The Old New York, New York Forum

run like hell

Hey guys, this is more on the topic of NYC than software...

Someone on the "companies in NYC" thread mentioned that they wouldn't have a company downtown for 'safety reasons'. Now that we're about to start carpet bombing the middle east, that concern has probably been aggravated.

Like most NYers, I don't let it get in the way of my life, but every now and then I wonder.... am I a complete idiot for living here, a few subway stops from 'ground zero'?

An anecdote: When I read Camus's _The Plague_, a horrific novel about a small town that is quarantined with, yes, the plague, I was struck that everyone stayed there despite serious indications, like rats coughing up blood and dying in the streets. A few years ago the West Nile Virus was leaving dead pigeons everywhere. At the time, I did draw the connection to the book, but guess what, never even thought of getting out of town.

I moved to NYC to be where the action is... guess dreams do come true! :-P

Charles

Charles Lewis
Monday, March 17, 2003

I have lived and worked downtown since about the summer of 2001. I lived with my girlfriend in 1 Ocean West from about May 2001 until Dec 2001. I moved home for a few months after my girlfriend moved out at the end of her internship, and moved back down to Battery Park City in March. I worked at 1 Liberty Plaza, across the street from WTC, until Sept 11, and I've been down in the Wall St area since.

I consider Lower Manhattan my home, and I'm not leaving. This is where I belong.

And to be honest, I'm not worried. The fact of the matter is, downtown is already devastated, and other than the NYSE there's really no specific target left. I'd be more worried working across the street from Penn Station, or the Empire State Building, or the UN, than down here.

And we have cities on the West Coast which are within range of a nuclear ballistic missile from North Korea.

Does that mean we should all move to Kansas and live in a hole somewhere??

Sorry for the rant. I do know what you're saying... it's a tough thing, and I guess everyone has to deal with it in their own way.

Tim Marman
Monday, March 17, 2003

I was the one that mentioned the safety reasons. I certainly didn' t mean to alarm you and I apologize if I did. My company's home office is downtown, right next to the WTC. At the moment, however, I am working for an Investment bank in Midtown.

I think about this every day. You probably have taken on some extra risk by living here, but it is still much more likely that you will survive the next 'incident' than that you won't. It is also possible that nothing significant will happen over the next decade and therefore leaving a good job for a bad one in another area would be a decision that you would come to regret. You are definitely not a complete idiot for living here.

The focus of the original thread had to do with an employer's decision to locate here. As an employer your decisions effect more people than just yourself, therefore I would prefer some distance from possible targets where it is practical. I still would not be chased out of the area, I just would not locate my office on Wall Street. I could not stand to be like the CEO in WTC tower one that lost every single employee that was in the office that day.

Tomorrow there is a full moon in Iraq. My guess that the bombs will start then. With any luck at all we will get through this without further incident.

Ran
Monday, March 17, 2003

"Tomorrow there is a full moon in Iraq. My guess that the bombs will start then. With any luck at all we will get through this without further incident. "

other than slaughtered iraqi women and children you mean? yes..thats worth hoping for...god, let all future deaths include iraqi innocents instead of american ones...

lets kill them all
Monday, March 17, 2003

Original discussion was about terrorism in NYC. The poster wondered whether bombing in Iraq would cause more terrorism here (a valid concern). The morality or the appropriateness of the war is an entirely other question. We can discuss it if you want, but don't take remarks out of context so that you can vent your moral outrage. You must honestly believe that you are the only one capable of concern for the Iraqis. Incredible. Why don't you give other people some credit?

Ran
Monday, March 17, 2003

"The morality or the appropriateness of the war is an entirely other question. "

I dont see how it is...according to the bush administration the terrorism attacks here and the war on iraq are intimately linked.
The morality of the war is directly linked imo to the possibility of further attacks here in NYC.
The question is fairly simple really....if we in america attack iraq in such a way that the possibility of iraqi civilians dying is 100% likely, is it reasonable to expect iraq and its sympathisers to attack us in the same way?
The answer to that has to be yes..of course they will if they possibly can.
And the only way to do that is by attacking america directly.....the sad truth is that the war, its morality and its appropriateness has *everything* to do with the likelihood of a fresh attack on NYC.

well...Id settle for merely killing the bad guys
Monday, March 17, 2003

Dear making-a-list-of-who-to-kill,

While I agree with your sentiment, I do feel that there is a significant distinction between knowing that civies will die accidently after doing your best to avoid it, and intentionally targetting as many civies as you can. I know, I know: "tell them that..." but I do believe that there is a real difference.
And it is an issue for us here, and people everywhere: will there be respect for the rule of law at the international level? As my fiance is fond of pointing out, in a nuclear-enabled environment, there'd better be.... a foreign policy based on bullying and unilateralism will eventually lead us to apocalyptic ends.
I especially like to hear how fellow NYers feel about this stuff. It really annoys me when commentators who were far far away from here on Sept 11, 2001 tell me how I'm supposed to feel about what happened. Commentators like (yes you saw this coming) our president. Maybe if he had put down the children's book he was reading and actually showed up here I'd feel differently.

BTW: I don't mind having this thread hijacked to discuss other sorts of angst like this. I'm not sure how Joel feels about his board being used by ranting NYers to speak out on the morality of military agression, but very likely he's tickled pink that we're showing up and talking.

Charles Lewis
Monday, March 17, 2003

I heard rumors that Deutsche Bank wanted to move out of Wall Street, but they could not find anyone to lease their building (the one they bought from JP Morgan) - so they stay on and give a speech about how they are committed to rebuilding downtown.

Personally, thought I have not lived in NYC, I would stand my ground.

Prakash S
Tuesday, March 18, 2003

When I was at Merrill I was told that the financial industry as a whole was asked by the Bush administration to disperse from the Manhattan area for security reasons.

I have not heard any confirmation of this since then.

Ran
Tuesday, March 18, 2003

A friend of mine at a clearing company said that half of his company has been moved to the backup location. No doubt other companies are doing the same.

Charles Lewis
Wednesday, March 19, 2003

"Tomorrow there is a full moon in Iraq. My guess that the bombs will start then. With any luck at all we will get through this without further incident."

Tactically speaking, this would be the worst time for action to begin. High-tech is the US advantage and 'owning the night' is minimized with a full moon. The US is better off letting the Iraqi's stew for a little while and getting some more defections and possibly right of passage from the north (Turkey).

anon
Wednesday, March 19, 2003

How many Iraqis would die if Saddam continued in power indefinitely?

Jim Rankin
Wednesday, March 19, 2003

possibly more than the number of people executed in Texas in the same period.

Charles Lewis
Wednesday, March 19, 2003

far less than have died as a direct consequence of the sanctions placed on iraq by the UN

killings no fun..lets starve them to death..
Thursday, March 20, 2003

I heard a story of a man who had crossed over the Iraqi border into Jordan or Turkey. He ran into a reporter, and told him the story of his wife, who was killed in the hospital during a routine surgery in order to "prove that sanctions were killing Iraqis."

Iraqis died needlessly during sanctions because of a brutal campaign by Saddam to eliminate the sanctions. It only goes to show that our error is not in kicking him out now, but in waiting for so long.

Keith Wright
Friday, March 21, 2003

do you know a story about a man who was told by another man that he ....what?

<g> whats the definition of an urban myth again?

killings no fun..lets starve them to death..
Saturday, March 22, 2003

I heard a radio documentary interview of an Iraqi who had snuck across the border. What is the definition of primary source again?

Keith Wright
Monday, March 24, 2003

...In fact:

If you want to listen to it yourself, you can find the audio on this page:
http://www.thislife.org/pages/archives/archive02.html
It is the top most listed episode, and it is act 2 (or 3?) of the episode.

I recommend everyone to scan over the archives. "This American Life" is a damn fine series of documentaries both silly and serious.

Keith Wright
Monday, March 24, 2003

Hi Keith,

thanks fo rht link, this looks quite interesting. <g> If only I could find an application to play .ram files..what are they?

I cant seem to find a list of references for the research they've done either....

love to the world...love, to you and me...
Monday, March 24, 2003

Pretty sure that '*.ram' is usually played by realPlayer.

Download at Real.com (Prepare for AOL offers to be installed to your desktop)

Ran
Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Just one thing on the sanctions: in the abscence of a war, there was never any proposal to end the sanctions in the UN, that I know of. So, if Saddam had stayed in power, the sanctions would probably stay in effect, and far more Iraqis would die than will die from American bombs.

And you do know that immense warehouses full of food for the Republican Guard, have been found just wasting away, right?

Jim Rankin
Wednesday, April 9, 2003

This seems kind of circular: we imposed sanctions, so people there are dying, so we have to invade to keep people from dying because of the sanctions we imposed.

This sounds like a fun game: spot the circular reasoning in the war on Iraq:

we claim that there are 300 tons of anthrax in Iraq, Iraq doesn't have 300 tons of anthrax, we call them liars and demand that they turn over 300 tons of anthrax, they destroy some missiles, we pre-emptively invade Iraq because of the 300 tons of anthrax that we said they have.

OK, I can think of one more.. hmm... oh!

we institute no-fly zones over northern Iraq to keep them from killing the Kurds, they lose control of northern iraq because of the no-fly zones, terrorists begin using the lawless areas for training, we attack Iraq because of the terrorists in the lawless areas that we created with the no-fly zones.

Jeez, you just can't win.

As I've said in other posts (I think), it's not that I think that Saddam is such a nice guy, but the "reasoning" I've been fed doesn't stay down so good. I'm sure that they have very good reasons that are too complicated to explain to us, though.

Charles Lewis
Friday, April 11, 2003

As I understand it, the initial accounting determined they had x tons of anthrax (or whatever). When inspections resumed, they claimed to have no anthrax (or whatever), but also no record that it had been destroyed. There were lots of these inconsistencies.

So Iraq needed to admit they still had this stuff and announce plans to destroy it, or document how they already destroyed it. They did neither.

As for sanctions or war, was there a third option? I guess the third option was let Saddam keep and develop any weapons he pleases, and ignore the cease fire he signed. Was that your preferred option?

And whether or not Saddam was responsible for the terrorists in the Kurdish region, a result of the war is that many of them are now dead. Is this a bad thing?

And beyond all this, I have to ask, why can't you decide for yourself? Was it a good idea to get rid of Saddam, or no? You can get pretty much all the relevant information off the web to make an informed decision, without waiting for W to convince you. Let me paraphrase Reagan: are the Iraqis better off now than they were under Saddam? Are we?

ps We should really take this to the "trolling - war" thread.

Jim Rankin
Friday, April 11, 2003