Well, nothing like a single horrific event to change how the day looks. The disaster in New York and Washington shocked us all, and I had number of personal connections to it which brought it close to home. Thankfully, it seems that all of my friends and family are safe and were not in the immediate area, but especial thoughts go to Paul Golding, Olga Leslie and Lewis Chilton who work and live in New York and New Jersey. But two years ago I was working in the World Financial Center and walked through the World Trade Center every day on my way to work. Some of the first pictures I took with my digital camera were of the World Trade Center. I stayed in the hotel in the World Trade Center. Yikes.

The other connection goes back to my Amiga days, with the Flight Simulator programme. The Amiga version had a pretty basic map of Manhatten, but it did have models of the World Trade Center, and it was a lot of fun to try and fly a Cessna or Learjet between the twin towers. My first thought, yesterday morning, was that some idiot in a Cessna had tried exactly that, and missed...

There's a real feeling of grimness in Toronto today. Almost nobody is smiling, even though business is proceeding as usual. We've all been hurt by this, and it's not clear when we'll be healed. I hope the leaders involved have the wisdom to realize that their approach should be twofold: defend and deter against future attacks (with whatever retribution is necessary), but also understand the source of the anger and work to counter it. Yesterday proved that the western world has made enemies of very intelligent people, who were able to turn simple resources into effective weapons. The only long-term defense possible against this is to stop creating such enemies in the first place.
posted by Tom at 11:47 AM | link |