Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Richard Posner: “The narrative points to something different, banal and deeply disturbing: that it is almost impossible to take effective action to prevent something that hasn't occurred previously. Once the 9/11 attacks did occur, measures were taken that have reduced the likelihood of a recurrence. But before the attacks, it was psychologically and politically impossible to take those measures. The government knew that Al Qaeda had attacked United States facilities and would do so again. But the idea that it would do so by infiltrating operatives into this country to learn to fly commercial aircraft and then crash such aircraft into buildings was so grotesque that anyone who had proposed that we take costly measures to prevent such an event would have been considered a candidate for commitment.”

Posner argues the report, which I have not yet read, is excellent in terms of quality of writing, is very flawed in its analysis and recommendations. It criticizes Presidents Clinton and Bush for “narrow and unimaginative menu of options for action” when Posner writes that instead “[t]he options considered were varied and imaginative” but not feasible. He then lists recommendations that the narrative section of the report implied would be made—there is a risk that they could be read as Posner's recommendations, which is not necessarily true (except the biometric passport recommendation)—compared to the recommendations actually made. The main argument Posner is making, though, is that the commission, much like American culture, is predisposed to ascribing the success of a surprise attack to structural problems rather than the fact that the attack was, by definition, inconceivable, or, in Nassim Taleb's words, a black swan. Americans have been successful in planning for an attack similar to Sept. 11th, but the problem is that the next major attack will be nothing like what they have planned for.

Walter Laquer has written an article on the future of terrorism and argues, among many things, that the connection between poverty and terrorism is a weak one if it exist at all. This is a blow to the left's assertion that poverty is the root cause, or is a root cause, but Laquer is more nuanced in his arguments, and has little patience for right-wing assertions that fighting terrorism can be fought with traditional war methods. Other points Laquer argues: he suggests that proportional responses to terrorism—especially in what he chillingly believes is the inevitable use of weapons of mass destruction by a very small, tightly knit and very much invisible (so below-the-radar that they may be impossible to defend against) group of fanatics—because war is usually unpopular outside the borders of the country going to war; Pakistan is a potential powderkeg that President Musharraf has little hopes of controlling; resentment in European Islamic population, especially the young, both despite and because of “alcohol, loose morals, general decadence, and all the other wickedness of the society facing them”, governments abiding by the Geneva convention and other aspects of international law do so foolishly because terrorists almost by definition do not play by the established rules; and democracies may have to engage in propaganda campaigns—even if it means outright lying—to convince societies that believe that Sept. 11th was the work of the Israeli intelligence agency.

Duncan Watts on Toyota's recovery after a key factory burned to the ground: “Within three days, production of the critical valves was in full swing, and within a week, production levels had regained their pre-disaster levels. The kind of coordination this activity required had not been consciously designed, nor could it have been developed in the drastically short time frame required. The surprising fact was that it was already there, lying dormant in the network of informal relations that had been built up between the firms through years of cooperation and information sharing over routine problem-solving tasks. No one could have predicted precisely how this network would come in handy for this particular problem, but they didn't need to—by giving individual workers fast access to information and resources as they discovered their need for them, the network did its job anyway.”

A little later there is an interesting paragraph about workers of a trading firm in New York City just after Sept. 11th, who gathered to determine the passwords of their colleagues who had perished, because those passwords held the key to the remotely-stored data that the company needed access to. It's a case where insecure passwords—or at least passwords were based on something that, collectively, a group of friends or colleagues (or, more likely, both) could guess if the survival of an organization—and indirectly that collective—are at stake.

The Watts article, especially the password anecdote, is a good example of what James Surowiecki called the wisdom of crowds, although from the password example does not say whether the employees were independent and diverse, but they clearly based their guesses on public and private information.

• Andy “Hankering after things that are out of reach only makes you dissatisfied, so after a while you build a high wall so that you can’t see them any more and that way you don’t get so dissatisfied. You don’t notice the rut, because everyone living your side of the wall has their own rut.” I wrote something similar the other night, something about intimidation. But...
• ..Betsy Devine says it's not a good idea to blog about your personal crap if you're name is #1 in a search for your name, or if you link to your personal crap from a site that is #1 for your name.
• Michael Kimmelman thinks that elitists should be in charge of a Sept. 11th memorial. The argument isn't very well-written, but the most of the controversial art—controversial because it challenged the contemporary regime in such a way that made that art long-lasting—were either commissioned or done one one's own dime without it being put to a vote. Any corrections or elaborations on this broad generalization of art history are welcome.
• Aaron Friedman thinks that car alarms are seriously annoying (I would have gone with "fucking annoying", but it's a family newspaper). There's one that goes off near my apartment complex, and it only goes off around 2 AM or so. I actually considered posting an angry note, but that just escalates the anger of all involved: “False alarms enrage otherwise lawful citizens, and alienate the very people car owners depend on to call the police.”

Not a whole lot this time.

Photodude: “"when you look at it close up, nearly insignificant amidst the massive destruction, there is a solitary human form. A woman with long red hair, wearing a black top and off white pants. Leaning out in search of an escape she would never find. It's an epic image of one recognizable person looking for a way out of a horror much much larger than them, or worse than any nightmare.”

Writing on September 8th, Christopher Hitchens argues that we should not be commemorating September 11th too early, or rather that we are commemorating that date in the wrong way:

Should this solemn date be exploited for the settling of scores? Absolutely it should. When confronted with a lethal and determined enemy, one has a responsibility to give short shrift to demoralizing and sinister nonsense. [..]

Two beautiful fall seasons ago, this society was living in a fool's paradise while so far from being "in search of enemies" that its governing establishment barely knew how to tell an enemy from a friend. If there is anything to mark or commemorate, it is the day when that realm of illusion was dispelled—the date that will one day be acknowledged as the one on which our enemies made their most truly "suicidal" mistake.

• Tim Bray's review of Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 by Thomas L. Friedman. Bray describes me at the end of the review, which is why I picked it up from the library.
• Dan Dickinson, on his wife's reaction—and his reaction to her reaction—to Britney Spears' kiss with Madonna: “Katie has finally hit her breaking point and has purged everything Britney from the house. All MP3s, gone. Bookmarks, gone. Stages book, gone. Britney's Dance Beat, actually we sold that back a couple days ago. I can't stop crying. Buckets of tears. OF RELIEF.”
• gapingvoid.com: “You don't sleep alone because girls don't like 'nice guys'... You sleep alone because girls don't like whiney-ass losers.”
• If you were looking for a Shockwave presentation of Saddam Hussein rapping over an Eminem beat, this is your lucky day.
• Heidi Fleiss: “[prostitution] laws are currently written by and for men.” Oh really? They may be written by men, but if they were written for men, then why is prostitution still illegal? “There is no downside to legalizing prostitution.” Sorry hon, there are downsides to everything. Since I quote TV in place of my own opinion...Donna, Josh's assistant on The West Wing, says “"You think if you make prostitution legal, then prostitutes are going to suddenly want everyone to know they're prostitutes?” Then again, Television Without Pity deconstructs that quote...
• Bottled water is an incredible scam: it's true, and needing water while still a half hour from home after dragon boat practice, I succumbed to the lure of a quick infusion of ice cold water.
• Halley Suitt's Alpha Male series: I call bullshit on pretty much all of it, especially Confidence Game. It's not so much that I think that "girls like confident guys" is bullshit. It's a little unclear how she thinks it's not patently obvious to those who don't have confidence that girls like confident guys. The part about needing to work to get confidence is bullshit, because it assumes that being yourself is the wrong strategy. NotDating™ seems like an approach best suited to those who, when asked by the Nelsons of the world "How come you suck?", as Skinners, reply meekly “Uh, I lack confidence?”.
• A "resume" of George W. Bush. Too bad it's not a resume, and too bad about the name calling, and the intentional arrogance toward the weblog's readers. (Any arrogance displayed on my weblog is unintentional, but I fully acknowledge it.)
• How do you read other weblogs? Quotes an opposing view to using weblogs as filters.
• Jarno Virtanen: “"the content is not, by far, all I am after when I am reading weblogs. You see, personality counts.”
• Venn Diagram of sexual fetishes. Weird, mine's not on there.
• Adam: “For a moment, my petty worries and cynicism gave way to a feeling of awe and determination — to accomplish more, dig deeper, study harder, love better, and ponder more fully. To engage in living more completely. To make my little corner of the world as perfect as the ripples in the water.”
• Rocking my world of late: Kenna's New Sacred Cow. This post is titled after a song on that album. Dragon boating: actually it's been kicking my ass more than rocking my world, but love it so much that, breaking with decades of tradition, waking up at 7:00 AM on a Saturday now seems unproblematic. WOXY Cincinnati: it's where I first heard about Kenna.

Kissinger Quits As Chairman of 9/11 Panel

Henry Kissinger cites the controversy surrounding (unnamed) potential conflicts accruing from his appointment of a panel investigating the Sept. 11th attacks (seems to be a lot of panels investigating this; Sept. 11 will most likely be over-investigated, not under-). Kissinger gets off the hook from revealing his client list. From Chistopher Hitchens' field day on the appointment:

Kissinger's "consulting" firm, Kissinger Associates, is a privately held concern that does not publish a client list and that compels its clients to sign confidentiality agreements. Nonetheless, it has been established that Kissinger's business dealings with, say, the Chinese Communist leadership have closely matched his public pronouncements on such things as the massacre of Chinese students. Given the strong ties between himself, his partners Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, and the oil oligarchies of the Gulf, it must be time for at least a full disclosure of his interests in the region. This thought does not seem to have occurred to the president or to the other friends of Prince Bandar and Prince Bandar's wife, who helped in the evacuation of the Bin Laden family from American soil, without an interrogation, in the week after Sept. 11.

Yet by resigning because of the controversy that could (in his view) surround his consulting practice, doesn't that shine a light on said consulting practice? Has Kissinger tried to avoid the controversy while at the same time courting it?

'Death of Dissent' a myth: Refuting the doomsayers by Matt Welch
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It was the first thing that caught my eye when looking for something to counter the claim that dissent is has been stifled because of the American government's reaction to September 11th.

“Newsrooms may have shut down their foreign bureaus, but individuals have learned how to scour the Internet for the latest news and opinion from the Middle East (and elsewhere), and then publish their findings online. A single Los Angeles Web designer and part-time musician named Charles Johnson (http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php) attracts thousands of readers each week with his eagle-eyed watchdogging of the Arab and Israeli press.”

I'm a little disappointed that Welch didn't talk more about weblogging, because weblogs are a huge source of dissent (and even support) of American policies concerning terrorism and the military. Oh well, there has been a lot of dissent, but those who say it's being stifled either don't see it or are dissenters themselves and have something to gain (publicity) by saying it is stifled.

"You might think that an over-extended country, which spends far more of its gross domestic product on the military than any other major power, would react to a horrendously effective potshot by reconsidering its sprawling and occasionally heavy-handed engagement with the world. But you would be wrong."

This quote contains the problem I have with this article. I actually think that, for the size of it and the technology it possesses, the United States is under-extended militarily.

Like Min Jung, taking Media Break, this September 11th. I'm going to withdraw and read a book or two. No e-mail, no TV, no nothin' (as best I can, in this heavily media saturated world).

MidasMulligan: “(We didn't know what had happened after the first one, but after the second I knew immediately is not accidental - you know that distinct noise jet engines make when they open the throttle? That motherfucker actually opened it wide - in essence, floored it - in the last couple of seconds before it hit. Sorry about my language - still hard to even think about this).”

Just a quote that I remembered about, earlier today, upon finishing William Langewiesche's part 1 on the collapse of the WTC towers in The Atlantic Monthly's July/August issue. Apparently all three parts (excerpt of part two) will be made into a book, and if the two remaining parts are even half as good as the first, Langewiesche deserves a Pulitzer.

Quote that made me remember the above link, from the Langewiesche piece (part one): “[The plane that struck the South Tower] was minimally loaded that morning for the Boston-To-Los Angeles run, with only sixty-five people aboard and about half of the maximum fuel, and as it approached the building it weighed about 137 tons. It was flying at about 586 mph, which was 150 mph above the airplane's designed limit at low altitude. In the cockpit the overspeed warning must have been warbling loudly.”

Not that the pilots were paying much attention.

Langewiesche has written a lot about airplane accidents, and his piece on the ValuJet crash is especially good, and argues that “"in complex systems some accidents may be 'normal' -- and trying to prevent them all could even make operations more dangerous”.

Maybe it's about time I start a "Favourite Authors List", complete with pronunciation guide for the hard-to-pronounce ones, like Langewiesche.