The foiled Millenium bomb plot from 1999-2000 had three known targets:

1. Several sites in Jordan, including the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman.
2. USS The Sullivans in port in Yemen.
3. LAX, Los Angeles International Airport

The attack on the USS The Sulivans was attempted on January 3, 2000 but failed because the bomb-delivery dinghy couldn’t handle the explosives’ weight. Ten months later on October 12, 2000, the USS Cole was attacked in the same port, using the same tactic. This past August, two missiles missed a US Navy ship while in the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

On April 20, 2004, Jordanian security forces seized 20 tons of chemicals which were to said to be intended for a chemical weapons attack against Amman. Two months ago, Jordanian security forces arrested 17 suspected of plotting attacks. Yesterday three suicide bombers killed nearly 60 people at three hotels in Amman Jordan. One of the hotels was the previously targeted Raddison. One of the bombers murdered guests at a wedding.

The initial millennium attack against LAX was averted on December 14, 1999 by US Border control officers who were probably searching for drugs but instead found explosives and timers. On July 4, 2002, a Egyptian-born gunman killed two people at El Al’s ticket counter in LAX. This was finally determined to be a terrorist act in April of 2003, though he was most likely targeting Israel rather than the US. The specific LAX targets of the millennium plot are apparently unknown.

Not counting the sole gunman at LAX, two of the three known targets from the Millennium plot have now been successfully attacked.

I remember spending many wonderful hours talking with Phil outside of classes at Art Center. Cigarettes were his cadence, coughing his punctuation. He used to stress that no one should ever leave their apartment without a pen and change for several calls on a pay-phone. He loved to tell stories about parties, rock stars, The Life. Phil made it all seem so glamorous, he’d lived his dream and he seemed to want the same for all of us too. His stories about New York City contributed to the myth and wonder that helped lead me here.

But those stories are only part of made Phil special for me. Phil was one of the most consistently encouraging and giving people at Art Center. Too often teachers try to mold students into copies of themselves, but Phil taught his students to recognize and better use their own innate strengths. He pushed us to outdo ourselves, as ourselves. His own life was an example of succeeding on one’s own unique merits, more than anything else, this was the greatest lesson he could offer.

Phil Hays died last week at the age of 74, he’ll be fondly remembered.

In the mid-1950’s Mr. Hays was one of a young band of expressive and interpretative illustrators, including Robert Weaver, Jack Potter, Tom Allen and Robert Andrew Parker, who, rather than paint or draw literal scenes based entirely on an author’s prose, interpreted texts with an eye toward expressive license. Mr. Hays said that representational illustration was an art of nuance, and his work routinely dug below the surface, drawing on Impressionist, Expressionist and Surrealist influences. In 1957, Mr. Hays was hired by Silas H. Rhodes, a founder of the School of Visual Arts in New York, to teach his first illustration class, and later he became chairman of the illustration department.

As a teacher he introduced novels, plays and films to students as a way to increase their visual and verbal literacy. “Phil’s favorite expression is ‘Why not?,’ ” wrote the poster artist Paul Davis, a former student of his, on the occasion of Mr. Hays’s being awarded the Society of Illustrators 2000 Distinguished Educators in the Arts award. “He welcomes experimentation and innovation.” […]

In 1979 Mr. Hays moved back to California to become chairman of the illustration department at the Art Center College of Design. He retired in 2002.

Being PowerBook based, I was a bit disappointed. The towers sound fantastic, especially the G5 Quad, which is a mind-blowing amount of horsepower in a desktop machine. Aperture looks stellar, I know several professional photographers who will probably start using it right away and I might be graduating from iPhoto too.

Today’s hardware releases had to have been tailored for a few goals:

1. Make terrific machines which will sell
2. Don’t exceed the Intel machines
3. Don’t fall too far behind the Intel machines

Number one is obvious. Numbers two and three are more delicate. These machines can’t be so good that they take the piss out of the coming Intel boxes. Likewise, they can’t be so pathetic that Intel hardware makes these worthless. Apple has a great deal invested in brand loyalty, these machines were distinctly tailored for the transitional role they’ll be serving.

Based on that, i think it’s clear that the PowerBooks are maxed out. Yes they have better screens, better batteries, upgraded video chipsets, dual-layer DVD burners, digital audio ports and the option for larger hard drives. But there was no speed boost. These are the same CPUs as the previous generation — and that’s why I’m not going to buy one now.

New portables will most likely ship before new towers. Intel’s latest quarterly earnings pointed to the exceptional performance of their portable division. Before this upgrade, PowerBooks hadn’t been updated since January 2005, which means that Apple’s laptops for the holiday season will likely be running year-old CPUs. That’s just bad on its face. Intel’s Mobile Computing Platform and Centrino chips have been an area of great innovation at Intel, a good thing since AMD’s workstation and server chips are currently out-performing Intel’s equivalents. Apple’s Intel laptops are likely going to break my third point above. Battery life should be significantly improved and there will probably be something close to a half gigahertz speed increase (numbers based on the Intel® Products Laptop Processor Roadmap). This round of laptops won’t compare well unless Apple releases intentionally weakened Intel PowerBooks.

So I’m thinking 1Q 2006 for laptops, hopefully at MacWorld in January. They will absolutely be shipped at least a month or two before WWDC. There’s no way Jobs will get onstage this year without having shipped Intel laptops. A few months lead time would allow many developers to have Intel hardware on their laps for the keynote.

If one always argues as the Devil’s Advocate does one eventually come around to the Devil’s side?

It’s interesting to hold an opposite position from nearly everyone you know. Especially about something politically divisive. Everyone assumes you think like they do, lots of offensive stuff gets emailed and linked, people nudge you about things and expect something other than a blank stare. I’m good at the blank stare now. I’m also good at keeping my mouth shut and swallowing anger. People, even good smart people, just aren’t as accepting of differences as they think they are, and it’s just not worth the risk of finding out who can deal with it and who can’t. Yes, this is can be depressing at times.

Sort of related side note:

Last week a friend of a friend (of a friend…) was emailing around this short New Yorker column:

Day No. 1
And the Lord God said, “Let there be light,” and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, “Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?”
“Im loving that,” said Buddha. “It’s new.”
“You should design a restaurant,” added Allah.

What’s wrong with this picture? The Lord God and Allah are the same entity. How could the New Yorker let that slip? Are they honestly that ill-informed? Or was it perhaps a last minute “diversity-correction”, grepped in to appease the new gods of political correctness. Whatever it was, it completely undermined the whole piece. Successful humor is just not based on alternate universes. The punch-line to a joke can’t come from somewhere outside the setup. “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the sky was green and there was no gravity.” The Lord God can’t just talk with an accent and then become Allah. The Lord God is Allah, and vice versa.

I had written a few related paragraphs about my thoughts on religion, evolution, intelligent design and a few other topics. Then I deleted them. If you really want to know what I think about any of those, buy me a beer. Or three, I’m difficult to pigeonhole and chatty when I drink.

ps. I will not acknowledge any guesses as right or wrong so please don’t bother.

On each anniversary I walk by Engine 28 and Ladder 11’s stationhouse . In 2001 they were my local FDNY company who would serenade the East Village with “Lowrider” blaring from the hook-and-ladder’s PA. They used to buy groceries at my supermarket.

Today I took Lila with me. We talked a lot, explaining how today was a sad anniversary instead of a happy one. She knows a little, as she puts it, “a building fell down and lots of firemen got hurt.”

Each year after their memorial mass a large group of firemen and their families gather near the station. Lila was asking why they were “all dressed up” in their formal uniforms. Soon enough the questions are going to get more difficult to answer. I told her that today was a special day for thanking firemen. I also thank the police, military, and Con-Ed who were busy restoring power the next day, if not sooner. And especially that one MTA bus driver who was driving his M14 bus up Avenue A after the towers fell, with a foot of debris on the bus’s roof.

This year I finally shook hands with and thanked one of the firemen in person, something I’ve been wanting to do for four years but never found the courage.

My voice broke. We both stood there quietly for a few seconds, looking down. I felt very small.

Dear Anonymous Neighbor with the crappy cordless phone,

You probably noticed a constant clicking sound on your new phone. That would be the 5-7 wireless networks freaking out because your crappy phone is flooding the spectrum. I’m sure you got a great deal on it and never thought about it again, people get attached to their cellphones, not crappy cordless phones. But your phone sucks. And it’s suckingness is inconveniencing a half dozen of your neighbors.

“Ok,” you say, “maybe all those wireless networks are causing trouble? Maybe they’re overlapping and turning the air to mud?”

I thought about that. Thing is, this never happens when normal people are at work or sleeping. I don’t have a normal schedule. I’m home during the days, some days working, others taking care of kids. And I’ve always been a night person, usually going to bed around 2am even though I need to be functional again at 8. And all those times, the early afternoons during naps, late at night when everyonen else is sleeping. Those times are wonderful. Flawless wifi.

Then you get home from work, get on your crappy cordless phone and wreck everything for everybody.

Perturbed, you try to blame my computer, “maybe it’s your crappy laptop.”

That would be plausible, but it’s not just my laptop. It’s also my wife’s and my neighbors (they asked me for help when their wireless network was having trouble). It’s also my Linksys WRT-54Gs. Yes, I have two, sometimes, specifically the times mentioned above, they work flawlessly. I’m using hacked firmware, which includes a frequency scanner. When you’re on the phone, every network in range is obliterated. You could sell that thing as a frequency jammer for five times what you paid for it.

“Aha! Hacked firmware, what do you expect.”

Uh huh, I guess you weren’t listening when I mentioned the other networks. Those include Apple hardware, whatever RCN sends out, other Linksys routers and a few miscellaneous devices I wasn’t able to identify. The hacked firmware also allows me to adjust wifi properties like beacon frequency. The beacon is probably what you’re hearing when you’re phone clicks. Tonight I’m setting the beacon on my router to something much smaller. I’m also turning the broadcast power up to eleven.

Cordially,

joe

The total area of destruction is the size of Great Britain.

We should have dropped leaflets.

“President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.” There had never been a mandatory evacuation of the city before. This action saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I never once heard that mentioned by the cable news networks.

Immediately after the Superdome became a hellhole (something I feared before landfall) I wondered if the suffering was an indictment of public transportation. I ask this question as someone who doesn’t own a car and relies on public transportation. The failure to evacuate wasn’t the fault of public transportation, it was a systemic failure to utilize local resources which could have evacuated thousands of people before the storm hit. I’ve now seen several satellite photos and found evidence myself with Google Maps that appear to be flooded parking lots full of hundreds of buses:

A full lot of city buses and unused school buses. I can’t tell what these are, they might be more unused buses but maybe not.

New Orleans had a high crime rate, with murder nearly 8 times the national average. I doubt the criminal element packed their families up into the minivan and headed for Shreveport. The best of New Orleans got out, leaving behind a far higher concentration of criminals. When MSNBC found police officers looting shoes from a Wall Mart, it became more clear that local governance had failed and that’s when criminal lawyers from http://mattgould.ca/ have to do their work.

Despite many exploiting this disaster to advance existing prejudices against the president, as the facts come in, Louisana’s local and state officials look worse and worse. There seems to be some assinine political bickering on the part of Lousiana’s governor, even accusations that early federal requests to take over relief efforts were simply a ploy to pass blame. How many people died while that idiotic idea was discussed? The “24 hours to make a decision” story is appalling (video). According to Mayor Nagin, Bush asked the governor to make a decision about transferring relief to federal agencies and she said she needed 24 hours to make a decision. As if she was buying a car or something. Since everyone’s throwing around questions and accusations, I think a fair question to ask is whether Governor Blanco’s politics and dislike of President Bush affected her decision making.

Ultimately it comes down to this: The situation in New Orleans vastly improved the instant federal and military aid arrived.

After the flood of 1900, the city of Galveston was elevated. New Orleans will be rebuilt, I hope out technology is brought to bear and the city’s vulnerabilities are corrected. Really, they have to be, it would be stupid and immoral to rebuild any ruined part of the city below sea level.