Mediaite » September 11th

Teacher Who Promised Not To Shave Until Bin Laden Was Captured Whips Out The Razor

Matt Schneider — Mon, 02 May 2011 20:38:56 +0000

Talk about commitment. Nearly ten years ago, Gary Weddle, a teacher in Washington state, witnessed the horror of September 11th and vowed not to shave until Osama bin Laden was captured or proven dead. Thinking it would take the United States only a couple of months at most to bring bin Laden to justice, Weddle didn’t think his vow was that big of a deal. Fast forward a decade later and Weddle, truly a man of his word, still never shaved . . . until last night.

The Daily Astorian reports on Weddle, and how as a schoolteacher he told his students every year that his unwieldy beard was a reminder of the tragic attack that should never be forgotten. Last night Weddle didn’t waste a moment celebrating the news of bin Laden’s death and finally shaved. Now it looks like with bin Laden’s death, the Navy Seal “Team Six” weren’t the only ones to escape a “hairy” situation.

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

President Obama Condemns Ahmadinejad’s 9/11 Accusation: “It Was Offensive, It Was Hateful”

Hillary Busis — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:37:54 +0000

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made waves yesterday when he suggested before the U.N. General Assembly that the U.S. government may have orchestrated the terrorist attacks of September 11. (Maybe the Iranian leader was still stinging because President Obama never responded to a message) Ahmadinejad sent shortly after he was elected to the American presidency.

Today, Obama reacted to Ahmadinejad’s remarks in an interview with BBC Persian TV, saying:

“It was offensive, it was hateful—and particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, where families lost their loved ones… people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation.”

In the video below, after the interview snippet plays, BBC Diplomatic Correspondent Bridget Kendall elaborates on Obama’s words. According to her, the president went on to explain how accusations like Ahmadinejad’s make diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. difficult. As Kendall says:

“Further on in the interview, he says, well, if you see this sort of statement from the Iranian president, which is frankly disgusting to make in a place like New York … you can understand why we’re so mistrustful, so wary of having dealings with the Iranian government.”

Keith Olbermann Asks ‘Where Are GOP Politicians’ Condemning Koran Burning Event?

Eric Cunningham — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 01:00:12 +0000

There’s a media storm brewing over a Florida church’s plan to hold a “Burn a Quran Day” event this Saturday, on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Tonight on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the host took aim at the event, but not from the religious-freedom perspective some viewers would expect.

Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center claims that his church is holding the event in order to “bring to awareness to the dangers of Islam” and declare it “a violent and oppressive religion that is trying to mascarade [sic] itself as a religion of peace.”

Tonight Keith Olbermann addressed the topic, ignoring the intentions of the church and instead framed the effort to stop the Quran burning as “a practical issue,” rather than an academic or fringe discussion. To illustrate that point, he invited Staff Sergeant Todd Bowers, a veteran of the conflict in Afghanistan, to speak on the issue. He came with personal examples where Koran burning lead directly to increased attacks and the destruction of many advances American troops had made with local leaders.

General David Petraeus, Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan has already gone on record saying that this behavior will make its way back to Afghanistan and put U.S. servicemen in harms way. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs echoed that point this afternoon, saying this type of event, “is a concern to this administration.”

As the Olbermann clip below shows, Pastor Jones has heard these concerns but will likely continue with the event saying his message is too important to push aside.

Click below to watch Staff Sergeant Bowers discuss his experiences in Afghanistan on Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

Obama To Spend 9/11 At Pentagon, Dobbs: President “Heading To Bunker”

Jon Bershad — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:32:32 +0000

Today, the White House announced that President Obama would be spending September 11th attending memorial services at the Pentagon which he also did last year. Many in the media are speculating that this decision was made to avoid possible protests if he spent the day at Ground Zero. On Fox News, Lou Dobbs likened the move to a president hiding himself in “a bunker.”

Dobbs joined Megyn Kelly to discuss the choice and both seemed to feel that it was a mistake. Dobbs said that this and other decisions by the president were “isolating” him when the party desperately needs him to “broaden his appeal.” If the Pentagon choice was based on potential protests, it seems rather silly because, as Kelly and Dobbs point out, the last President Bush was protested everywhere he went and that didn’t stop him from making appearances. However, the constant protests around that president during his second term certainly helped add to the impression that he and his presidency was a failure, something that didn’t help his party at all in the 2008 elections. This is something the Dems really don’t need right now. Still though, if the story becomes about Obama running and hiding, that might be even worse.

It’s safe to say this was most likely a no win situation for the president.

Revisiting the New York Times’ 2001 “Year In Ideas”

Philip Bump — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:21:00 +0000

This week, the New York Times Magazine was dedicated to their newly traditional Year In Ideas thinkpiece. It’s always a fantastic collection of new discoveries, shifts in ways of thinking, and products that we’re likely to hear more about in years to come. It tries, in many ways, to be predictive; to isolate still-germinating concepts that will shape the world.

I thought, therefore, that it made sense to see how they did. In the spirit of the end of the decade, I looked back at their first Year In Ideas released in December of 2001. Heavy on concepts that emerged following the terrorist attacks (such as “American Imperialism, Embraced”) and the Internet (“Populist Editing”), the series was born at a fascinating moment in American history.

While I’m not a scientist or a fashion designer, I did my best to gauge how much impact each “idea” actually had – if, in essence, it was viable. By my count, of the 77 ideas presented, over half (40 or so) are still relevant in 2009. About 30% aren’t. Many others I considered “maybes” – I just don’t know enough to make the call.

Maybe you do. Check out the full list below, complete with links to the original article, and share your wisdom. The Internet was made for arguments.

The idea	Description	Still viable?	Why or why not?
A Better Golf Ball	A new dimpling pattern on Callaway golf balls.	Yes?	Not a golfer, but it seems they’re still using and refining this concept.
Acquired Situational Narcissism	The idea that narcissism can be emergent, as opposed to life-long.	Yes	More discovery than theory, this one has ample evidence backing it up.
Air Taxis	There is a viable business model for small jets at small airports that can be hired on an as-needed basis.	No	There is, however, a model for smaller jets combined into regional carriers, as we’ve seen since 2001.
American Imperialism, Embraced	Embracing the stereotypical role of America as the world’s policeman.	No	What is described is a nascent neo-con movement, a little over a year before the invasion of Iraq.
Announced Assassinations	Israel asks that the Palestinian Authority arrest someone, or they will kill him.	Maybe	Unclear if this is still common practice.
Apes Have Culture, Too	Apes pass on cultural traditions.	Yes	Scientific discovery.
Artificial Chromosomes	Adding custom chromosomes to existing arrays of genes.	Yes	In fact, this year’s glow-in-the-dark dog used a similar process.
Attaching Good Genes to Bad Viruses	Changing the genetic content of viruses to provide a supplement instead of a detriment.	Yes	Genetic engineering is still a huge area of research, including this particular idea.
Battleswarm	Transitioning from traditional military tactics to pods of soldiers networked together.	Yes	Rethinking how troops are used is an ongoing evolution, though the specifics of this technique may not be the end result.
Beauty Is Back	Post-modernism’s turn away from aesthetics has been reversed.	Maybe	I’m a little surprised to hear that beauty was out of fashion.
Blame the Brokers	The dot-com bubble’s bursting is blamed on the brokers who were peddling the stocks in the first place.	Yes	2008′s iteration was the hold on selling stocks short in the midst of the credit crisis.
Cheating Is Part of the Game	Bending the rules of sport to gain an advantage.	Yes	This, too, seems to be as much observation as idea. People cheat – always have, always will.
Cloning Endangered Species	Preserving threatened species by cloning them.	No	While this may still be done, it certainly isn’t common in my observation.
Communal Bereavement	Grief for those you’ve never met can have the same physical impact as grief for those you have.	Yes	A discovery, as opposed to a new concept.
“Content”	The blending of commercialism and content generation.	Yes	Common practice, for better or worse.
Corporate Jujitsu	Using your opponents’ strengths against them.	Maybe	Building off two real-world examples, it’s hard to say if this ever became a trend.
Designer Truth Commissions	Creating custom commissions to help nations and even communities deal with trauma.	Yes	A great piece in the New Yorker this year looked at how Rwanda is still employing something similar.
Distroboto	Selling things yourself in cigarette vending machines.	No	Beyond adaptations at airports and in Japan, this hasn’t really gone anywhere.
Dropper Popper	A toy that, when dropped, bounces high into the air.	No	This isn’t even an idea. Perhaps it’s an example of “content” sponsored by Toys ‘R’ Us?
Every Happy Country Is Happy in Its Own Way	A social scientist develops a way to compare the happiness of nations.	Yes	Denmark is currently the world’s happiest country.
False-Identification Prevention	If witnesses are shown possible perpetrators one at a time, there are fewer false positives than when picking from a group.	Maybe	I don’t know if this is now common practice, but if Law and Order is any indication – it ain’t.
Final Scratch	A system for DJs to use old-fashioned turntables to mix digital sound.	No	Well, maybe. What do I know. But I think most DJs are still using vinyl on their Tecnics.
Focus on the Negative	Instead of emphasizing positive thinking, preparing for negative outcomes can be helpful.	Maybe	While possibly valid counseling, it’s hard for me to gauge its success.
Focus-Group Hypnosis	Hypnotizing focus groups to get better results.	No	A marketing gimmick presented as an innovation. Time- and cost-prohibitive.
Forget the Art — It’s All About the Building	For an institution, the art often plays second fiddle to a big, new building.	No	The Times just last Saturday ran an article repudiating this idea.
Genetic Pollution	Genetically modified crops could pollute the non-modified	Yes	There has been a great deal of attention paid to ensuring this doesn’t happen.
Global Antiretroviralism	Providing anti-retroviral drugs to developing countries.	Yes	While we’re still working out full distribution, thousands of lives have been saved with this idea.
Global-Warming Lawsuits	To combat global warming when polluters won’t take action, some small countries are taking them to court.	Maybe	I leave this to the experts, although Earthjustice’s ad campaigns indicate they’re still in this business, if only metaphorically.
History Turns on the Tiniest Things	Minor things in history that ended up changing the world significantly.	Yes	Surprisingly, this article wasn’t written by Malcolm Gladwell.
Hybrid Cars	Self-explanatory.	Yes	Now seen as a critical intermediary step to reducing gasoline consumption.
Hygiene is a Hazard	Using anti-bacterials and overusing antibiotics reduces adaptation to illnesses, making us sicker.	Yes	The idea that we’re unhealthy because we don’t eat dirt pops back up as a trends piece every few months.
Infantilized Adults	Adults who act like teenagers.	Sadly	This is the story of Hollywood this decade. Also, ever met a hipster?
Justice Without Borders	An attempt to develop guidelines for crimes that would have universal jurisdiction.	Maybe	An expert could answer this better than I, though it seems unlikely that the United States signed on to this between 2001 and 2008.
Kustom	Customization of vintage clothes to look more modern.	Yes	Vintage, in its infinite forms is still big, and remaking old styles is common.
Laptop Composing	Musical artists can create works from the comfort of their own laptops.	Yes	Girl Talk, anyone?
Nonromantic Dating	Speed dating.	Yes	Given that I can describe it as speed dating and you know what it is, this one obviously stuck around.
Old Masters Cheated	Some famous painters traced their paintings.	Maybe	This discovery raised awareness about technique, to be sure, and may have reduced prices – but didn’t fundamentally change the art world, as fas as I can tell.
One E-Mail Message Can Change the World	The power of an email to change popular thinking.	Yes	An early ode to the power of a single message to become a meme.
Open Sperm Donation	Making common the practice of revealing the identities of sperm donors.	Maybe	No idea if this is common, I’m happy to report.
Pharmacogenomics	Prescribing drugs that tackle a precise genomic problem.	Yes	Still not in common practice, from my understanding, but something being researched.
Play With Your Food	Foods for kids that blur the boundary between play thing and comestible.	Yes	There are still a number of products on the market that are as fun (I guess) as they are delicious (I guess).
Populist Editing	Wikipedia.	Yes	Ever heard of Wikipedia?
Positive Asymmetry	Using an imbalance in resources to a positive effect.	Yes	More a description of an understood conceptualization than anything.
Prayer Works	A study seems to show that prayer can impact the likelihood of getting pregnant.	No	I can’t find evidence this study has been repeated – only the contrary.
Precautionary Principle	Taking action based on limited data to sooner combat negative effects.	No	If this had taken hold, Copenhagen would be a 3-hour summit.
Quarterbacks as Middle Managers	Quarterbacks merely manage plays, but don’t need to be stars for a team to win.	No	Tom Brady.
Reissues	Designers reissuing old designs.	Maybe	Not my forte. But if you count Canal Street, I’d say this is still pretty common.
Return to Segregation	The 2000 Census revealed increasing racial segregation in communities.	Maybe	We’ll see after the 2010 Census, I suppose.
Self-cooling Buildings	Buildings that incorporate systems to cool without using air conditioning.	Yes	Part of a now-common trend toward environmental construction.
Simputer	A computer that has only a touchscreen and stores info in the cloud.	Yes	Although still evolving.
Slow Food	Enjoying artisanal and other foods that take longer to prepare as a statement and means to be healthy.	Yes	This is a component of the very modish local and organic foods movement.
Social-Norms Marketing	Combatting misconceptions about common behavior to reduce unwanted activity.	Yes	Telling the truth is generally a good strategy to provide information.
Steganography Goes Digital	Burying data within an electronic file that purports to be something else.	Yes	Still something under consideration in security circles.
Super-slow Exercise	Super-slow exercise.	No	Yoga, maybe. Otherwise, no one does this.
Telesurgery	Remote surgical procedures.	Yes	While not common, this is still a technique considered acceptable.
The All-Species Inventory	A foundation that seeks to catalog all existing species within a short time period.	No	The foundation wasn’t able to raise enough funding to survive. Somewhat coincidentally.
The Consciously Constructed Sexual Paradox	People who celebrate modesty while embracing a more salacious appearance.	Yes	The current example is Miley Cyrus (and, to a lesser extent, the Jonas Brothers). The example given in the piece: Britney, whose then-proclaimed virginity was later recanted.
The Cram-Down	To get more funding, owners of start-ups are forced to reduce their stake in the business.	Maybe	The one real-world example they use is of Icebox.com, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard of. If this is still common, it doesn’t seem too successful.
The Crawl	After 9/11, crawls of important stories became ubiquitous on television news.	Yes	The crawl was so big that when CNN revised its last year, that made news.
The End of Shoelaces	Shoes that cling to the foot.	No	[ This space intentionally left blank. ]
The Fewer the Episodes, the Better the Show	Limiting how many episodes are expected of a show can improve quality.	Yes	The example in the piece isn’t a good one. Here’s a better example: compare the British and American versions of The Office. Case in point.
The Game That Plays You	Use of the web for marketing campaigns that simulate reality.	Yes	This is now a more mature way of engaging people in a new product.
The Lie Detector That Scans Your Brain	Certain types of brain waves are triggered upon recognition of an object – scanning these can demonstrate knowledge.	No	“He predicts that by 2005, brain mappers will be able to automatically scan the skulls of everyone going through airports to search for potential hijackers.”
The Moratorium Gambit	Instead of seeming weak on crime by banning executions, using the concept of a moratorium to stop them while still claiming support.	No	An interesting political move, but not something that was sustained over the decade.
The Open-Source Celebrity	Building conceptions around what celebrities are like that are fictional.	No	Slash fiction seems to be the final resting place of this trend. (Don’t Google that if you don’t know what it is.)
The Right Not to Be Born	A French court granted compensation to a child born with disabilities whose mother couldn’t get an abortion.	No	Beyond likely pilot projects in the Deep South, this idea doesn’t seem to have gained much traction.
The Torpedo	A particular variety of hockey intended to combat another variety of hockey.	No idea	I’m not a hockey fan.
The Video-Game Workout	Games like Dance Dance Revolution give you exercise along with your fun.	Yes	Wii Fit.
The White House Doesn’t Need the Press	The White House doesn’t need press to make its case to the public, and will be drama-free.	No	The invasion of Iraq was heavily dependent on the press. While the engagement may have taken a novel form, it still was important.
The ‘X-Files’ Conspiracy Trope Is Dead	9/11 proves that the government is incapable of the vast conspiracies that, over time, had been attributed to it.	No	Until, of course, 9/11 itself was attributed to it. Government conspiracies are a long way from dead. (See also: Birthers.)
Transcending Equations	Instead of developing equations to answer questions about nature, we should run programs with an output eventually refined enough to mimic the real world.	Yes	We’ve seen a number of ways in which computer simulations have resolved questions about the world, and the article’s reference to Stephen Wolfram certainly lends current credence.
Turning a Bad Drug Good	Repurposing abused substances as medical treatments.	No	One example is given, and no one seems to be dipping into their heroin supply to treat a headache.
Unilateral Separation	Israel cordoning itself off from Palestinians.	Yes	Self-evident.
Weather-Forecasting	A toaster that imprints the day’s weather on your toast.	Sort of	As a celebration of integrating Internet-based information into more common activities, this is dead-on. As a description of a product anyone would ever use, nope. Even if the price has since dropped from $2,100.
Winning Isn’t Everything	Michael Jordan’s stint with the Wizards taught him the meaning of the game.	No	No, it didn’t. His Hall of Fame speech was widely criticized for settling old grudges.
Your Very Own Breakfast Cereal	General Mills making cereals to order.	No	My Honey Nut Cap’n Crunch Choculas never really caught on.
Zeroing In on a Killer	Identifying likely criminals by narrowing down the probable area in which they reside.	Maybe	Crime experts could weigh in on how common this is, but the increase in use of geospatial tools makes this seem pretty likely.

Season’s Greetings, Glenn Beck Style: Terrorist Attacks For The Holidays?

Colby Hall — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:37:20 +0000

Season’s greetings from Glenn Beck! On his show that aired Wednesday, November 25th, the Fox News host asked his audience to imagine a terrorist attack on the United States, pretending that we’d “be as lucky as we were with the World Trade Center where everybody was gone or most people were gone.”

Beck said:

You know everything is too big to fail, but nobody talks about the little guy. Nobody talks about the individual. Let me ask you this question. Please ponder this over the holiday season. Heaven forbid anything happens. God help us if al Qaeda would come but imagine if somebody could succeed in blowing up any of our great American icons. If they destroyed all of Washington, let’s just pretend that we would be as lucky as we were with the World Trade Center where everybody was gone or most people were gone—and they destroyed the Washington Monument and everything else—all of our enduring symbols, all the monuments we’ve always treasured—would it matter?

I don’t think so. The monuments are meaningless. The monuments are there to remind us who we are. But we have forgotten. We have become about the structure. We are the people that defeated the most powerful empire on earth as a group of rag-tag farming colonists. We were the people that explored. We mapped. We tamed the west. We crossed the mountains in wagons. We stunned the world with technical marvels and defeated the Nazis. We defeated the communists. We walked on the moon.

Keith Olbermann Tells Glenn Beck “Go To Hell” For “Making Light Of 9/11″

Colby Hall — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:50:17 +0000

Last night, Countdown host Keith Olbermann named Beck his “Worst Person” in the recurring segment, which in itself is not news. But last night he used language that rarely, if ever, is used towards another person on a news program. After calling out Beck for “invoking 9/11 just to oppose health care reform,” Olbermann ended by telling him to “Go to Hell.” Wow.

Olbermann first quoted Beck as saying:

“Ten years ago, I could have shouted every single day about Usama bin Laden and his wacky, crazy threats to kill Americans in New York and no one would have been willing to stand in line two hours while some security officer made grandma take off her shoes. Today, things are different. America is changing. We’re not letting you get away with it anymore. …The 912ers are willing to stand in line and take off our shoes before the towers hit the plane.”

Olbermann’s response: “Beck … shark … jump. You and the 9/12ers have the nerve to exploit 9/11 for your lousy TV ratings. You can not make light of 9/11, nor bandy about as if your petty political grievances are comparable to it, and still be an actual patriotic American. In short, Glenn, 9/12ers, if you are invoking 9/11 just to oppose health care reform, go to hell.”

Olbermann’s comments:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Glenn Beck’s original comments can be seen here:

9/11, Remembered In Old Screengrabs

Philip Bump — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:45:51 +0000

Then living in California, I woke up eight years ago to the already-burning Twin Towers – a moment that would have seemed dream-like had it not been instantaneously jarring. A friend noted that only on noticing that the windows near his TV had grown dark did he have any indicator of how long he’d been watching the news.

Like a growing number of others in a time obsessively concerned with the “digital divide”, I went to my desktop computer to get more information. Unlike many others, though, I made screen captures of the sites as I visited them.

In retrospect, I’m not sure why I did this. It may have been the same instinct that led me to collect as many copies of newspapers about the events as I could. Or it may have been the recognition that the information on the sites was temporary and would be lost in a moment’s time as HTML or ASP pages were updated. As it was, I snagged about 15 captures of various sites between 12:15 and 3:30 pm Eastern. Eventually these were added to a larger repository of similar screen captures that is still online.

Even outside of the context of the events of the day, the captures are time capsules. A Mac guy, I notice today the cumbersome Internet Explorer 5 browser, the bookmarks bar I created that includes cryptic folders for “mine” and “humor”. I’m reminded that I was a premium member of Salon; that websites then were just starting to follow a more dynamic, blog-like format.

The sites themselves, of course, are noticeably doddering – like the unfamiliar cursives of the elderly. Salon, for example, used an odd mix of typefaces, on a text-heavy, cramped design. Slashdot was a jumbled mess of serifs and tables. The traffic-crippled New York Times was almost entirely graphic-free. Perhaps most striking are the sites for the impacted airlines, United and American – each stripped bare to simple text messages confirming the loss of their planes. If a website can look dazed, these sites do.

I discovered in time that my captures (and those of others in the archive they eventually joined) weren’t the only record of the day. The always surprisingly comprehensive archive.org (home of the original Wayback Machine) assembled regular 9/11 updates as the day progressed. It is also now home to the astonishing, minute-by-minute September 11th television archive, allowing visitors to watch the feeds of any of the major networks from that day.

9/11 was, of course, the first of the major JFK-Challenger-Pearl Harbor-style crises to occur in the internet age, meaning that it has an electronic trail unprecedented in history. It is the first tragic moment in history (of hopefully only very few) that transpired on a relatively mature internet which distributed what information it could as rapidly as possible. Snopes might have frowned on what we were reading, but the internet was still pivotal in assuring that we understood what was happening. It was, perhaps, a key moment in the transition from television’s dominance to the supremacy of the web.

The web now fully embraces history, including, today, the history of the astonishing events of eight years ago. The Times, for example, provides an exceptional look at amateur footage and photos of the day. Had the tragedy occurred today, those recordings would be on YouTube and Flickr within minutes, bandwidth-providing. Better eight years late than never.

I’ve made the point to people in the past that our descendants will see our era as one emerging from a type of Dark Age – from this point forward, no incident, however small, will be undocumented, unrecorded, or un-photographed. September 11th was the first truly momentous event of this new era, allowing us to look back with an unprecedented clarity. Which, on a personal note, allows me through my screen captures to remember what that day was like – sitting at my computer waiting for CNN to load whatever images it could, reading terse, telegram-like statements that connected me to the rest of the reeling world.

SLIDESHOW: 9/11 Screengrabs

Philip Bump is a technology and communications consultant in New York City who will be writing an occasional column for Mediaite about the intersection of history and the Internet called “The Wayback Machine” (inspiration here). Follow him on Twitter here.