BuzzMachine

Now comes word that the terrorists are targeting bridges in California. I never did like bridges — vertigo, you know — and now I really fear them. Never did like tall buildings and now I really fear them. I now fear tunnels, too. I was thinking of moving to nice, flat Kansas but that reminded me of “North by Nothwest” and the crop duster. Where to go? I’m thinking Yellowknife, Northwest Territories — and I won’t give my forwarding address. I now fear mail, too.

Not a religious war? Not according to Bin Laden, who’s targeting Christians.

Nick Denton is finally back blogging at Blogorama with a report from North Africa.

Alert Doonsbury! Geraldo Rivera is moving from CNBC to Fox to be a war correspondent. Perfect! Via Romenesko.

– Frightening stuff deep in a Washington Post anthrax story, making it clearer to me that this is a well-funded, well-researched (read: foreign) attack and that the danger is bigger than we yet know:

“Indeed, the closer scientists look at the spores that have traveled through the mail, the more impressed and concerned they have become…. ‘We didn’t think that anybody could come up with the appropriate coatings for anthrax spores to make them float through the air with the greatest of ease,’ [senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control Alan] Zelicoff said, adding that exposing 28 people with a single opened envelope ‘is no mean trick.’ And C.J. Peters, director of the Center for Biodefense at the University of Texas at Galveston, said that someone who has learned to produce two grams of anthrax spores milled to one to five microns — as was true of the spores mailed to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) — could just as easily produce two kilograms of the stuff. He sees the potential for a grander terror. ‘With two grams of finely milled anthrax,’ Peters said, ‘if you can disseminate it in a closed system like a subway or building, you could infect hundreds of thousands of people.’ ”

– And doctors are scared. Also from the Post: ” ‘Once you suspect anthrax, you have no time to think,’ said Carlos Omenaca, a Miami specialist who treated Ernesto Blanco in Florida, the second case. ‘You first treat and then think.’ ”

– NY tests air in subways.

– Bin Laden’s kidney stones.

– Gotta love them Texans: The “harshest right-wing station” in Texas (yow, that’s frightening) is raising money not to feed Afghan children but to buy a bomb! [Via Romenesko]

– I’m fascinated by stories about what’s left standing below Ground Zero (perhaps because that’s the part of the WTC I saw every day). Here’s the narrative from Dan Rather‘s 60 Minutes II report from down there tonight.

– Osama to his cultists: Fire at will.

– Waiting until spring for the big attack?

– Star-Ledger: Government “backed away from their insistence that the general public is not at risk.”

– Our buddy Blair: “I am completely confident we will get the mass murderer Osama bin Laden, of that I have absolutely no doubt.”

– A tip of the Former Pacifist baseball cap to Matt Welch for baiting me to make the charitable calculation below.

Matt Welch throws out a challenge to react to Geov Parrish’s assertion that the amount of money being contributed to the families of the heroes and victims of 9/11 is “obscene — they don’t need any more.” I’ve actually been meaning to do the math. Correct me if I’m wrong (there’s a reason I’m a writer, not an MBA) but if you take $1 billion — which is what the total should be if the Red Cross were not misappropriating funds and contributors’ good intentions by funneling money to buying new phones for themselves — and divide that total by 5,000 — the still-accepted number of deaths — you get $200,000 per family. Obscene? Only to an unemployed Afghan, perhaps. That would not pay for one college education. That would not compensate for one year’s income — let alone a long career ahead — for the young and talented victims of this mass murder. Double it or say I’m off a zero and it’s $2 million; still nothing compared to a life. Parrish, whoever you are: Sod off.You give your money to whatever hackneyed cause you want. I will give mine where I give it every year and I will now give it here.

I’ve also been wondering: Will the families of the victims of the anthrax attacks receive any of this generosity? I vote yes.

– Telegraph: We prepared for a full invasion.

– British Muslims who fight vs. Britain face charges of treason.

– And I thought Nixon’s enemies list was bad; here’s the Taliban’s hit list.

– OK, let’s stop with the columnists telling us all just to calm down about this anthrax “scare” because only a relatively few people have died — there is no such thing as only a “few!” Now one poor person who hasn nothing to do with the post office in New Jersey has it. And one poor person with no apparent connection in New York has it. This is a biowar attack on us!

– Howard Stern said that what shook him about Ashcroft’s omnibus warning was that Ashcroft looked shaken.

– As Churchill said…

– War criminal re war criminal: Milosevic.

– U.S. warns Afghanis “not to confuse food parcels with cluster bombs.”

– Star-Ledger: Since 9/11, “cigarette sales are up. Weight- loss centers say business is down. Liquor stores say business is up, and addiction-counseling groups have seen an increased demand for alcohol and drug treatment services.”

– Bush loses weight.

– Unspecified panic and terror: On the one hand, I suppose I’m glad the FBI keeps trying to keep us informed. But I wish somebody would tell me what I’m supposed to do when they issue a nonspecific warning of impending terror attacks. Distrust all strangers? Stay at home? Move to Canada? (Anybody know a good real estate agent in Toronto?) Help!

– But now EVERYONE will have cause to panic: A civilian (not a mail worker, not a government worker, not a media worker, not a defense worker, just a plain old worker) gets anthrax.

– Howard Kurtz on impatience with the war, already: “Call it the miniseries mentality: Shouldn’t this show be over by now? Why, the Gulf War ended in a mere 100 hours.”

– Turncoat Brit bozo.

– More Brits wigging out: fearing nukes.

– Sensible Brit says celebs are meaningless.

– Very sensible Brit Tony Blair asks Britain to “hold its nerve.”

– More eloquent Blair: “We should never forget why we are doing this. Never forget how we felt watching those planes flying into the trade towers….î

– Question: “Is it better for bin Laden to be dead or be captured?” Tony Blair’s answer: “I think it is better that he be stopped.”

– Sensible British idea: requiring immigrants to carry photo ID.

– Debka: 1 million Russians ready for war.

– Terrorist how-to.

– Seinfeld tainted mail episode pulled.

– CNN tonight: “What is it about New Jersey?”

If you can’t go to the Here Is New York Gallery in Manhattan, you can now see this amazing collection of 1,000 photos online (and buy them soon): HereIsNewYork.org.

– A fine and right-on Ken Layne rant: “I am tired of the pro-war/anti-war arguments. This is a war, and we are in it. This is a war declared by bin Laden, on the teevee for everyone to see. The fires are still burning in Manhattan. Going to the mailbox has turned into a nightmare…. It is time to deal with how this war is being fought.” Give this man a T-shirt!

– Iraq is sabre-rattling. Rumsfeld rattles his sabre back. But Britain’s Straw keeps his sabre at his side.

– A well-read reader points out this link from anthrax to Iraq: the chemical additive bentonite, which only Iraq uses. Told ya. (Thanks, Clyde.)

– I’m already getting spam offering me anthrax-zappers. All that and a bigger package, too.

– America’s economy contracts anthrax.

– Arthur C. Clarke suggests compulsory psychiatric tests to find the terrorists. Trumps the national ID card.