Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
If you're a Muslim moron get off my planet you stupid fucking asshole. If you are an ex-Muslim you have my respect.
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Image: Ex-Muslims of North America debuts billboards in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston |
Jon Hersey September 5, 2019
Islam is a difficult religion to leave, probably the most difficult. As with others, children are indoctrinated as soon as they begin to use words. But Islam also demands an extraordinarily high level of commitment—praying five times a day, for instance—unquestioning faith, unmitigated obedience, and constant attention. For many Muslims, it becomes a nearly inextricable part of who they are.
In addition to the psychological difficulties of leaving Islam are social and legal difficulties. A Canadian woman named Stephanie (her last name is cautiously omitted in sources about her) learned this the atrociously hard way after converting to Islam in her teens and marrying a Muslim from Libya. In his tribe, women are allowed to work, but their options are incredibly limited. Stephanie explains:
I remember one time my daughter asked something of her father, and he told her “no, you can’t do this.” And she looked at him and said, “that’s because I’m a girl, right?” My kids were young at that time, not even three, the eldest. But I was like, what am I turning them into? What am I doing to them, to their opportunities in the future?
When she began expressing discontent with the burdens of Islam, her husband convinced her to move to Europe where he would pursue a PhD. Instead, they entered Libya, where sharia aspects of the law gave him immediate and total control over Stephanie and their kids. When she left Libya for a trip back to Canada, he revealed that he would never allow her to see her kids again unless she renounced her Canadian custody of them, which would most certainly seal them within Libya forever. It’s been more than five years since Stephanie has held her kids, but she refuses to give up custody—because it would require giving up her hopes for their future.
Stephanie considers her husband’s treatment of her as mild. According to Islam, she says, “I deserve either exile or death, usually death.” Apostasy is punishable by death in Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Apostates are also commonly murdered in Muslim-majority countries where the law does not call for it. In Bangladesh, twenty-eight-year-old student Nazimuddin Samad—who posted secularist messages on Facebook—was hacked with machetes and shot. He was among the many who were killed there after Muslims posted a list of secular bloggers. “Talented youths are killed one after another,” says Kabir Chowdhury Tanmoy, president of the Online Activist Forum, “but there are no visible measures against these heinous acts.”
Of course, leaving Islam is legal in the civilized, Western world—but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy or even safe. Many face social ostracism if not much worse. Recent headlines announced that two Afghani men living in London were arrested for plotting to kill a young female apostate. Ex-Muslim co-founder of Faith to Faithless, Imtiaz Shams, reports that being an ex-Muslim is one of the hardest things that those who renounce the faith will ever do. “I’ve even spoken to people who are from a Muslim background and gay, and sometimes they say that it was harder for them to be ex-Muslim than to be gay.” The experience of many apostates, he says, is that “your family, your community . . . will shun you and treat you like absolute scum.”
“In the West, our existence is not a crime, but we still face isolation, threats, and abuse by our own families and former faith community,” says Muhammad Syed, president of Ex-Muslims of North America. “Unsurprisingly, many former Muslims choose to hide their lack of belief. But the first step to gain acceptance is coming out openly, without shame or fear.”
Syed and Sarah Haider formed Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) in 2013 to advocate acceptance of religious dissent, promote secular values, and reduce discrimination faced by those who leave Islam. Syed says, “There’s a huge stigma among Muslims about leaving the faith, and we’re trying to erase that stigma, making it normal. People should have the freedom of conscience to believe whatever they want, live their lives however they want.”
The non-profit organizes support communities where mentors share their experience of leaving Islam, hosts ex-Muslim events, and grants aid to “apostates in need.” In 2017, EXMNA launched a campus tour, enabling ex-Muslims to share their stories with young people all over the country. In early September 2019, EXMNA unveiled billboards in Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta reading: “Nearly one in four Muslims raised in the U.S. have left Islam. Godless. Fearless. Ex-Muslim.” Sadly, getting these billboards up required an incredible act of persistence. Company after company refused to work with EXMNA for fear of offending Muslims. EXMNA’s site reports:
Unfortunately, the process diluted our message quite substantially. Our billboards went from challenging religious claims head-on to a simple declarative sentence about our existence. Many of our first versions were rejected. Even the proposed hashtags were rejected, and fearing a longer delay in publishing, we decided to remove the “Awesome Without Allah” hashtag entirely from the billboards.
Nonetheless, EXMNA has carried on with its planned social-media campaign, inviting ex-Muslims to share their stories about leaving Islam and using the hashtag #AwesomeWithoutAllah. Although the campaign just began, the results are already impressive. For instance, Ali Rizvi, author of The Atheist Muslim, tweeted “We normalized lapsed Catholics, secular Jews, and ex-Mormons. Now it’s time to normalize ex-Muslims. To think Muslims are somehow immune to reason, secularism, and Enlightenment is a form of bigotry.”
Of course, renouncing one’s irrational beliefs is only a first step in rebuilding one’s life, something Imtiaz Shams alludes to when trying to answer the question, “Why use the word ‘ex’[muslim]? Isn’t it a negative thing? It’s such a negative word, isn’t it?” He says:
Leaving Islam was supposed to be about exploring the world and enjoying the one life I have, that I know I have, versus this kind of Islamic immortality where you “live forever” and so this world kind of doesn’t matter. So for me, ex-Muslim felt a bit negative when I wanted the positive of the world.
Recognizing that one’s beliefs are irrational requires some grasp of the rational. But building a flourishing life requires systematically replacing irrational beliefs with rational, life-promoting ones. It requires a rational philosophy, without which, many attempts at ditching religion fail.
Nonetheless, ditching Islam is a necessary step toward a truly human life for millions of Muslims all over the world, and EXMNA is helping many to take that step. “We want closeted ex-Muslims to know they are not alone,” says Sarah Haider, EXMNA’s Executive Director. “We also want them to know that while the prospect of coming out as nonreligious is frightening, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You can make it to the other side, you can rebuild your life and find joy in the freedom from religion.”
If you care about fostering a peaceful, secular, civilized world, please help EXMNA share its beautiful message. “Hopefully, this will lead us toward Enlightenment within the Muslim world,” says Syed. “And we’re marching towards that.”
Islam is a difficult religion to leave, probably the most difficult. As with others, children are indoctrinated as soon as they begin to use words. But Islam also demands an extraordinarily high level of commitment—praying five times a day, for instance—unquestioning faith, unmitigated obedience, and constant attention. For many Muslims, it becomes a nearly inextricable part of who they are.
In addition to the psychological difficulties of leaving Islam are social and legal difficulties. A Canadian woman named Stephanie (her last name is cautiously omitted in sources about her) learned this the atrociously hard way after converting to Islam in her teens and marrying a Muslim from Libya. In his tribe, women are allowed to work, but their options are incredibly limited. Stephanie explains:
I remember one time my daughter asked something of her father, and he told her “no, you can’t do this.” And she looked at him and said, “that’s because I’m a girl, right?” My kids were young at that time, not even three, the eldest. But I was like, what am I turning them into? What am I doing to them, to their opportunities in the future?
When she began expressing discontent with the burdens of Islam, her husband convinced her to move to Europe where he would pursue a PhD. Instead, they entered Libya, where sharia aspects of the law gave him immediate and total control over Stephanie and their kids. When she left Libya for a trip back to Canada, he revealed that he would never allow her to see her kids again unless she renounced her Canadian custody of them, which would most certainly seal them within Libya forever. It’s been more than five years since Stephanie has held her kids, but she refuses to give up custody—because it would require giving up her hopes for their future.
Stephanie considers her husband’s treatment of her as mild. According to Islam, she says, “I deserve either exile or death, usually death.” Apostasy is punishable by death in Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Apostates are also commonly murdered in Muslim-majority countries where the law does not call for it. In Bangladesh, twenty-eight-year-old student Nazimuddin Samad—who posted secularist messages on Facebook—was hacked with machetes and shot. He was among the many who were killed there after Muslims posted a list of secular bloggers. “Talented youths are killed one after another,” says Kabir Chowdhury Tanmoy, president of the Online Activist Forum, “but there are no visible measures against these heinous acts.”
Of course, leaving Islam is legal in the civilized, Western world—but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy or even safe. Many face social ostracism if not much worse. Recent headlines announced that two Afghani men living in London were arrested for plotting to kill a young female apostate. Ex-Muslim co-founder of Faith to Faithless, Imtiaz Shams, reports that being an ex-Muslim is one of the hardest things that those who renounce the faith will ever do. “I’ve even spoken to people who are from a Muslim background and gay, and sometimes they say that it was harder for them to be ex-Muslim than to be gay.” The experience of many apostates, he says, is that “your family, your community . . . will shun you and treat you like absolute scum.”
“In the West, our existence is not a crime, but we still face isolation, threats, and abuse by our own families and former faith community,” says Muhammad Syed, president of Ex-Muslims of North America. “Unsurprisingly, many former Muslims choose to hide their lack of belief. But the first step to gain acceptance is coming out openly, without shame or fear.”
Syed and Sarah Haider formed Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) in 2013 to advocate acceptance of religious dissent, promote secular values, and reduce discrimination faced by those who leave Islam. Syed says, “There’s a huge stigma among Muslims about leaving the faith, and we’re trying to erase that stigma, making it normal. People should have the freedom of conscience to believe whatever they want, live their lives however they want.”
The non-profit organizes support communities where mentors share their experience of leaving Islam, hosts ex-Muslim events, and grants aid to “apostates in need.” In 2017, EXMNA launched a campus tour, enabling ex-Muslims to share their stories with young people all over the country. In early September 2019, EXMNA unveiled billboards in Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta reading: “Nearly one in four Muslims raised in the U.S. have left Islam. Godless. Fearless. Ex-Muslim.” Sadly, getting these billboards up required an incredible act of persistence. Company after company refused to work with EXMNA for fear of offending Muslims. EXMNA’s site reports:
Unfortunately, the process diluted our message quite substantially. Our billboards went from challenging religious claims head-on to a simple declarative sentence about our existence. Many of our first versions were rejected. Even the proposed hashtags were rejected, and fearing a longer delay in publishing, we decided to remove the “Awesome Without Allah” hashtag entirely from the billboards.
Nonetheless, EXMNA has carried on with its planned social-media campaign, inviting ex-Muslims to share their stories about leaving Islam and using the hashtag #AwesomeWithoutAllah. Although the campaign just began, the results are already impressive. For instance, Ali Rizvi, author of The Atheist Muslim, tweeted “We normalized lapsed Catholics, secular Jews, and ex-Mormons. Now it’s time to normalize ex-Muslims. To think Muslims are somehow immune to reason, secularism, and Enlightenment is a form of bigotry.”
Of course, renouncing one’s irrational beliefs is only a first step in rebuilding one’s life, something Imtiaz Shams alludes to when trying to answer the question, “Why use the word ‘ex’[muslim]? Isn’t it a negative thing? It’s such a negative word, isn’t it?” He says:
Leaving Islam was supposed to be about exploring the world and enjoying the one life I have, that I know I have, versus this kind of Islamic immortality where you “live forever” and so this world kind of doesn’t matter. So for me, ex-Muslim felt a bit negative when I wanted the positive of the world.
Recognizing that one’s beliefs are irrational requires some grasp of the rational. But building a flourishing life requires systematically replacing irrational beliefs with rational, life-promoting ones. It requires a rational philosophy, without which, many attempts at ditching religion fail.
Nonetheless, ditching Islam is a necessary step toward a truly human life for millions of Muslims all over the world, and EXMNA is helping many to take that step. “We want closeted ex-Muslims to know they are not alone,” says Sarah Haider, EXMNA’s Executive Director. “We also want them to know that while the prospect of coming out as nonreligious is frightening, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You can make it to the other side, you can rebuild your life and find joy in the freedom from religion.”
If you care about fostering a peaceful, secular, civilized world, please help EXMNA share its beautiful message. “Hopefully, this will lead us toward Enlightenment within the Muslim world,” says Syed. “And we’re marching towards that.”
Wall Street Journal - New Clues Emerge of Dinosaurs' Final Day
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| Workers loaded supplies on the platform in the Gulf of Mexico that explored the crater from an ancient asteroid. |
Some nitpicking: The Wall Street Journal fucked up. They wrote the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago but it was 66 million years ago. I looked it up.
Google: “Dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid 65 million years ago” is now an indicator of outdated understanding. For one thing, geologists have recalibrated the end of the Cretaceous Period (the final stage of the Mesozoic Era) to 66 million years ago. February 7, 2013
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In the comments an American asshole wrote this bullshit: "Contemporary American scientists deliberately fudge the data to fit preconceived conclusions."
This is Idiot America. We have millions of anti-science morons. I wrote this for the stupid fucking Christian asshole: "You like to insult scientists while you provide zero evidence for your complaints. I don't think you understand how science works."
I wanted to say "Grow up you fucking retard." The fucktard is most definitely a Christian. The only way to defend the moronic Christian cult is never-ending lying about science and scientists. I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
Another Christian asshole wrote this moronic bullshit: "You can take any set of data, and reach any conclusion you want, based on the worldview that you hold. None of it is reliable because of this. That's why most theories are in favor only for a short time...until they're not."
These stupid fucking Christian assholes don't know anything about science. They don't even know what science is.
This is the stupidest comment I ever saw in my life:
"100% speculation based on the premise that there is no God and therefore was no global flood. The crater and all that can be observed now could just as easily have been formed by an eruption from within the earth, as described in the book of Genesis. Man has a propensity to explain everything without God, no matter how far fetched the explanation."
Christians are stupid fucking assholes.
This is the Wall Street Journal which is infested with Republican assholes. At the New York Times, every comment would be well written and contribute something that's interesting. There is no god bullshit at the New York Times.
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"The dinosaur-killing asteroid, estimated to have been up to 50 miles or so across, was likely an event that occurs only once every billion years, the scientists said."
If that huge space rock missed Earth and hit the much bigger Jupiter instead, we would not exist. Our small mammal ancestors would still be hiding in the trees and under the ground. But we do exist and that's a good thing for us, but not a very good thing for this planet.
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Here is the whole thing:
Wall Street Journal - Scientists Discover New Evidence of the Asteroid That Killed Off the Dinosaurs
New rock samples in Mexico show how a city-sized asteroid wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
By Robert Lee Hotz
Updated September 9, 2019
This is the stupidest comment I ever saw in my life:
"100% speculation based on the premise that there is no God and therefore was no global flood. The crater and all that can be observed now could just as easily have been formed by an eruption from within the earth, as described in the book of Genesis. Man has a propensity to explain everything without God, no matter how far fetched the explanation."
Christians are stupid fucking assholes.
This is the Wall Street Journal which is infested with Republican assholes. At the New York Times, every comment would be well written and contribute something that's interesting. There is no god bullshit at the New York Times.
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"The dinosaur-killing asteroid, estimated to have been up to 50 miles or so across, was likely an event that occurs only once every billion years, the scientists said."
If that huge space rock missed Earth and hit the much bigger Jupiter instead, we would not exist. Our small mammal ancestors would still be hiding in the trees and under the ground. But we do exist and that's a good thing for us, but not a very good thing for this planet.
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Here is the whole thing:
Wall Street Journal - Scientists Discover New Evidence of the Asteroid That Killed Off the Dinosaurs
New rock samples in Mexico show how a city-sized asteroid wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
By Robert Lee Hotz
Updated September 9, 2019
Drilling into the seafloor off Mexico, scientists have extracted a unique geologic record of the single worst day in the history of life on Earth, when a city-sized asteroid smashed into the planet 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and three-quarters of all other life.
Their analysis of these new rock samples from the Chicxulub crater, made public Monday, reveals a parfait of debris deposited in layers almost minute-by-minute at the heart of the impact during the first day of a global catastrophe. It records traces of the explosive melting, massive earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and wildfires as the immense asteroid blasted a hole 100 miles wide and 12 miles deep, the scientists said.
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What are some questions you’d like to see answered about dinosaur extinction? Join the conversation below.
The sediments also offer chemical evidence that the cataclysm blew hundreds of billions of tons of sulfur from pulverized ocean rock into the atmosphere, triggering a global winter in which temperatures world-wide dropped by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit for decades, the scientists said.
“It tells us what went on inside the crater on that day of doom that killed the dinosaurs,” said Jay Melosh, a geophysicist at Purdue University who studies impact craters and wasn’t a member of the drilling team. “All of this mayhem is directly recorded in the core.”
The scientists in the drilling consortium, led by geophysicist Sean Gulick at the University of Texas in Austin, who was co-chief of the $10 million project, published their research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The project was sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program.
The scientists worked aboard a drilling ship called Lifeboat Myrtle anchored offshore from the Mexican port of Progreso. In 2016, they drilled into the crater’s inner rim for the first time, buried in the seafloor under about 1,500 feet of limestone deposited in the millions of years since the impact.
Drilling Into A Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Impact
Geologists discover new details of the asteroid that wiped out much of the life on Earth 65 million years ago.
Impact area
investigated
Within one minute after impact
1
An asteroid blasts a 100-kilometer-wide crater into the sulfur-rich seafloor off the Yucatan, spewing a vast plume of limestone, granite and water vapor into the atmosphere.
Sedimentary
rocks
Water
Impact
plume
Impact
melt
Crust
Within three minutes after impact
2
The crater collapses inward, sending an immense jet of molten rock upwards temporarily creating a peak higher than Mount Everest.
Impact melt
Mantle
An hour after impact
3
Waves of seawater surging back and forth cover the ring of crater peaks with shards of volcanic glass and splintered rock.
Resurge
By the end of the day
4
The backwash of waves adds more and more finely graded debris, including traces of charcoal from distant wildfires caused by the impact.
Breccia*
Sorted
suevite†
Sedimentary
rocks
Tsunami
*Shattered rocks cemented together †Shards of volcanic glass and rock
Source: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Geologists study rocks as a record of compressed time, with ticks of the geologic clock typically measured in layers that accumulate over thousands of years. In the Chicxulub crater, though, hundreds of feet of sediments built up rapidly, recording impact effects like a high-speed stop-action camera, the scientists said.
“Here we have 130 meters in a single day,” said Dr. Gulick. “We can read it on the scale of minutes and hours, which is amazing.”
The asteroid blasted a cavity between 25 and 30 miles deep in the first seconds of impact, creating a boiling cauldron of molten rocks and super-heated steam, according to the scientists’ interpretation of the rock. Rebounding from the hammer blow, a plume of molten rock splashed up into a peak higher than Mount Everest.
Within minutes, it collapsed into itself, splashing gigantic waves of lava outward that solidified into a ring of high peaks, the scientists said.
About 20 minutes or so later, sea water surged back over the newly formed peaks, covering them in a blanket of impact rocks, the scientists said. As minutes became hours, waves choked with shards of volcanic glass and splintered rock rippled back and forth, coating the peaks in a layer of impact rock called suevite, the scientists said. As the hours passed, the backwash of waves added more and more finely graded debris.
At the very top of the rock core, the scientists detected traces of organic matter and charcoal. “We think the reflected tsunami brought back these traces of land and these tiny, tiny charcoal fragments,” said Dr. Gulick. “The land was clearly on fire.”
Earth normally speeds through a cosmic rain of debris. In 2013, a relatively small meteor about 30 meters in diameter and weighing about 13,000 metric tons exploded in the air over Russia, damaging about 7,200 buildings and injuring about 1,400 people.
Inspired by the discovery of the Chicxulub crater in the 1970s, astronomers and NASA now routinely map the orbits of nearby asteroids and meteor swarms for signs of potentially lethal collisions. The space agency is planning a mission in 2021 to a nearby asteroid called Didymos to test ways to safely deflect a dangerous comet or asteroid before it strikes.
There are currently no sizeable asteroids known to be on a collision course with Earth, NASA astronomers say. The dinosaur-killing asteroid, estimated to have been up to 50 miles or so across, was likely an event that occurs only once every billion years, the scientists said.
“Impacts are a fact of life on Earth,” said Dr. Melosh. “But we know there are no big asteroids crossing Earth’s orbit.”
Rossini - Barber of Seville (Opera)
Gioachino Antonio Rossini The Barber of Seville Track list: 1. The Barber of Seville - Act 1 - 1st Part 00:00 2. The Barber of Seville - Act 1 - 2nd Part 23:18 3. The Barber of Seville - Act 1 - 3rd Part 44:11 4. The Barber of Seville - Act 1 - Fin 1:04:51 5. The Barber of Seville - Act 2 - 1st Part 1:24:47 6. The Barber of Seville - Act 2 - Fin 1:47:05
All Muslims are scum and they all need to be wiped off this planet. Same thing for the politically correct assholes who suck up to Muslim scum.
The Wall Street Journal had a book review of two books which I will probably buy, "The Only Plane in the Sky" and "Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11".
Nothing in the book review and in the comments said anything about the Muslim scum that made this cowardly attack against America possible. Most likely the WSJ censored any comment with the word "Muslim" in it. This wimpy political correctness is ridiculous.
Who is worse, Muslim scum or the wimpy assholes who suck up to the scum? I wrote a comment for the Wall Street Journal wimps. It will probably be vaporized.
What I wrote: "Let's not talk about the religion that made this genocide possible because that would not be politically correct."
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Here is the whole thing:
BOOKS
BOOKSHELF
THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY
By Garrett M. Graff
Avid Reader, 483 pages, $30
FALL AND RISE: THE STORY OF 9/11
By Mitchell Zuckoff
Harper, 589 pages, $29.99
Two new journalistic accounts that strive to preserve the memory of September 11, 2001.
By Tunku Varadarajan
September 6, 2019
A remembrance of beauty persists alongside the horrors that mark Sept. 11, 2001. A storm had swept across the Northeast the day before, giving rise that morning to a rare meteorological phenomenon known as “severe clear.”
In “The Only Plane in the Sky,” an oral history of 9/11, Garrett Graff writes of the “cloudless skies that made an enduring impression on all who would witness what transpired in the hours ahead.” He quotes people who describe the sky high over New York and Washington. “A gorgeous blue,” says a Virginia police officer. “Deep blue,” says a Capitol Hill staffer. “Deep, deep blue,” says a chef in Manhattan. Others remember the hue overhead as “cobalt blue,” “cerulean blue” and “the bluest of blues,” and as one “that you wish you could put in a bottle.”
Over 64 fine-sliced chapters, Mr. Graff, a former editor at Politico, gives us “the stories of those who lived through and experienced 9/11—where they were, what they remember, and how their lives changed.” The result is remarkable, and Mr. Graff’s curation of these accounts—drawn from hundreds of his own interviews and from the reporting of other journalists and historians—is a priceless civic gift. After all, as he notes, the fall of 2019 “will mark the entrance of the first college class born after the attacks.”
This is a new generation that “barely remembers the day itself,” and it is Mr. Graff’s mission to offer these young, unscarred Americans a book that will teach them about what happened on 9/11. The book is refreshingly free from editorializing, ideology and ululation. It gives us instead poignant, often distressing, vignettes and impressions of the day and its aftermath.
On page after page, a reader will encounter words that startle, or make him angry, or heartbroken, or queasy. Mohamed Atta was running late at Portland International Jetport, in Maine, for his flight to Boston, where he would board American Airlines Flight 11, the plane he crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Mike Tuohey, a ticket agent in Portland, recalls saying, with the usual professional courtesy: “Mr. Atta, if you don’t go now, you will miss your plane.” (Yes, everyone who reads this will ask himself what might have been had Atta missed his flight.) Pages later, we encounter the recorded words of Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant on AA 11, spoken on an Airfone to a manager on the ground. “Something is wrong. I don’t think the captain is in control. I see water. I see buildings. We’re flying low. We’re flying very, very low. Oh my God. We’re flying way too low.” Within seconds, the plane hit the tower.
There is much in this book about the bravery of the firefighters and security personnel who responded to the attacks. Father Mychal Judge was a chaplain with the Fire Department of New York, the only priest to enter the towers that day, administering last rites. He died in the North Tower. “The firemen took his body,” a friar says. “Because they respected and loved him so much, they didn’t want to leave it in the street. They quickly carried it into [nearby] St. Peter’s Church.” Rick Rescorla was a former British paratrooper who was vice president of security for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower: Ignoring the Port Authority’s assurance that the tower was safe, he said: “I’m getting my people the f— out of here.” He saved hundreds of lives in the process but lost his own.
Yet it is the goodness of ordinary people that leaves the deepest impression. We read, for instance, of the reaction of Heather Ordover, an English teacher at a high school three blocks south of the World Trade Center, just after the first plane hit the tower. “We all heard the scream of the engines,” Ms. Ordover says, “like a bomb in a war movie—then the flash.” As the kids in her class ran to the window, where they saw smoke and falling debris, her protective teacher’s instincts kicked in. “I ran back to the front of the room, yelling to the kids to sit down and write about what they’d just seen—anything to get them away from the windows.”
There are countless other stories of selflessness, of decency, of 911-operators telling people trapped on the topmost floors—who had called in to say, “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”—that help was on the way and that they weren’t going to die. Untruths, of course, but of the utmost kindness. In Mr. Graff’s book, the little details are allowed to speak for themselves, and the effect is one of notable eloquence.
“Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11,” by Mitchell Zuckoff, is a monumental complement to Mr. Graff’s spare book. A former reporter at the Boston Globe, now a professor at Boston University, Mr. Zuckoff has sought to re-create in dramatic prose the very story that Mr. Graff sets out to assemble by oral jigsaw. He stresses that his narrative takes “no license with facts, quotes, characters, or chronologies.” His book’s avowed purpose is—like Mr. Graff’s—to preserve the memory of the day America was attacked, “to delay the descent of 9/11 into the well of history.”
Mr. Zuckoff’s descriptions of the hijacks—the turmoil on board the planes, the crashing of the aircraft, the destruction of the towers, the rescues, the death, the subsequent anguish—are superb in their tautness and tension. Particularly moving is the account of how Brian Clark and Stan Praimnath, two total strangers who worked on the 84th and 81st floors of the South Tower, respectively, encountered each other in the acrid ruins. When Brian first extended a hand to help a disoriented Stan to his feet, he was startled to be asked by the latter if he believed in Jesus Christ. In response, Mr. Zuckoff writes, “Brian stammered something about church on Sundays. He wondered if the man he was trying to save had lost his mind.” In the middle of the calamity, on the 81st floor, they shook hands, told each other their names, and swore to be brothers for life. Then Brian draped his arm around Stan’s shoulder and said, “Let’s go home.”
They made it out alive. Elsewhere, colleagues of Brian’s remained trapped and doomed. Among them, writes Mr. Zuckoff, was a broker named Randy Scott, “a fun-loving, motorcycle-riding, happily married father of three daughters. With no other way to seek help, he scribbled a plea: ‘84th floor / west office / 12 People trapped.’ ” He tossed his note out of a window, “to flutter among countless bits of paper blown from both towers.” But before he did, he “pressed a bloodied finger against the note,” leaving the DNA that would later identify him as the writer.
Mr. Zuckoff’s chapter on United Flight 93—which crashed to the ground near Shanksville, Pa.—is gripping. This was, sequentially, the fourth of four hijacked flights, and the passengers and crew on board were aware of the hijackers’ intentions, having been in touch with families and officials via the Airfones in the plane. “That knowledge,” writes Mr. Zuckoff, “became a powerful motivator. It transformed them from victimized hostages into resistance fighters.” He describes the passengers’ conversations with their spouses and parents on the ground as “a spoken tapestry of grace, warning, bravery, resolve, and love.”
There are times in which Mr. Zuckoff’s efforts to breathe life back into his characters can be florid or sentimental. John Ogonowski, the pilot of AA 11, is depicted as “country-boy handsome,” his smile etching “deep crinkles in the ruddy skin around his blue eyes.” CeeCee Lyles, a heroic flight attendant on board United Flight 93, “had flashing brown eyes and a love of fine clothes that complemented her athletic figure.”
But such passages do not mar the narrative righteousness of Mr. Zuckoff’s enterprise. Reliving the moment when the second plane hit the South Tower, he writes that “the off-center jolt caused the upper floors to rotate like a boxer’s torso twisted from an unexpected blow.” The image is astonishing, almost magical in its evocation of a heretofore inconceivable assault. Alongside the voices from Mr. Graff’s oral history—calling down from the upper floors for aid, for a rescue that would never come—words like these will keep memories alive.
—Mr. Varadarajan is executive editor at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
Nothing in the book review and in the comments said anything about the Muslim scum that made this cowardly attack against America possible. Most likely the WSJ censored any comment with the word "Muslim" in it. This wimpy political correctness is ridiculous.
Who is worse, Muslim scum or the wimpy assholes who suck up to the scum? I wrote a comment for the Wall Street Journal wimps. It will probably be vaporized.
What I wrote: "Let's not talk about the religion that made this genocide possible because that would not be politically correct."
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
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Here is the whole thing:
BOOKS
BOOKSHELF
THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY
By Garrett M. Graff
Avid Reader, 483 pages, $30
FALL AND RISE: THE STORY OF 9/11
By Mitchell Zuckoff
Harper, 589 pages, $29.99
Two new journalistic accounts that strive to preserve the memory of September 11, 2001.
By Tunku Varadarajan
September 6, 2019
A remembrance of beauty persists alongside the horrors that mark Sept. 11, 2001. A storm had swept across the Northeast the day before, giving rise that morning to a rare meteorological phenomenon known as “severe clear.”
In “The Only Plane in the Sky,” an oral history of 9/11, Garrett Graff writes of the “cloudless skies that made an enduring impression on all who would witness what transpired in the hours ahead.” He quotes people who describe the sky high over New York and Washington. “A gorgeous blue,” says a Virginia police officer. “Deep blue,” says a Capitol Hill staffer. “Deep, deep blue,” says a chef in Manhattan. Others remember the hue overhead as “cobalt blue,” “cerulean blue” and “the bluest of blues,” and as one “that you wish you could put in a bottle.”
Over 64 fine-sliced chapters, Mr. Graff, a former editor at Politico, gives us “the stories of those who lived through and experienced 9/11—where they were, what they remember, and how their lives changed.” The result is remarkable, and Mr. Graff’s curation of these accounts—drawn from hundreds of his own interviews and from the reporting of other journalists and historians—is a priceless civic gift. After all, as he notes, the fall of 2019 “will mark the entrance of the first college class born after the attacks.”
This is a new generation that “barely remembers the day itself,” and it is Mr. Graff’s mission to offer these young, unscarred Americans a book that will teach them about what happened on 9/11. The book is refreshingly free from editorializing, ideology and ululation. It gives us instead poignant, often distressing, vignettes and impressions of the day and its aftermath.
On page after page, a reader will encounter words that startle, or make him angry, or heartbroken, or queasy. Mohamed Atta was running late at Portland International Jetport, in Maine, for his flight to Boston, where he would board American Airlines Flight 11, the plane he crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Mike Tuohey, a ticket agent in Portland, recalls saying, with the usual professional courtesy: “Mr. Atta, if you don’t go now, you will miss your plane.” (Yes, everyone who reads this will ask himself what might have been had Atta missed his flight.) Pages later, we encounter the recorded words of Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant on AA 11, spoken on an Airfone to a manager on the ground. “Something is wrong. I don’t think the captain is in control. I see water. I see buildings. We’re flying low. We’re flying very, very low. Oh my God. We’re flying way too low.” Within seconds, the plane hit the tower.
There is much in this book about the bravery of the firefighters and security personnel who responded to the attacks. Father Mychal Judge was a chaplain with the Fire Department of New York, the only priest to enter the towers that day, administering last rites. He died in the North Tower. “The firemen took his body,” a friar says. “Because they respected and loved him so much, they didn’t want to leave it in the street. They quickly carried it into [nearby] St. Peter’s Church.” Rick Rescorla was a former British paratrooper who was vice president of security for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower: Ignoring the Port Authority’s assurance that the tower was safe, he said: “I’m getting my people the f— out of here.” He saved hundreds of lives in the process but lost his own.
Yet it is the goodness of ordinary people that leaves the deepest impression. We read, for instance, of the reaction of Heather Ordover, an English teacher at a high school three blocks south of the World Trade Center, just after the first plane hit the tower. “We all heard the scream of the engines,” Ms. Ordover says, “like a bomb in a war movie—then the flash.” As the kids in her class ran to the window, where they saw smoke and falling debris, her protective teacher’s instincts kicked in. “I ran back to the front of the room, yelling to the kids to sit down and write about what they’d just seen—anything to get them away from the windows.”
There are countless other stories of selflessness, of decency, of 911-operators telling people trapped on the topmost floors—who had called in to say, “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”—that help was on the way and that they weren’t going to die. Untruths, of course, but of the utmost kindness. In Mr. Graff’s book, the little details are allowed to speak for themselves, and the effect is one of notable eloquence.
“Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11,” by Mitchell Zuckoff, is a monumental complement to Mr. Graff’s spare book. A former reporter at the Boston Globe, now a professor at Boston University, Mr. Zuckoff has sought to re-create in dramatic prose the very story that Mr. Graff sets out to assemble by oral jigsaw. He stresses that his narrative takes “no license with facts, quotes, characters, or chronologies.” His book’s avowed purpose is—like Mr. Graff’s—to preserve the memory of the day America was attacked, “to delay the descent of 9/11 into the well of history.”
Mr. Zuckoff’s descriptions of the hijacks—the turmoil on board the planes, the crashing of the aircraft, the destruction of the towers, the rescues, the death, the subsequent anguish—are superb in their tautness and tension. Particularly moving is the account of how Brian Clark and Stan Praimnath, two total strangers who worked on the 84th and 81st floors of the South Tower, respectively, encountered each other in the acrid ruins. When Brian first extended a hand to help a disoriented Stan to his feet, he was startled to be asked by the latter if he believed in Jesus Christ. In response, Mr. Zuckoff writes, “Brian stammered something about church on Sundays. He wondered if the man he was trying to save had lost his mind.” In the middle of the calamity, on the 81st floor, they shook hands, told each other their names, and swore to be brothers for life. Then Brian draped his arm around Stan’s shoulder and said, “Let’s go home.”
They made it out alive. Elsewhere, colleagues of Brian’s remained trapped and doomed. Among them, writes Mr. Zuckoff, was a broker named Randy Scott, “a fun-loving, motorcycle-riding, happily married father of three daughters. With no other way to seek help, he scribbled a plea: ‘84th floor / west office / 12 People trapped.’ ” He tossed his note out of a window, “to flutter among countless bits of paper blown from both towers.” But before he did, he “pressed a bloodied finger against the note,” leaving the DNA that would later identify him as the writer.
Mr. Zuckoff’s chapter on United Flight 93—which crashed to the ground near Shanksville, Pa.—is gripping. This was, sequentially, the fourth of four hijacked flights, and the passengers and crew on board were aware of the hijackers’ intentions, having been in touch with families and officials via the Airfones in the plane. “That knowledge,” writes Mr. Zuckoff, “became a powerful motivator. It transformed them from victimized hostages into resistance fighters.” He describes the passengers’ conversations with their spouses and parents on the ground as “a spoken tapestry of grace, warning, bravery, resolve, and love.”
There are times in which Mr. Zuckoff’s efforts to breathe life back into his characters can be florid or sentimental. John Ogonowski, the pilot of AA 11, is depicted as “country-boy handsome,” his smile etching “deep crinkles in the ruddy skin around his blue eyes.” CeeCee Lyles, a heroic flight attendant on board United Flight 93, “had flashing brown eyes and a love of fine clothes that complemented her athletic figure.”
But such passages do not mar the narrative righteousness of Mr. Zuckoff’s enterprise. Reliving the moment when the second plane hit the South Tower, he writes that “the off-center jolt caused the upper floors to rotate like a boxer’s torso twisted from an unexpected blow.” The image is astonishing, almost magical in its evocation of a heretofore inconceivable assault. Alongside the voices from Mr. Graff’s oral history—calling down from the upper floors for aid, for a rescue that would never come—words like these will keep memories alive.
—Mr. Varadarajan is executive editor at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
65% of Americans Favor Prayer in Public Schools
The Establishment Clause of our Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution requires a complete separation of church and state, including the federal government, state governments, city governments, and especially government schools.
This means there should zero religious bullshit in our public schools. No praying. No Magic Jeebus Man. No God bullshit. No Allah bullshit.
So why do 65% of Americans want to force all children to pray to their dead Jeebus? The only possible explanation is Christians are stupid fucking assholes.
One more thing: Praying is talking to yourself. It's a mental illness. American Christians are fucking insane.
The Establishment Clause of our Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution requires a complete separation of church and state, including the federal government, state governments, city governments, and especially government schools.
This means there should zero religious bullshit in our public schools. No praying. No Magic Jeebus Man. No God bullshit. No Allah bullshit.
So why do 65% of Americans want to force all children to pray to their dead Jeebus? The only possible explanation is Christians are stupid fucking assholes.
One more thing: Praying is talking to yourself. It's a mental illness. American Christians are fucking insane.
Christian fucktards and their ridiculous denial of reality.
"Who confirmed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?"
The whole thing is bullshit. Jeebus was an uneducated moron and the magic god fairy is just a childish fantasy.
Christian fucktards want to throw out reality but reality is not going anywhere.
The whole thing is bullshit. Jeebus was an uneducated moron and the magic god fairy is just a childish fantasy.
Christian fucktards want to throw out reality but reality is not going anywhere.
Monday, September 9, 2019
Nobody cares about this but for me it's a good thing.
Here in the northwestern Illinois farm town I live in, we have a grocery store called "Save-a-Lot." It's a wonderful friendly place and the excellent food is almost free.
For example today I was able to buy chicken thighs for only 79 cents a pound (which is 0.71 euros for 0.45 kilograms).
An interesting scientific fact: Chickens are dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were wiped out about 66 million years ago but the very small dinosaurs were able to survive. They are the ancestors of all birds living today including chickens. This means I will be eating a dinosaur tonight.
BBC Earth - A chicken embryo with a dinosaur-like snout instead of a beak has been developed by scientists
For example today I was able to buy chicken thighs for only 79 cents a pound (which is 0.71 euros for 0.45 kilograms).
An interesting scientific fact: Chickens are dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were wiped out about 66 million years ago but the very small dinosaurs were able to survive. They are the ancestors of all birds living today including chickens. This means I will be eating a dinosaur tonight.
BBC Earth - A chicken embryo with a dinosaur-like snout instead of a beak has been developed by scientists
Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid is believed to have crashed into Earth. The impact wiped out huge numbers of species, including almost all of the dinosaurs.
One group of dinosaurs managed to survive the disaster. Today, we know them as birds.
The idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs has been around since the 19th century, when scientists discovered the fossil of an early bird called Archaeopteryx. It had wings and feathers, but it also looked a lot like a dinosaur. More recent fossils look similar.
But these early birds didn't look the same as modern ones. In particular, they didn't have beaks: they had snouts, like those of their dinosaur ancestors.
To understand how one changed into another, a team has been tampering with the molecular processes that make up a beak in chickens.
By doing so, they have managed to create a chicken embryo with a dinosaur-like snout and palate, similar to that of small feathered dinosaurs like Velociraptor. The results are published in the journal Evolution.
The team's aim was to understand how the bird beak evolved, because the beak is such a vital part of bird anatomy. It has been crucial for their success. The 10,000 or more bird species occupy a wide range of habitats, and many have specialised beaks to help them survive.
But they did not set out to create a "dino-chicken", say lead authors Bhart-Anjan Bhullar of Yale University in New Haven and Arkhat Abzhanov of Harvard University in Cambridge, US.
"Whenever you examine an important evolutionary transformation, you want to learn the underlying mechanism," says Bhullar.
The beak is also the part of the avian skeleton that has "diversified most extensively and most radically", says Bhullar.
Despite this diversity – ranging from flamingos to pelicans - very little work has been done to figure out "what the heck a beak actually is", he adds.
"I wanted to know what the beak was skeletally, functionally and when this major transformation occurred from a normal vertebrate snout to the very unique structures used in birds."
To begin to understand this, the team trawled though changes in the ways genes are expressed in the embryos of chickens and several other animals. They looked at the embryos of mice, emus, alligators, lizards and turtles, representing many of the major animal groups.
They found that birds have a unique cluster of genes related to facial development, which the non-beaked creatures lacked.
When they silenced these genes, the beak structure reverted back to its ancestral state. So too did the palatal bone in the roof of the mouth.
To make this genetic tweak, Bhullar and his colleagues isolated the proteins that would have gone on to develop beaks. Then they suppressed them using tiny beads coated with an inhibiting substance.
When their skeletons started to develop inside the eggs, these animals had short, rounded bones instead of elongated, fused beaks that bird skeletons have.
"By affecting this early protein you are actually altering gene expression," added Bhullar.
The work highlights that beaks develop very differently from snouts, using a different set of genes, says Michael Benton of Bristol University in the UK. "That's what proves the beak is a real adaptation or 'thing', not just a slightly different nose shape."
The shift from snouts to beaks happened well into the evolution of birds, 40-50 million years after Archaeopteryx, says Benton.
For now Bhullar has no plans, or ethical approval, to hatch the snouted chickens. But he believes they would have been able to survive "just fine".
"These weren't drastic modifications," says Bhullar. "They are far less weird than many breeds of chicken developed by chicken hobbyists and breeders."
"The rest of the animal looked OK, but one needs to think about this carefully from an ethical point of view."
Follow Melissa Hogenboom and BBC Earth on twitter.
A fucktard asked "What are the rules in heaven?"
"What are the rules in heaven?"
It's important to repeatedly suck up to the Magic Jeebus Man.
By the way, a magical 2nd life in a magical heaven is totally fucking impossible. Only cowardly morons think this bullshit fantasy is real.
It's important to repeatedly suck up to the Magic Jeebus Man.
By the way, a magical 2nd life in a magical heaven is totally fucking impossible. Only cowardly morons think this bullshit fantasy is real.
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