California. And while I'm at it, Northwest Airline's website really sucks. They don't want to give you any real info until you cough up your WorldPerks number, and they don't offer any way for you to get it, just in case you don't walk around with it all the time.

Maps

• Map of Afghanistan
• Another map of Afghanistan
• Map of Afghanistan-Pakistan border

Photos of Afghanistan of dubious quality and utility.

Intelligent facts (rounded off) about Afghanistan from the CIA Fact Book

• Population: almost 27 million
• 42% of the population is younger than 15
• Life expectancy: 47 years for men, 45.5 years for women
• Largest ethnic group: Pashtun, making up 38% of the population
• Religions: Sunni Muslim 84%, Shi'a Muslim 15%, other 1%
• Literacy: total population: 31.5%, male: 47.2%, female: 15%
• How they spell it: "Afghanestan"
• Independent from the UK since August 19, 1919
• "Suffrage: NA"
• "on 27 September 1996, the ruling members of the Afghan Government were displaced by members of the Islamic Taliban movement."
• Afghanistan's embassy operations in the U.S. were suspended August 21, 1997. The American embassy in Kabul has been closed since 1989.
• At the peak of the Soviet war there were 6 milliion Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. There are still 3.4 million in those two countries.
• "Afghanistan was by far the largest producer of opium poppies in 2000, and narcotics trafficking is a major source of revenue." [I am so sure the Koran has something to say against that.]
• GDP: $21 billion, 53% of which is agriculture
• 70% of the labor force is in agriculture
• Agriculture products: opium poppies, wheat, fruits, nuts; wool, mutton, karakul pelts. [Karakul is a sheep]
• Electrical production: 420 million kWh, 64% of it from hydro
• In January 2000 one US dollar was worth 4700 afghanis (their currency)
• There are 6 AM radio stations, 1 FM, 1 shortwave, "at least 10" TV stations, and 1 internet service provider
• There are 24.6 Km of railways! And 2793 Km of paved highways.

My Netflix subscription is going well. No complaints so far. One Ron's Log reader pointed me to RentMyDVD.com which is similar to Netflix. The pricing is slightly different. Netflix charges $20/month for a 3-disc subscription, while RentMyDVD charges $25 for a 4-disc subscription. The only real difference between the two is that Netflix has only one location: San Jose, California. RentMyDVD has a California location, plus one in metropolitan New York City, so they promise shorter mail times. They say they plan to open additional locations over time. Postal time between Boston and San Jose is running around 4 or 5 days. Netflix provides a same-day turnaround. That is, on the day they get my returned disc, they send out the next one. My current DVD is Fight Club. Obviously, I should have gone in and reviewed my "Rental Queue" after the September 11 attacks and moved some of the lighter, cheerier films to the top of the list…but I didn't.

irenic \eye-REN-ik; -REE-nik\, adjective: Tending to promote peace; conciliatory.

With an irenic spirit they join the debate, at times ugly and vicious, about the historicity of the Bible (by which they mean the Hebrew Scriptures, also known as the Old Testament).
--Phyllis Trible, "God's Ghostwriters," New York Times, February 4, 2001

Indeed, for Cozzi--as for several scholars--the Interdict controversy of 1606-7 became the emblematic struggle that defined the Venetian Republic as tolerant and open, free from the tyranny of the Counter Reformation Church, animated by an aristocracy steeped in the values of civic humanism and evangelism, and committed to commerce and an irenic diplomacy.
--John Martin (Editor) and Dennis Romano (Editor), Venice Reconsidered

Taylor was always irenic by temperament and desire, and his sensitivity to others enabled him to bring together and work with people of very diverse views.
--"The Right Rev John Taylor," Times (London), February 1, 2001

Irenic comes from Greek eirenikos, from eirene, "peace."

Trivia: The name Irene (after Eirene, the Greek goddess of peace) shares the same Greek root as irenic.

from www.dictionary.com

Full reversal from Falwell as he gets with the program. (And you'll see that the NY Times has restored their requirement to sign in).

Washington Post's Victim List

Logan airport's chief of security was Governor Weld's personal driver before Weld appointed him to his current job. In addition, the President and CEO of Massport was Weld's Press Aide and Governor Cellucci's campaign manager before Cellucci appointed her to her current job. LA Times story here.

Robo-Roaches. This is real!

webArchivist.org is working with The Internet Archive in collaboration with the Library of Congress to identify and archive pages and sites related to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. You can help!

The 30 worst atrocities of the 20th century. Unusual site where the author discusses whether Mao, Stalin or Hitler was the biggest murderer in the century of murder.

minatory \MIN-uh-tor-ee\, adjective: Threatening; menacing.

... state-inspired guerrilla and terrorist campaigns; maritime blockades and minatory troop concentrations; continuous threats and boycotts, etc.
--Benny Morris, "The Core of the Conflict," New York Times, March 25, 1990

Were it not for its sturdy clarity, its lurking wit, its homely figuration, its mostly impeccable grooming and tuning, Mr. Strand's poetry might seem on the surface a mere minatory black shadow.
--"Strong Intuitions and Lurking Wit," New York Times, January 18, 1981

[H]e was often observed peeping through the bars of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike terror into their astonished minds.
--George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Minatory derives from Latin minatorius, from minari, "to threaten." It is related to menace.

from www.dictionary.com

A couple of "Christian" supporters of terrorism take this opportunity to deepen divisions in the U.S. But here Falwell attempts to backpedal a little.

Huge hi-res satellite photos of Manhattan and Pentagon, before and after.

Bay Windows article about Ride FAR.

I got permission to add Carlton's name to his account yesterday of watching the WTC from Staten Island. He tells me he is in effect trapped on Staten Island. There is still no ferry service, and it takes 3-4 hours to drive across one of the bridges.

First hand stories from average people.

Good pictures:

• The Statue of Liberty watching over the carnage.
• And again here.
• Satellite photo of lower Manhattan.
• Firefighter with American flag
• Missing.
• Unanimity at the UN Security Council!
• Memorial at Volkswagen Autostadt auto museum.
• At a chapel in Zagreb, Croatia, a family lights candles for victims of the attacks.
• Even Caesar's Palace!
• A Broward County Sheriff's Deputy looks through the window of an apartment in Hollywood, Fla., searching for information about two men suspected of participating in Tuesday's terrorist attacks. (He found two boxes of absentee ballots!)
• Access to many photos here.
• Amazing infra-red satellite photo of lower Manhattan, New York harbor and New Jersey. The fire is prominent.
• Surreal photo of dust-covered woman.

Picky word shit.
I usually let this one go, but "decimate" means to destroy one-tenth of something. A lot of media people have described the World Trade Center as "decimated." We should be so lucky.

If you haven't been able to get into the Red Cross web site to donate money, you can use Amazon's Red Cross donations page. Yahoo lists other organizations accepting donations here.

Mark Bingham, the passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania who phoned his mother to tell her he loved her, was gay, according to this article at PlanetOut and this Bay Windows article. He is described as "a former Division 1 rugby player who also played in San Francisco's gay rugby and basketball leagues" and "a large, athletic man who was once gored in the leg while running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain." He was seated in first class, which would give him better access to the cockpit than a coach seat. There's no proof yet that he was actually one of the passengers who ganged up on the hijackers, but it doesn't sound like he's the sort of guy to sit there and wait for the seatbelt light to go off before making a move. Plus, everybody knows a terrorist would collapse in panicked confusion when confronted by an angry gay American man [perhaps all angry gay American men should get free upgrades to first class for security purposes!]. Who do you think should play Mark in the movie version?

Don't know if it's a permanent change, or just a temporary fix to help relieve some of the load, but the NY Times has not required me to log in yesterday or today!

Read this:

Each man was pretty much alone with his thoughts last week, turned inward, considering things privately. The man we met for lunch was preoccupied, adjusting his life to a new set of conditions, not yet completely understood. In their offices, on the street, at home, people met and talked as they always had, but they thought separately. Everybody exchanged military opinions based on what little information there was (it was a lovely season for clich&#eacute;s and false premises), but no one was very attentive, each busy with his own need to grasp the real dimensions of what had happened, to define his own relation to it.

Actually there was an uneasy duality in most men all that week. The realization of an absolute change from yesterday was never continuous. People waking up in the morning forgot for a little while, people working at their desks forgot, people shopping, reading, going to the movies, playing with children all forgot briefly that they were at war. This happy state was always brief. There was always something to bring back the consciousness of total separation from the past, putting familiar faces and scenes into sharp, unaccustomed focus, giving the man who looked at them a sense of valuing them precisely for the first time, changing the identity of the man himself.

Any attempt to tell how people felt in New York during the first days of war necessarily has a personal basis. Our own emotions covered quite a good deal of ground. We wish we could say that we looked forward to being bombed with the calm fatalism recommended by our London friends, but we didn't. Logic (and the military experts) told us there was no appreciable danger, but the peril was too far outside our experience-something that might come in from the sea without warning, very high and nearly silent, as impersonal as lightning. The wail of the sirens coming up thinly from the street, the controlled voice on the radio telling of destruction already conceivably on its way, even the drumming of our own planes patrolling the threatened city-none of these sounds was particularly reassuring. We weren't exactly afraid, but unlike one nerveless hero we met, we weren't exactly bored, either.

On the other hand, there was a good deal more to be proud of: the President's magnificent speech on Tuesday night and the quick answer to it by a suddenly united nation; the brave men who died in the Pacific; the acceptance of the first bad news by everyone, without any illusions about its importance, but equally without discouragement or fear; the sense of civilian obligation, slow in coming but universal at last; the promise that boundless production was finally under way and not to be stopped until its certain purpose was accomplished. We felt some pride and confidence because of all these things.

There's a Secret Service office just a few doors down from the office where I work. These guys like to wear vests at work — either the kind pushed by Old Navy, or the "Safari" vests that Banana Republic used to sell years ago when their stores still had a jungle motif (was that before Gap bought them?). The trouble is, these Secret Service agents are all too big and old to be wearing Old Navy vests as fashion statements, and they're all too young to have bought Safari vests. In the last couple of days these vests have become much bulkier, and the agents insist on being the last person to board an elevator car. If anyone knows the self-defense reason for that, please let me know.

"All tasks of 1955 we will fulfill with honor"

Wardell Pomeroy, Kinsey Institute researcher, author of Boys and Sex (out of print, ISBN 0440907535) which is number 61 on the list of banned books in the 1990s, and co-author (with Kinsey) of the landmark work Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, died September 6 in Bloomington, Indiana. NY Times obituary here.

Like Everest, it was there and we conquered it. For the first time, a large body of sex information was gathered, so monumental and so comprehensive that it has not even been approached.

Got this from my friend Carlton who is still living in New York City:

Thanks for asking. Yesterday, I wanted to go downtown for an interview and job fair---NOT!. I'm doing fine now but quite upsetting yesterday.It's been hard to call out long distance and phones are still somewhat out of whack.

It was shocking to actually see those towers collapse like that. I was on my way to take ferry and people were standing around watching the tops of those towers on smoke and fire..Then when we saw them collapse we all just hugged each other and folks were crying....unbelievable! It was a scary sight to see---like the end of the world or something.

Now it's very strange looking from SI across the river and not seeing any towers and last night was particularly eery to watch...All there where was smoke, ambulances and a huge spatial void like seeing something out of a sci-fi special effects movie. Seeing New York without those towers will be weird.

Believe me, architects are planning ideas for a building replacement, a memorial sculpture/monument or a park to some type for that area. We will get through this as time moves on, though it is strange of how something like this can slip through our "strong" security and intelligence sytems.

September 11, 2001 For those of you too young to recall where you were on the day JFK was shot, THIS is what it was like…but this is far worse. "An Albanian girl lights a candle as a gesture for the victims of terrorist attacks against U.S. targets, in the capital Tirana, September 11, 2001. The banner on the back reads 'In homage to the American people'." I ask my friends in the NYC and Washington areas to let me know how you are.