The net is at a standstill in some parts of the country, thanks to a new web server/email hybrid virus. I wonder if it's an act of cyberterrorism (well, all viruses are, though people don't useually mean them to be so debilitating, because what does a 16-year-old know of the difference between terror and mischief?)

Just thought I'd mention it, is all.

PS: Looks like I might get out of here on time today.

I got forwarded a column today, a column that's been making the rounds. It touched a bit inside me that hasn't been tapped amidst myself and my friends keeping composure, analyzing instead of feeling, scouring news sites to forestall the inevitable moment when we have to face ourselves, our fears, our anger.

I don't expect that everyone will feel the same way about the linked column, but I'm interested to know: what does it touch in you?

Trying times like these bring out the best and worst in people. I'm lucky enough to work for a company that, in this last week, has played a humanitarian role, acting as a rallying point for donations (Firefighter and Red Cross donations), a center for news and discussion (News and groups), and a means of communicating with loved ones when telephones have gone out (Yahoo! Mail and Messenger).

Working 'for the people' means that the entire company has a feeling of compassion about the news and the country, and it shows through all levels inside and out. What's been so appalling to me is that so many of my friends working for other companies have not been so lucky. On Tuesday and through the rest of the week, so many people felt helpless, needing to gain control in some aspect of their lives, that they used their role as manager to 'tighten the ship,' berating or otherwise slighting employees who let last week's events affect their work through reading more news, or staying home Tuesday.

Many managers and bosses just don't know how to cope, and this is the response. I've heard from friends who have been issued ultimatums last week to not read news sites at all while at work, to discontinue telecommuting practices altogether, to not discuss the WTC tragedy in the workplace, or otherwise let it affect either the organization's bottom line or the illusion that a corporate entity stands apart from the people who are its foundation.

A prime example comes from Palm Beach Florida, where on Friday NCCI Holdings told its employees that "displays of nationalism had no place in the office", ordering employees to take down flags and other national symbols, allegedly sending one woman home for refusing to remove a small flag from her desk.

I'd like to read your thoughts and experiences here, be you an employee or employer. It just stuns me that some of us have become so anesthetized to drama that we can't see the difference between talking about last night's West Wing episode at the water cooler and keeping tabs on events that have affected the stability and freedoms in this country...

An article at Fox News brings up a good point of how to think globally by acting locally: Buy something. Anything.

Red Cross donations are great (and boy have donations been rolling in, with $11 million and $6 million (as of this moment) raised via Yahoo! and Amazon, respectively), but the the economy has also been injured, as signified by 12,000 Continental Airlines layoffs, with more to come soon in other industries.

In an effort to shore up my own psyche, I did a little medicinal shopping at IKEA yesterday to the tune of $520. If there's something you've been needing or thinking about getting for a while, now is probably the best time (for the country) for you to get it...

Just a thought: Why is it that everyone (well, 93% of the US population) is jumping on the war bandwagon after this attack, but there was little or no move for massive retaliation after the 1993 WTC bombing?

If that bomb had succeeded it would have resulted in roughly 60,000 fatalities (the number of people in both towers on a given weekday afternoon), yet we didn't have a huge upheaval of the political landscape on a global scale, just because someone underestimated the strength of the building's foundation?

In any other war I can think of, the reaction has been tied to both the size of the invading force and the number of casualties. In a terrorism model, the invading force is so small, and the casualties so high, that we don't know how to treat it.

$40 billion to wage a war that is in any way akin to a 'conventional attack' would likely be missing the point, end up killing countless Afghan citizens who are not part of the extremist movement, and would likely give rise to countless more dissatisfied Islamic people willing to join the extremist movement, in whatever country they happen to live.

There's a fascinating article from US News, written in January, describing how cells form, disperse, and rebuild to avoid elimination. This kind of article exemplifies how attacking a geographic region will do little but call others to join extremist movements, letting other cells grow.

It's a different kind of problem. It's a war against terrorism that we've already been fighting for decades. Of course, with terrorism, stopping the attack 90% of the time isn't good enough, and it's the kind of game where the CIA, NSA, and FBI can't gloat about their successes. We only see the failures.

Obviously we can't do nothing, or have it appear that we're doing nothing, but even so, I believe that changing the way we fight the war won't work either, we just need to fight the way we are fighting better, and use this tragedy as a worldwide poster-child to help us commit other nations to a 'with us or against us' position, effectively allowing us to fight that war with better resources in more cooperative environments.

To write any more would probably be rambling (too late?) but I welcome your response, vehement though I fully expect it to be.

I was watching TV this morning and I realized I still had some unwatched shows in my TiVo from Sunday and Monday (all the shows it recorded after that were, unbeknownst to my TiVo, actually continuing news coverage).

I sat down and watched Futurama, the Simpsons, and Angel, prizing each (and especially the newsbreaks during the commercials) as little gems of nostalgia, reminders of 'the way things were' just five long days ago.

I don't want to delete them.

So classes started up at Berkeley again a few weeks ago, and it reminds me of when I first came here, starting my freshman year in 1991.

Life was so different living in the dorms than it was back at home. I had people who were quickly becoming friends all around me all the time. One think I specifically remember was the change in world view. I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone, but while living at home with my mom, we both kept up closely with current events, local and global. Every week the LA Times would have a quiz about the week's news, and we would each take it, competing on who's been keeping up to date. Keep in mind that there was no 'net so this all our info was gleaned from newspapers and TV.

Anyhow, back at Berkeley, I'd been there no more than a week or so when the Soviet Union quickly and irrevocably self-destructed into its component parts. I had no TV in my dorm room, and I didn't subscribe to the paper, and though I realized the earth-shattering magnitude of these events, my knowledge and awareness of them was primarily gleaned by looking at the headlines of the newspapers in the coin-op dispensers on the way to the dining commons each morning.

I was aware of the impact, but without the data-inroads into my everyday life, I wasn't as 'in touch' with them, and was a far more distant observer.

Today, I practically live on the 'net. Working for a web company, being active in the weblogging community, and having as many 'virtual friends' as local ones, any issue that takes over the net also takes over a corresponding portion of my brain. I started this post wondering if this year's freshmen, 10 years removed from my own experience, have that same detachment, but in writing I realized that the net has tied them into the loop as well, bringing every news tremor to their dorm room with stunning speed and detail.

But what about those people who don't live in this 'wider, closer world'? Another post to follow on that topic soon.

As for now, I have so many conflicting emotions and opinions on where we should go from here and what this means for the way we and the rest of the world will live our lives. I've been a little reluctant to post these opinions in recent days because suddenly this blog has been thrust into a larger audience.

Where before my readership has been a cozy group of around 400-600 people who have been reading for a while and either know me personally or know what I'm about through having read the blog for a while, one post I wrote debunking the Nostradamus meme has garnered over 75,000 visits to the site. Suddenly I'm not writing to a group of friends; I'm standing on a soapbox. And while I feel comfortable expressing views to people who know my personal context, speaking out to a larger group of strangers opens me up to a much wider spectrum of response, including a great deal of reactionary, uninformed criticism, as well as touching sentiment, as you may have noticed by some of the comments to fly through here recently.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I value you more than I did a week ago; a lot more. Opening the door to a flood of strangers has only thrown the differences between people who read my site and the public at large into sharp contrast, and I feel warmer and fuzzier for having you as readers.

Anyhow, now that the soapbox is beginning to sink down again, (as, surely, is your patience for this long-winded, self-serving sentimental post) I'm feeling more free to discuss my own feelings about the week's events, and (thank god) things that have nothing to do with them.

Take care all. I hope you're all starting to regain your own inner peace...

I agree with David first comment on the previous post. The cathartic response is to use this tightly wound and capable military spring we have and unleash due vengeance.

The reality is that the number of people responsible, or members of the group(s) responsible for this attack almost surely is smaller than the deathtoll thus far, and so as long as we remain a just nation that doesn't believe in the collateral deaths of innocents, we'll likely never get that catharsis.

The more likely way the government will help us find peace (inner peace, that is. The irony is heavy on my heart) is to declare a 'War on Terrorism.' Like the 'War on Drugs' or the 'War on Communism' declaring a war on a principle is a way to keep momentum going even when the target might frequently change. It's a sad justification, as sad as declaring that 'Freedom was attacked today' instead of a people, city, or country, but in lieu of a foreign nation standing up to be toppled over, it's what the people will demand, because I get the feeling that for most Americans, you can't kill a handful of people dead enough to make up for the death and destruction they've already visited upon us.

Is it just me, or is anyone else feeling sharply conflicting emotions within themselves? I am on several levels, the most simple being: The desire to turn into tangible action this fury so many of us feel, and the logical conclusion that opposite sides always disagree on the starting point of a tit-for-tat feud, ensuring that it will go on in perpetuity, always justifiable in the attacker's eyes, whosever turn it is.

It's Thursday morning. Two days have now passed since the world changed, yet the progression from one day to another doesn't seem as granular as it did before. Now it just seems like a steady stream that I just sometimes happen to be awake for or happen to be asleep during.

These pictures of international commiseration are just amazing, all the more so for the knowledge that they're just a smattering representation of the emotion through the world. (original overloaded source)

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Blar. One's down, the other full of broken links now. Anyone have a better link to comisseration pics from around the world? Post it in the comments!

Thanks.

When I was ten years old, I saw a made-for-TV movie, The Day After, a story about the before, during, and after events of a nuclear war, told from the perspective of a small Missouri town.

Seeing that movie, and the graphic images of instant death, both of people and of culture, terrified me. This was in 1983, at the time Reagan was still in a face-off with Russia, feeling out Andropov, so soon after Brezhnev died, and we were all on edge about full scale nuclear war.

Being in 5th grade, I was terrified. What I did know came from TV and movies, and movies like Wargames taught me that if a nuclear war did come, we the people wouldn't know until we saw the flash, glowed, and disappeared in a flying firestorm.

I started to worry whenever I heard a plane go overhead. Our home was in the landing path for the Burbank airport, and whenever I'd hear the roar of the jets in the sky, I'd hold my breath and stay still, praying that it would pass overhead, and that it wasn't Soviet-launched destruction from half a world away.

I was literally incapacitated for months, with these feelings going through me several times a day, never weakening. I wondered if I'd ever feel at peace again, and I was sad that ten years old is a young age to lose your idealism.

Then one Saturday morning, after months of this prolonged terror, I had a realization: Nuclear warheads don't have engines, and they travel faster than the speed of sound when they're approaching their target. I wouldn't hear it coming, and I probably couldn't see it coming either. In a rare feat of logic overcoming emotional response, my fear was instantly gone. Thereafter, whenever I heard a plane I knew that it was a good plane full of friendly people, and didn't portend anything more than people moving safely from place to place. I was still worried about the threat of war, but now I could be worried in a more abstract way, and the adrenaline-fear didn't return because there wasn't a trigger to set it off.

...

I haven't thought about this in years, but as I was getting ready to go to sleep last night I thought I should take advantage of the no-fly order and look out my windows, from which I have a view of the landing pattern of both the Oakland and San Francisco airports, as this would likely be the only time I'd see a completely clear sky.

Off in the distance, I saw a flashing light, moving slowly across the sky, and it was a little jarring. Of course logically I knew that it must be a military aircraft, or at least one cleared to fly, but at the same time I wondered, when I'm back at work today, sandwiched between the flight path of commercial jets leaving from San Jose International, and the Moffett Air Force Base, what feelings will the scream of jet engines stir in me now?