Homeland security, Israeli style
: A woman shopping in an Israeli grocery store shot a terrorist suicide bomber, averting disaster. From the Jerusalem Post:
At least one small explosion did take place, leaving one customer lightly wounded but causing no casualties, said Jerusalem Post reporter Margot Dudkevitch. Nails from one of the explosions littered the floor. Further tragedy was averted when a woman shopping in the packed supermarket apparently saw the terrorist trying to set off a second explosion and shot him twice in the head from close range.
Instapundit: Please don’t use this as another justification for gun-love. This is Israel.
Sticks ‘n’ stones
: The NY Times reports today on the new and redefined words and phrases that are front and center in our collective vocabulary after 9.11 — “9.11” itself taking on a momentous new meaning. From the American Dialect Society comes a long list:
: 9/11 in all its forms
: ground zero
: burka, burka blue, women of cover
: theoterrorism (hadn’t heard that one but I like it)
: weaponize and weapons-grade
: homeland security
: debris surge, debris storm (I called it just The Cloud)
: shuicide bomber (a tasteless Leno)
: “so September 10”
: “Let’s roll!”
I would add:
: anthraxophobia
: jihad as an all-purpose adjective
: bin as an all-purpose prefix
: I know other bloggers would add Islamofascist and anti-idiotarian (not yet in common usage, I’d say)
: I hope my coinage, “he decade,” catches on
What else? Send nominees here.
After
: Here are, as Little Green Footballs aptly put it, the heartbreaking satellite images of the World Trade Center before and after. Credit: spaceimaging.com. [via Den Beste]
Speed
: The NY Times reveals more frightening data about the flights that hit the World Trade Center. The second jet, which hit the south tower, was traveling faster than the first jet and that is the latest theory on why that tower fell first even thought it was hit later (my unscientific opinion is also that the second jet hit lower and so there was greater weight atop the melting steel beams).
In any case, the statistics are harrowing. That second jet, the United plane, was traveling at an estimated 586 mps, 100 mph faster than the first jet. The Times says it “was moving so fast that it was at risk of breaking up in midair as it made a final turn toward the south tower, traveling at a speed far exceeding the 767-200 design limit for that altitude, a Boeing official said. ‘These guys exceeded even the emergency dive speed,’ said Liz Verdier, a Boeing spokeswoman. ‘It’s off the chart.’ ”
I have nightmares not just about what did happen that day but what could have happened.If these people had missed their target and slammed into the ground, the spread of damage would have been huge, the carnage even worse. If the Tower had toppled even sooner or in a different direction, more would have died. At the speed at which these evil lunatics were traveling, this and more could have happened. And so many millions of close calls (mine included) would not have been close calls.
A memorial
: It appears there may be an agreement on a temporary memorial to New York’s 9.11 victims. Says the NY Post:
temporary memorial park honoring the victims of Sept. 11 may include a glass structure etched with the names of everyone who perished, sources said yesterday.
Sources said the idea, still in the early stages, calls for a glass box or a small dome that would fit over sculptor Fritz Koenig’s “Sphere” – a massive bronze artwork recovered from the World Trade Center site.
The glass could be etched with the names of all the nearly 3,000 trade center victims.
The favored location is a small, triangular park known as “teardrop park” on Murray Street in Battery Park City, the sources said.
The idea surfaced as a separate proposal, a month-long “Towers of Light” tribute sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society, has made progress – but still hasn’t gotten City Hall approval.
I think this is a fitting beginning.
Blog wisdom
: Many have wisely linked to the National Post story on blogging quoting the wise Ken Layne. I want to quote him here too just because I agree with him so damned much, having learned the lesson about personality when I wrote newspaper and magazine columns and now that I am relearning it in blogging:
Layne hopes more newspaper columnists might learn something from bloggers’ attitudes. “U.S. papers are so damned dry,” he said. “I mean, who picks up the paper and says, ‘I wonder what the Pentagon reporter has to say this morning.’ The good bloggers are not much different from old-time newspaper columnists. They have a style, they have a personal connection with readers, they don’t seem like factory-made op-ed writers. Maybe newspapers will inject some of this first- person style into the news columns. What I hope news sites learn from blogs is that personality matters.”
: And, by the way, I forgot to congratulate Layne et al for being blog-cloned on Fox News, which is also wise to take notice of the power of blogs.
Lassie would be proud
: A British animal org is awarding two guidedogs who led their owners to safety on 9.11 a special medal.
