9/11 Conspiracy Theories Live
When most Americans hear these theories, they just laugh – it never occurs to them that anyone could take them seriously. The New York Times does an article on 9/11 conspiracy theories just as that tragic anniversary approaches:
9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom
Justin Lane for The New York Times
CAIRO — Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too.
Many in Cairo see the attacks as part of an anti-Muslim plot.
This is not the conclusion of a scientific survey, but it is what routinely comes up in conversations around the region — in a shopping mall in Dubai, in a park in Algiers, in a cafe in Riyadh and all over Cairo.
“Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.”
It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.
“The United States should be concerned because in order to tell people that there is a real evil, they too have to believe it in order to help you,” said Mushairy al-Thaidy, a columnist in the Saudi-owned regional newspaper Asharq al Awsat. “Otherwise, it will diminish your ability to fight terrorism. It is not the kind of battle you can fight on your own; it is a collective battle.”
There were many reasons people here said they believed that the attacks of 9/11 were part of a conspiracy against Muslims. Some had nothing to do with Western actions, and some had everything to do with Western policies.
Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But they also said that Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq.
“Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”
You can read the entire article at The New York Times.
Marriage Improves With Age
This is from AOL News, and you can read the rest of the interview/ article by clicking here:
Couples Improve With Age, Book Says
By Nanci Hellmich, USA Today
(Sept. 3) – Married couples in their later years often show a great deal of affection, says best-selling author Maggie Scarf, 77, who has spent more than 30 years studying relationships.
“There’s intimacy. There is pleasure in each other’s company. They say to each other, ‘I love you more than ever.’ ” Scarf’s new book is ‘September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years,’ released Sept. 3. She has been married for 55 years to Herb Scarf, 78, a Yale professor.
They have three daughters. Scarf shares her insights with USA TODAY.
Q: How would you describe your marriage?
A: Like any other couple, we’ve had our ups and downs at times. We haven’t ridden through 55 years on a cloud of bliss. But the fact is we have always remained committed to each other. We have a lot of fun. My husband has a tremendous sense of humor, and we laugh a lot. He is my best buddy.
Herb is the person who knows everything about me. And I know everything about him. At least we think we do.
Q: What is the U-shaped curve in marriage that you describe in the book?
A: There have been pretty influential studies over the past 40 years that show a couple’s contentment is at its highest in the earliest phase of marriage.
Then you get to know the other person’s foibles and faults. Kids come along and you lose sleep and you want the other person to do more than they are doing. Then you are negotiating on a daily basis with your adolescents, and your sense of contentment and well-being go down during that time.
But as the nest starts to empty, your sense of well-being, contentment and time for intimacy go up. The U-curve begins to rise. You rediscover the person you knew early on.
I like it that she shoots straight that her marriage was not always a bed of roses. Couples whose marriages survive have to work hard to keep a marriage alive. When the kids start coming along, there are so many demands on your time, so many distractions, it is hard to keep a marriage fresh and thriving. The good news is that all the good times come back.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
ExPat Labor Force Statistics Kuwait
(For your good laugh of the day, visit NQ’s / L’s Brain very original take on the blogging scene in Kuwait . . . I mention it because they have me reading aloud from the newspaper, which I do! LOL!)
1.15 million expats working in private sector
From today’s Al Watan:
KUWAIT: An official census published on Thursday showed that around 1.15 million expatriates worked in the Kuwaiti private sector until June of this year.
The census, prepared by the Central Census Department, showed that males made up 93.5 percent of the expatriates, while 6.5 percent were female.
The study said that around 67.7 percent of the expatriates got salaries lower than 180 Kuwaiti dinars. About 63 percent of the expats were nonـArabs, while 37 percent were Arabs, the study added. ـKUNA
Grammar Gripes from BBC
Found this morning on BBC News Magazine:
Grammar just ain’t what it used to be, it seems. When we explained the difference between “fewer” and “less than”, following Tesco’s policy shift on this matter, readers told us what grammar rules they see being flouted or find confusing. The list was a long one. Here are the best.
1. The one that really annoys me is how people suddenly seem to confuse “have” and “of”, as in: “I could of learnt how to write properly.” There’s no excuse for it!
Pete, Sheffield
2. The phrase “for free” is becoming commonplace and is used often on television and it’s wrong. It should be “for nothing”.
Mary, Basingstoke
3. That guardian of our language, the BBC, is full of solecisms these days; just one example: 12 pm. There is no such time; “meridiem” as in am (“ante meridiem” means “before noon”) and pm (“post meridiem” means “after noon”) means midday. The 12th hour is neither before nor after midday. So please, BBC use either midday or noon with midnight the correct term for the other end of the day. This is not being pedantic; in these days of 24-hour days, it is often not readily apparent what time 12 pm might be.
Mervyn, Usk, Monmouthshire
4. If you do something to change a situation, then you “effect” a change. If your circumstances are changed by an action, then the change has caused an “effect”. You cannot “affect” a change in something, nor can you be “effected” by one.
Rob, Lyme Regis
5. I get annoyed at the reckless use of apostrophes, for example, the plural of CD can’t be CD’s.
Shahed Alam, London
6. Many people, including public speakers, incorrectly use “I” instead of “me”. For instance, they would say “She said some very kind things about George and I”, thinking that they are being polite or grammatically correct. An easy way to remember which to use is: if you would say him or her on its own, use me; if you would say he or she on its own, use I. For example, “She said some very kind things about him”.
Lorraine, Aylesbury
7. Incorrect use of reflexives make my blood boil. I think that for someone to say “yourself” and “myself” when they just mean “you” or “me” is possibly out of a false sense of politeness, or maybe the insidious effect of TV soaps, or both. Those who use it correctly can give “themselves” a pat on the back.
John Self, Wisset, Suffolk
8. How about “none of them is” and “none of them are”? Most people would use the latter whereas the former is correct. “None” is short for “not one” therefore “not one (none) of them is” would be used. Most newsreaders still get it right though – on the BBC anyway!
Emily, Bristol
NOTE: Fowler’s Modern English Usage says that “none” is not short for “not one” and although using a singular verb is more common, using a plural verb has also been an acceptable option since the reign of King Alfred.
9. Similar TO, different FROM, compared WITH. Not “to” used for all of them!
Susan, Brisbane, Australia
NOTE: Fowler’s Modern English Usage says: “The commonly expressed view that ‘different’ should only be followed by ‘from’ and never by ‘to’ or ‘than’ is not supportable in the face of past and present evidence or of logic.” It adds that “compare to” is to liken and “compare with” or “compare to” is used to point out similarities and differences. The BBC News website style guide differs with Fowler’s on this last point. It says that when pointing out differences, “compare with” should always be used.
10. Here’s one they often get wrong on BBC news! BBC reporter: “Then they opened fire on us”. This is incorrect. In military terms there are two methods of shooting at an enemy, controlled-fire and open-fire. I.E. you are not opening anything so using the past tense of open is incorrect. The correct expression should be “Then they open-fired on us”
JWTH, Belfast
11. I find the increasing, incorrect use of “literally” annoying…. “I literally went blue with anger!!” “Really?” I ask.
Ned, Wallingford
12. The proper use of “its” and “it’s” seems to confound many people, with “its” being a possessive and “it’s” being a contraction of “it is”. I’ve seen this mistake made even in some rather lofty publications…
Eric, Berlin
13. It annoys me when people use “due to” when they mean “owing to”. But then I’m a pedant.
Guy, London
NOTE: The BBC News website style guide says “due to” means “caused by” and needs a noun, but “owing to” means “because of” and relates to a verb. Hence, “the visit was cancelled [cancelled is the verb] owing to flooding” is correct. So too is “the flooding [flooding is the noun] was due to weeks of heavy rain”.
14. As a secondary teacher, I’m beginning to despair when it comes to “they’re”, “there” and “their”; not to mention “to”, “two” and “too”. Why are we so afraid to correct these simple mistakes which make all the difference at a later stage?
Alexandra, London
15. There is also confusion over lend and borrow. I keep hearing school children asking “to lend your pencil” when what they actually mean is to “borrow” the pencil.
Ian Walton, Bedford
16. I cringe when I hear BBC reporters say “amount of people” when it should be “number of people”!
Jill Thistlethwaite, Leyburn, UK
NOTE: Fowler’s says “amount” is used with nouns that are not countable, such as “amount of forgiveness” and “amount of glue” – but “number” is used with countable nouns, such as “number of boys” and “number of houses”
.
17. I don’t like it when people say: I can go there “by foot” instead of “on foot”….the right preposition to use is ON.
Daniela, Urbana, IL
18. The usage that I find particularly irritating is that of a single noun with a plural verb, for example: “the team are happy with their victory”, or “management have congratulated the workforce on the recent increase in productivity”. Team is a singular noun so it should read “the team IS happy…” or “the team members ARE happy”, the same applies “management HAS congratulated…” Also, what has happened to the word “versus”, abbreviated “vs”? Now all we see is “v”; it is even read like that in sports announcements.
Lucia, Horndean, UK
NOTE: The BBC News website’s style is that sports teams and pop/rock bands are always plural.
19. A classic confusing rule is the one that states that one is supposed never to end a sentence with a preposition. While this is easy and appropriate to follow in most cases, for example by saying “Yesterday I visited the town to which she has just moved” instead of “…the town she has just moved to”, it becomes troublesome when the verb structure includes a preposition that cannot be removed from it, as in “At work I am using a new computer with which my manager recently set me up”, which cannot correctly be changed to “…I am using a new computer up with which my manager recently set me”.
Philip Graves, Stockholm, Sweden
20. Stadiums, as a plural of stadium, rather than stadia.
C. Matthews, Birmingham, UK
NOTE: Fowler’s says that when dealing with modern sports grounds, rather than ones from the classical world, the plural is “stadiums”.
My own pet peeve is a very small thing; people say anxious when they really mean eager. Anxious, as in “I am anxious to take my vacation” really meaning “I am eager to take my vacation”. Anxious implies an element of worry, eager is take-the-brakes-off-ready-to-go!
Home Prices Drop, Sales Rise in Seattle
The Seattle Real Estate market has been fairly bullet-proof, until lately, when following the trend across the United States, prices here have also dropped, reports this morning’s Seattle Times. (If you have ever dreamed of having a home in Seattle, even after all my rain photos, now is the time!)
By ALEX VEIGA
The Associated Press
A real-estate-agents trade group says sales of existing homes rose 3.1 percent in July as buyers snapped up deeply discounted properties.
Stephanie Kuhn — who moved in March from the Seattle area to Orlando, Fla., because of a family emergency — has yet to find a buyer for her Mountlake Terrace condo.
The two-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot condo has been on the market since March but is drawing little interest.
“I can’t buy another house until I sell my house up there,” said Kuhn, 47.
Seattle and Portland, Ore., were among the top 10 metro areas in the nation with the most pronounced drop in home sales last month compared with July 2007, according to The Associated Press-Re/Max Monthly Housing Report, which analyzed all home sales recorded by all local agents.
The AP-Re/Max home-sales report was one of two released Monday. The second was from the National Association of Realtors.
Sales of existing homes in the West edged higher overall in July, as many buyers took advantage of falling prices in foreclosure-ravaged areas in California, Nevada and elsewhere, both reports show.
About 1.1 million pre-owned houses and condominiums were sold last month in the 13-state region, up almost 1 percent from the same month last year, the Realtors group reported. But the median home price plunged more than 22 percent to $273,200, it said.
You can read the rest of the article HERE.
Science, Cows and Serendipity
This is from BBC but I first heard this story on National Public Radio.
Scientists at the University of Duisburg-Essen were studying naked mole rats and discovered that when they build a nest, the sleeping areas are always south. They wondered if humans also had an unconscious magnetic sensitivity and decided to use GoogleEarth to study how campers set up their tents around the world, but found that it was too difficult to see tents, but they could see cows really well. Since they could see cows, they decided to survey the cows and discovered that MOST of the time, cows face either north or south. Who knew?
Cattle shown to align north-south
By Elizabeth Mitchell
Science reporter, BBC News
Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way?
Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction.
Wild deer also display this behaviour – a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.
In the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say the Earth’s magnetic fields may influence the behaviour of these animals.
The Earth can be viewed as a huge magnet, with magnetic north and south situated close to the geographical poles.
Many species – including birds and salmon – are known to use the Earth’s magnetic fields in migration, rather like a natural GPS.
A few studies have shown that some mammals – including bats – also use a “magnetic compass” to help their sense of direction.
Dr Sabine Begall, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, has mainly studied the magnetic sense of mole rats – African animals that live in underground tunnels.
“We were wondering if larger animals also have this magnetic sense,” she told BBC News.
I don’t know why, but random discoveries like this fascinate me. If you want to read more, you can do so here, at BBC News or here at National Public Radio.
Dont’cha just love these scientists? They figure out things just because they are curious!
High Schoolers Find Trumped Up Fish in Sushi
This is a great story; you can read the whole article at The New York Times. High school students, listening to a dad talking about DNA coding, wondered if sushi served in New York was what it was labled. They took samples, examined just one gene, and found that a lot of the fish was marketed as much more select than it really was. Don’t you just love it? These kids have made the news!
Fish Tale Has DNA Hook: Students Find Bad Labels
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: August 21, 2008
Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths.
In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.
They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.
What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it. Although the testing technique is at the forefront of research, the fact that anyone can take advantage of it by sending samples off to a laboratory meant the kind of investigative tools once restricted to Ph.D.’s and crime labs can move into the hands of curious diners and amateur scientists everywhere.
Read the entire article HERE.
Building 7 Collapse Solved, No Mystery
Feds Say They’ve Solved 9/11 Mystery
By DEVLIN BARRETT, AP
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (Aug. 21) – Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.
The 47-story trapezoid-shaped building sat north of the World Trade Center towers, across Vesey Street in lower Manhattan. On Sept. 11, it was set on fire by falling debris from the burning towers, but skeptics have long argued that fire and debris alone should not have brought down such a big steel-and-concrete structure.
Federal investigators said Thursday they have resolved a lingering question from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks: What caused World Trade Center 7 to collapse? They determined the building, which sat north of the World Trade Center towers, was brought down by fire started by debris from the twin towers.
Scientists with the National Institute of Standards and Technology say their three-year investigation of the collapse determined the demise of WTC 7 was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a skyscraper.
“The reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” said Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator on the NIST team.
Investigators also concluded that the collapse of the nearby towers broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water.
The building has been the subject of a wide range of conspiracy theories for the last seven years, partly because the collapse occurred about seven hours after the twin towers came down. That fueled suspicion that someone intentionally blew up the building in a controlled demolition.
Critics like Mike Berger of the group 9/11 Truth said he wasn’t buying the government’s explanation.
“Their explanation simply isn’t sufficient. We’re being lied to,” he said, arguing that there is other evidence suggesting explosives were used on the building.
Sunder said his team investigated the possibility that an explosion inside the building brought it down, but found there was no large boom or other noise that would have occurred with such a detonation. Investigators also created a giant computer model of the collapse, based partly on news footage from CBS News, that they say shows internal column failure brought down the building.
Investigators also ruled out the possibility that the collapse was caused by fires from a substantial amount of diesel fuel that was stored in the building, most of it for generators for the city’s emergency operations command center.
The 77-page report concluded that the fatal blow to the building came when the 13th floor collapsed, weakening a critical steel support column that led to catastrophic failure.
“When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain,” said Sunder.
The NIST investigators issued more than a dozen building recommendations as a result of their inquiry, most of which repeat earlier recommendations from their investigation into the collapse of the two large towers.
In both instances, investigators concluded that extreme heat caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures throughout the buildings until the entire structure succumbed.
The recommendations include building skyscrapers with stronger connections and framing systems to resist the effects of thermal expansion, and structural systems designed to prevent damage to one part of a building from spreading to other parts.
A spokeswoman for the leaseholder of the World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein, praised the government’s work.
“Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day,” said Silverstein spokeswoman Dara McQuillen.
In discussing the findings, the investigator Sunder acknowledged that some may still not be convinced, but insisted the science behind their findings is “incredibly conclusive.”
“The public should really recognize the science is really behind what we have said,” he said, adding: “The obvious stares you in the face.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
Your Last Breath
You never know. These people are just like us, renting a vacation house up the road a village or two, right on the ocean. And while they are sleeping, a plane crashes into their vacation house. You never know when you might be taking your last breath.
4 Die After Plane Crashes Into Home
GEARHART, Ore. (Aug. 4) – A small plane crashed into a seaside house in heavy fog early Monday, killing two people aboard and two children in the vacation home it struck, authorities said.
A small plane flying through heavy fog clipped a tree and then slammed into a house in Gearhart, Ore., Monday. Authorities said two people aboard the plane and two children in the seaside vacation home were killed. Here, a deputy fire marshal stands outside what is left of the home.
A third child was unaccounted for after the crash, which apparently occurred soon after the plane took off from nearby Seaside in northwest Oregon.
The single-engine plane clipped a tree and then plowed into the house, followed by explosions. A second, vacant home nearby was heavily damaged.
The pilot and his only passenger were also killed. Their identities were not immediately released.
The four-seat Cessna was owned by Aviation Aventures in Seaside. The company had rented it to the pilot, city officials said.
The impact shook homes a half-mile away in this resort town.
You can read the entire article on AOL News.
Live Olympics Coverage
NBC Olympics.com will be covering Olympic events live and streaming them to anyone who wants to follow them. I imagine, as NBC is an American network, that the coverage will be highly American team focused, but you never know.
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