Follow the rhymes, hubbies
  Click "link" when you run out of space
  The lines return to the left
  And you can resume your place

Ahh... performance art!

Yeah, it's a stretch. Everybody's already raised the "why". That's a biggie. If you're gonna be party to conspiracy, you'd better have a damn good reason to go to the trouble and risk the consequences. Given that 9/11 has proven to be our biggest nat'l security black eye since Pearl Harbor, and resulted in not much more than overextension of resources, involvement in two intractable and costly wars, social and political polarization, alienation from several strategic allies... man, this list goes on. Anyhow, that'd make for piss-poor conspiracy. Basically did more than any other wartime act in post-WW2 history to call our world primacy into question.

Then there's the fact that UBL wrote and published a manifesto against the United States expressing his intent to orchestrate an attack on American soil, and then he claimed responsibility for 9/11. Then there's all the evidence in favor of that.

Beyond all that, yeah, I find the initial NIST report way more plausible on a technical level than the hypotheses put forth by your guy. Especially given that the original report was conducted in concert with a host of independent engineering organizations, and is supported by careful analysis of one of the most widely-documented and well-witnessed disasters of our time.

Look, 9/11 was one of those things that was so bad on so many levels that digging through the rubble for conspiracy seems way extraneous. You want to mistrust the government in the face of what happened, fine- look no further than their failure to stop what happened in light of oodles of poorly-shared intel (again, read 9/11 report); their focus on totally pointless military incursion (Iraq) when they should have reserved resources for the important front (Afghanistan); the resulting destabilization of an entire region of the world- the consequences of which me may just be realizing; and their disproportionately draconian national security response, which all but cemented UBL's legacy and absolutely supported his goals. Be mad and mistrustful in light of that. Don't waste your time on the fringe stuff, it's so much less titillating.

Have you seen "Hearts of Darkness"?

insom -- honored to be a part of the newsletter this time around! Also, gotta agree with ButterflyEffect on this one...so much variety!

edit: Got the stickers today. WOHOOO!

When you scroll down really fast with the "dark" theme it looks like The Matrix passing a pair of kidney stones.

I speak Russian :)

Wooo! Stickers!

While I don't think it's a great article, there's definitely some parts in there that I found interesting, especially because only two weeks ago I was there. For instance, how should we remember history in an appropriate way? How does the urban form of the area reflect this?

I found the memorial to be quite...odd. On the one hand, the holes in the ground and the gigantic waterfall are a good representation of the emptiness that was left behind by 9/11.

On the other hand, it's also a park now, with neatly organized patches of grass and well-kept bushes. It seems too normal, if that makes sense. The park does not reflect the destruction aspect at all. It could have been just any park. The only remnant of how Ground Zero was on 9/11 is a column of the original building, which they put in the museum there.

To put it differently, the current site felt like a place of awe, a beautiful place, and not a place where I was confronted with the tragedy. Unlike the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which really conveys the tragedy. According to the creator:

According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.

And I get that, I felt that when I walked around it without knowing this info beforehand. Ground Zero didn't make me feel all that more connected to the tragedy. The names around the waterfall did make it more tangible and human, but that was about it.

Maybe I just have a different idea of treating cultural heritage though.

I've been reading the comments here but have remained hands off the discussion because I would never touch it with a ten foot pole. But this comment strikes a nerve.

Beyond the fact that your sentence style is much too passive voiced for my taste, I think you should give the Hubskiers here a bit more credit.

I think the response you've gotten here is levelheaded and thoughtful. Considering the sensitivity of the topic, and how most people on and off the internet would simply dismiss you immedietly because of the emotions it brings to the table, I'd say you're doin alright here.

Critical thought is what Hubski is all about. Just because its not the critical though that you like doesn't make it any less valid. Not trying to be antagonistic, but dismissing everyone else's thoughts on the matter sorta dismisses your own.

Unfortunately, Idle hit the nail on the head:

> How could a man who had only a grammar-school education and spoke Latin and a little Greek possibly have written something

This is all about an obsession with credentials, metrics, and statistical probabilities. Basically, Shakespeare didn't fit the profile for a successful author, most of whom come from a fairly high socioeconomic class and have had advanced educations. So, according to the theory, if Shakespeare wasn't, demographically, like most successful writers, then he couldn't have been a successful writer, and, therefore, someone else must have written the plays.

It's absurd, but you'd be surprised how many people rely on stats, metrics, and credentials to decide who or what to believe.

http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/2508/

I mean, you're right in pointing out the implicit creepiness of this thing but part of that I think has to do with the fucking weirdo German's that made this video. On the other hand though, I think that the virtual haptic experience is something we humans will increasingly normalize. Just think of the back massaging chair, or the, gulp, vibrating bed. In an era where people have computer generated wives and acquire emotional attachment to their iPhones, maybe - for some people out their - this weird blob of unrequited love is just the thing to keep them from the deep end.

Seems to me that that is exactly what his software is determined to do. The ultimate gotcha-question-insta-feedback-loop. I like this idea and am anxious to see how these kind of applications might progress in the future. I remember seeing one debate, in '08 I think, where every member of the audience had a device with a turn knob that would real-time feed their approval of the on going events minute by minute. The ticker at the bottom of the screen was able to sort that input into demographic fields i.e. age, party-line, sex etc. Now imagine running this truth telling machine through other kinds of detection software like body language and perspiration levels. Could be interesting. One thing I should say though that continually makes me a bit nervous is that these programs are always written by someone and of course can never be perfect. Our biases, whether we like it or not, have a way of seeping into the things that we build.

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

I lost my 10 bitcoins at MyBitcoin, which I am pretty sure was a scam. They promised to send you 40% of what you had back, and I accidentally entered by old key rather than a new one, so they sent 4 BTC into the ether.

IMO the biggest problem with Bitcoin for an individual is storage. If there were easier ways to keep you wallet safe, and to access it safely, then it might have more legs. I think I might buy 10 more BTC. Just to get them back. But I don't expect much to come of them.

I do predict that the next BitCoin will have more legs.

This is not happening because of ECB policies, and the ECB does not have the ability to address the fundamental problem. This is happening because the Euro is flawed. A currency won't stand atop multiple fiscal and domestic policies, simply because what gives a currency its meaning is trust in the policies of its printer. Europe doesn't seem ready to become one big country. As a result, the Euro will either fail, or it will remain some sort of bastard of a currency that helps some members of the Eurozone at the expense of others.

Of course, people would click on that headline less. :/

I am confident that articles like this won't keep people from trying. Long-distance communication will continue to be more mundane and ubiquitous. As control becomes less feasible, and profit from it less justified, it's reasonable that it move into the public domain.