9-11 tributes

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Yahoo! on 9/11 2002Several sites across the ‘net are altering their front pages as a tribute to the 9-11 attacks. Some aren’t bad, some seem to be pretty ridiculous (to me, at least).

Of the ones I’ve seen so far, Yahoo‘s seems the silliest. Essentially the same old Yahoo! as ever — just all in greyscale. I kind of prefer the approach that other sites have taken (such as Excite, who set their main page to a simple black background, a rememberance message, and links to enter the content area). This just gives me the feeling that while Yahoo figured they had to do something, they sure as heck weren’t going to hide their content — why, some poor soul might actually get distracted by thinking about actual issues and miss out on some ads!

Then again, maybe I’m just too cynical.

(via MeFi)

The Height of Ambition

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There’s an incredible article at the New York Times Magazine giving a great history of the World Trade Center, from its politically-charged beginnings to the architectural choices that both kept the towers standing as long as they did after the impact of the planes and contributed to their eventual collapse. Just be sure to set aside some time — I just spent the past hour reading this.

When the north tower, the first to go up, was finally topped out on Dec. 23, 1970, it was foggy, and no one could see the view. But James Endler, the West Point grad and construction contractor who oversaw the entire job for the Port Authority, made a point of showing up at a celebration for the workers held on one of the skeletal upper floors — the first open-air party ever to take place 1,300 feet above the street. There was a band, soda and sandwiches. But when the band played the Mexican hat dance, the construction workers started stomping in unison, and Endler — standing next to Jack Kyle, the Port Authority’s chief engineer — began to feel odd vibrations in the structure. The floor did not seem steady. After all the wind-tunnel tests, the computer calculations, the structural innovations, had something been missed? Had the thousands upon thousands of steel parts been fitted together incorrectly?

”Jack, how do we stop that vibration?” Endler asked.

Kyle turned to him, expressionless. ”Don’t play that song anymore,” he advised.

(via MeFi)

Font tweaks and hiding links

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Just on the off chance that anyone visits my site tonight (the evening of Sep. 9th, possibly into the morning of Sep. 10th), no, the site normally doesn’t look quite this wonky. I’m working on adjusting my font stylesheet to be a bit more what I’ve got in mind — but things may be a bit odd in the meantime.

Deal with it.

;)

Update: All done now — now things look the way I wanted them to. And, of course, I’m playing with a few more tricks…

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So long, Webloggers

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Well, it’s official — the Webloggers Webring is dead. Not a big surprise, really (some sort of crash had wiped out the linking system a few months ago, and it had been in limbo as to whether or not it could be recovered), but still something of a shame. Better remove those links from the sidebar….

Kung-tunes is back!

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I took a little time last night to get Kung-Tunes back up and running again — as before, there’s now a ‘Music of the Moment’ box displaying whatever .mp3 I’m listening to, updated every 30 seconds so that it’s always current.

Technical details follow…

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What kind of God…?

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Thinking about the upcoming one year anniversary of Sept. 11th, Dave had this to say:

A common theme — what kind of God lets this happen. I answer that with another question. What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn’t see that 9-11 was [the] tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective. What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS? They wonder at the spiritual vision of a person who jumps from the World Trade Center to certain death, but don’t wonder about the millions of people who do the same thing with tobacco? It’s out of balance. We’re out of balance. 9-11 was, IMHO, a small upheaval in getting to some kind of equilibrium in how the U.S. participates in the world, both from the U.S. perspective, and the world’s perspective. That we got so much sympathy says how big the human heart is. That there wasn’t more celebrating in the streets of world capitals says that they forgive us for our selfish attitude, which is back in force as if 9-11 never happened.

So what was the lesson of 9-11 that the U.S. has failed to learn? I think it’s that God doesn’t think we’re as important as we do. The concept of national security is obsolete. We can’t close our borders. We live on this planet with everyone else. Global warming, AIDS, terrorism, all penetrate all borders. New York is a world city. The last gasps of isolationism will be snuffed out by more humiliation, until we get the truth, we aren’t above the rest of the world, but we are part of it.

Amen.

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Don’t hold back!

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the Universe. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do…we were born to make manifest the Universe that is within us. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

— Marianne Williamson, Return to Love (via Unamerican)

Yahoo! editorializing

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Yahoo! editorializingHere’s an interesting little piece of editorializing on Yahoo! — a picture of Ground Zero in New York captioned “Recovery and debris removal work continues at the site of the World Trade Center known as ‘ground zero’ in New York, March 25, 2002. Human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. ‘war on terror’ since September 11.”

I went ahead and grabbed a screen capure of the page, since I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it gets re-edited sometime soon. It may have been just an editorial mistake, as pointed out in the MeFi thread…even so, it’s certainly an interesting editorial gaffe.

Ascii-pr0n!

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Deep ASCIIOkay, sure, so I’ll freely admit that i’ve been curious about seeing Deep Throat for a long time. Somehow, I never thought that my first chance would be through the magic of ASCII animation! Curiously engrossing, I’ve got to admit.

Also of note: asciipr0n.com, a collection of ASCII-generated pinups, nudes, and artwork. I remember being at mom’s office years and years ago, discovering, and printing out some of these on the office computer system — it gave me no end of amusement, though I’m not sure what either she or her coworkers thought of me stumbling across them…!

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Rights we used to have

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Overview of Changes to Legal Rights

By The Associated Press | September 5, 2002, 11:44 AM EDT

Some of the fundamental changes to Americans’ legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:

  • FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.
  • FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
  • FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
  • RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
  • FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
  • RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
  • RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

— Newsday, via Wil