I am me
: I don’ t why this amuses me — I sometimes don’t know why things do — but I chuckled at Tim Blair‘s author bio at the bottom of his piece in The Australian defending his homeland against an American assault: “Tim Blair is editor of timblair.blogspot.com.” Who needs editors?
Where were you in the war, Daddy?
: So now I understand what Photoshop Tennis is, now that I see More Than Zero(MTZ_ and Mind Over What Matters (MOWM) place themselves on a 9.11 aerial view. I’ve joined in: I was between WTC 1 and 5, then across the street, then along Broadway, then at Liberty when WTC 2 came down.
: I just added Live from WTC (WFWTC)‘s location.
Alert R Us
: Life in New York on High Alert Day (formerly Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday)… Three people can’t get to a meeting on time this morning because they closed the Lincoln Tunnel, just like the old days of five months ago…. I’m riding the PATH train back from New York (not enjoying being in a tunnel under water on this fine holiday) when we are detoured around a station because of “police action” there. As the announcement is made, everyone on the train looks at each other: wide-eyed eye contact all around, not reflecting irritation (as before 9.11) or panic (as shortly after 9.11) but worry, clearly worry. A reminder.
Ted opens his mouth
: As an unwilling stockholder in AOL (oh, how I wish I’d gotten rid of my Time Warner before the damned AOL merger), I regret that they’ve rehired Ted Turner, who made the mistake of opening his yap today:
“The reason that the World Trade Center got hit is because there are a lot of people living in abject poverty out there who don’t have any hope for a better life,” he said.
He said the attacks were an act of desperation, and that Americans lack an understanding of a willingness to die for one’s country.
“I think they were brave at the very least,” Turner said of the 19 airliner hijackers believed to have committed the attacks, adding that they “might have been a little nuts.”
The World Bridge
: I posted this on my 9.11 memorial blog as well but I like the idea so much I’m posting it here, too:
The more I hear about the proposed 9.11 memorial building a bridge for people across the Hudson River, the more I like it. The Jersey Journal in Jersey City has a feature on the plan:
“This is a place for people to go to, not just to go through,” said [architect Eytan] Kaufman, whose company has mostly redeveloped commercial buildings for residential use.
The World Bridge would be a completely people-oriented tourist attraction and no cars would be allowed to rumble through any of its six to eight floors. With a promenade, restaurants, shops and hotel accommodations, the 6 million-square-foot bridge would offer everything found on a New York City block – except it would span the Hudson River. Kaufman also proposes creating a public park for recreation and leisure.
“Its scale would be like the scale of the disaster,” said Kaufman, who drafted the proposal for his own benefit before he learned of the exhibit.
Futuristic in structure and function, the bridge would also help eliminate what Kaufman perceives as long-time disparities between New York and New Jersey.
“You tend to think of New York as the dominant partner,” he said, citing shared ventures between the two states such as the Port Authority. He also pointed out that many Sept. 11 victims were from New Jersey.
“I realized how good it might be for two financial centers, one already made and one in the making; this bridge would physically connect these two centers,” said Kaufman. “It would be a stronger symbol of the two states than a tower in Manhattan.”…
“I feel the towers sent a different signal before, a signal of dominance and a signal of power,” he said. “It looks to me now more important to recognize the other part of the world.”…
[Kaufman] envisions a bridge that would be some 250 feet above the water, just a little higher than the George Washington Bridge, so it wouldn’t affect shipping traffic.
