Never Forget...

[Burning Zeppelin]

Is tommorrow Tuesday or Monday in America?

Well, I was sleeping when it happened. It was late at night, or really early morning, whatever floats yo' boat, and my dad called from work to tell my mum that "the world is ending" or something like that. My mum woke me up (can't remember about sis) and we watched it on the news. It was pretty horrific at the time, but now as I've grown older, it is just so much more.

[Magus068]

Today is aniversary of 9/11 of which the day that the WTC falls & hundreds of people died... We must keep our guard up so that the 9/11 tragedy will never happen again.  I pray for those who died in 9/11 tragedy & may their soul rest in peace...

[Daniel Krispin]

I have always thought, and will always think, it was overhyped. A hundred thousand evils have happened in the world, even in recent times, that far outmatch this. It is merely given inordinate focus. Four thousand dead? The families have a reason to grieve, to be sure, but what is it to everyone else? If that sort of event is enough to shake a nation as large as the United States, then they are truly weak. Four thousand is not a huge number of casualties. Most battlefields have a worse showing, even in ancient times. How many died at Canae? 60 to 80 thousand, about 80% of those being Roman troops? Yet what did the Romans do? They didn't get disheartened. They kept fighting. The US has, as always, shown itself to be a strong nation with a weak heart.

People say 'let us never forget', and, well, maybe it's because I'm Canadian, but it doesn't give me cause for grieving in the least. We live in a harsh world, we suffer what we must. And four thousand lives ended is less than died on the average day during the second world war. What makes this so great? Because the supposed superpowers of the world were, for a day, beaten? Do we weep because of that, or do we continue onward? People must move on, and not dwell in the past. Those who were directly affected, let them grieve (but even for them, grief must have its due range and compass, and not last inordinate length.) But for me, I have yet to be shown why it was such a dire catastrophe. It is a war, and things like that happen in a war. The Israelis and the Palestinians have to put up with that all the time.

I'm just being a realist here. I disdain inordinate grieving, and value a more stoic approach to life. People who put no term to grieving have no future.

As a side-note, the event was not a tragedy. It was an event of strong emotion, of loss and disaster. But tragedy requires a certain depth of spirit capable of suffering. It is, in fact, a glorious thing, because it shows the strength of the human spirit when confronted by hardship. All I've seen from the US since then is the very opposite.

[Magus22]

Today is aniversary of 9/11 of which the day that the WTC falls & hundreds of people died... We must keep our guard up so that the 9/11 tragedy will never happen again.  I pray for those who died in 9/11 tragedy & may their soul rest in peace...

No doubt.

Thousands of people died. I doubt we'll get attacked again on home soil in along time.

I also missed a memorial service this morning at college... damn

[but2002]

SOmething has got me wondering about the 9/11 thing anyway, A plane crashed into the Building right? Well if you look at the Video, the way the building went down looked way too controlled, It almost as if a plane never hit it, but one DID, so I think there was another part to the Destruction as well as the plane.

[Daniel Krispin]

SOmething has got me wondering about the 9/11 thing anyway, A plane crashed into the Building right? Well if you look at the Video, the way the building went down looked way too controlled, It almost as if a plane never hit it, but one DID, so I think there was another part to the Destruction as well as the plane.

Okayee, here we go. I'll see what I can remember. I was trained as a MecE, not a CivE, but when that all happened I was in first year, and had a class about structures. That day the prof came in and explained why the buildings fell.

Firstly, it must be pointed out, they were extremely well designed. They got hit by planes full of jet fuel, and still remained standing for hours - that is an engineering marvel. But, let's see if I can describe this... the way the buildings were designed is roughtly so, if I remember: main support structures running the entire height of the building. Now, beams that tall will of course bend and break, right? What kept that from happening were the floors themselves. The floors checked at each story the outward bending tendancy of the support columns, thus making a coherent and stable structure. However, the impact of the plane did two things. Firstly, it destroyed a heck of a lot of floors, leaving an area of the beams several stories high that had no check to its bending. This wouldn't have been too much of a problem nearer the top, but where they hit there was sufficient weight from above to pose a danger. Even this, though was not enough to destroy the buildings. What truly did them in was the jet fuel and the fires they caused. This heated the support beams, and weakened them to the point where they bent under the weight from above. When they snapped, you had essentially several stories collapsing in on themeselves, bringing all the rest from above crashing down. Now keep in mind that all the structure here is a very tight thing - the rest of the support beams still keep the upper and lower segments tied together, likely even as they are crashing down upon each other. That likely accounts for what you saw, and why it did not fall outward or crumble away as you might have otherwise expected. It was not controlled, per say, but rather extremely well built, to the very end. The fall was essentially vertical, therefore, from what I can remember.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's how it happened.

[nightmare975]

The thing about the beams overheating could of been prevented if they had laced the beams with asbestos. I heard that from my science teacher once.

[Daniel Krispin]

The thing about the beams overheating could of been prevented if they had laced the beams with asbestos. I heard that from my science teacher once.

That does make sense. Aspestos being a heat-shielding material, it would have slowed the weakening effect of the fire, thus preserving the support pillars. However, aspestos is rarely used these days because it is a dangerous material. Skyscrapers were never meant to be hit by planes, either. There is no way something like that could have been expected in the design of the structures. A normal fire wouldn't have caused the same problem, you see. No one sitting around the drawing board would have figured to account for the twofold destruction of a great portion of several stories, an explosion, and a fire, all at once. I figure whoever designed those buildings did an extraordiary job, even allowing them to stand as long as they did.

[but2002]

You right, I looked it up after I said that, and I saw my answer there. Thanks for pointhing it out though ^^

[ZeaLitY]

The thing about the beams overheating could of been prevented if they had laced the beams with asbestos. I heard that from my science teacher once.

The problem is that asbestos causes lung cancer. It would have to be non-friable, but even then the plane's impact would have shot asbestos into the air all over New York City. That would be a massive catastrophe. There's a reason asbestos litigation is the longest, most expensive mass tort in U.S. history, involving more than 6,000 defendants and 600,000 claimants.

[Burning Zeppelin]

It was pretty overhyped. I mean, more people died in the massacre of the Native Americans than this.
But yes, it was horrible.

One point my sister pointed (duh) out was that America likes making wars on verbs and nouns, like War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Spontaneous Combustion.

[ZeaLitY]

The Daily Show is pretty good at ridiculing that rhetoric. Just as GW says we're "safe" but not "Safe," Liberals are calling themselves Progressives now since Kerry stained the term by losing the election.

[V_Translanka]

One point my sister pointed (duh) out was that America likes making wars on verbs and nouns, like War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Spontaneous Combustion.

And here, I'm pointing out (duy) that your sister is retarded. What else are they going to war against? Adverbs? Conjunctions? Verbs and nouns are the basis of the English language. Hit your sister upside the head once for me, would you?

[Daniel Krispin]

One point my sister pointed (duh) out was that America likes making wars on verbs and nouns, like War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Spontaneous Combustion.

And here, I'm pointing out (duy) that your sister is retarded. What else are they going to war against? Adverbs? Conjunctions? Verbs and nouns are the basis of the English language. Hit your sister upside the head once for me, would you?

Participles, maybe? You could have 'the war against running' for example.

[V_Translanka]

Oh, that's just an offshoot of a verb and you know it!

<~*(irreverent)POST 3000*~>