The worst part for me (and I really am feeling bad about this) is that I should be concerned about the victims right now, but I can't stop thinking about what freedoms I'll be losing as a result of this.
I feel like everyone expects a reaction and increased security and such, but sometimes this type of reaction won't be fruitful. What could we learn from this -- check every trash can for a bomb at every big event? There are an unlimited number of places you could hide a bomb. If someone trying to blow people up saw the 'reaction' being checking every trash can, they would just learn not to hide their bomb in a trash can. There's just no chance we can prevent disasters like this with security increases alone.
I feel like at this point that we should be examining who did it, and what caused them to do it rather than how it could have been prevented with security measures. Get to the root of the problem and solve it there, rather than a surface-level patch. Was it a mental health thing? Was it spurred by our culture of violence and/or attention to violence? Was the attacker after a specific person? Certainly not easy to find out these answers, but would probably be effort better spent than checking trash cans.
I'm sure there will be some silly knee-jerk response that serves no good for the public and likely just inconveniences everyone. I'm also sure that people working in the government understand these short-term reactions are almost always useless. Why does it continue happening?
Is there some "silly knee-jerk" response to every such event? I don't remember the knee-jerk response to the Oklahoma City bombing. Or the Atlanta Olympics bombing. Or the first WTC bombing. Or the attempted 2010 Times Square bombing. The response to Sandy Hook is better described as "belabored" rather than "knee-jerk."
As for 9/11, that involved 3,000 people dead and the collapse of a major American icon. It killed more people than the Pearl Harbor bombing and involved direct costs and losses approaching $100 billion.[1] Jury's still out on whether it was a "silly knee-jerk" response or a reasonable wake-up to the threat of global islamic terrorism.
The response to even the most serious disasters can qualify as a "silly knee-jerk" if the response does little or nothing to ameliorate the disaster or prevent another one. 9/11 was bad, but that still doesn't justify security theater.
AEDPA is designed to keep people from spamming the federal courts with frivolous habeas petitions, particularly in capital cases. It has 'anti-terrorism' in the name, but it's almost entirely about the 'effective death penalty' part.[1] Among other things it's heavily focused on forcing federal courts to give more deference to state court judgments and avoiding situations where prisoners invoke minor technical violations in order to argue that their detentions are "illegal." It doesn't limit habeas rights--it creates stricter procedures for invoking that right that are less susceptible to abuse.
[1] The "terrorism" part seems to come from using the example of people like McVeigh to argue for procedures to keep people from defeating a death sentence by filing endless habeas petitions.
Well, we're certainly going to disagree about whether the AEDPA is good law or not. I happen to think it abridges liberties, but that's beside the point. The
point is that its passage was very much in response to the Oklahoma City Bombings, even if its legacy today has to do with habeas petitions.
See this:
"But within weeks of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Senate voted 91 to 8 to pass the Comprehensive Terrorism Protection Act of 1995, which cut back sharply on state death-row inmates’ access to federal court. This bill eventually morphed into the broader Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which President Clinton signed shortly after the first anniversary of the bombing. Standing on the south lawn of the White House, in the presence of family members of the victims of Oklahoma City and other recent terrorist incidents, the president declared that the new law “strikes a mighty blow” against terrorism." [1]
And also [2], which notes that a draft of the AEDPA also contained additional surveillance powers, among other things.
I'd definitely call the AEDPA a knee jerk reaction.
Just because a bill is motivated by an event does not make it a "knee-jerk" reaction. There has to be some element of "poorly thought out." AEDPA is a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem it addresses.
"It doesn't limit habeas rights--it creates stricter procedures for invoking that right"
Much like free speech zones don't limit free speech rights, they just create stricter procedures for exercising those rights.
AEDPA was not just about habeas corpus rights. It covers penalties for conspiracies that involve explosives and for hacking into government computers. It covers counterfeiting activities. It covers law enforcement training and assistance. It covers international terrorist funding and investigation.
It is like an embryonic version of the PATRIOT act.
Not every attempt to address security and terrorism can be deemed "rights-contracting." The other stuff in AEDPA doesn't contract any rights, just addresses particular kinds of crimes. The only thing that arguably contracts rights are the habeas portion, and that's more appropriately seen as improving habeas procedures rather than contracting rights.
"Not every attempt to address security and terrorism can be deemed "rights-contracting.""
Of course; only those that restrict our rights should be so labeled. That, unfortunately, is what the majority of attempts to address security concerns do.
"The other stuff in AEDPA doesn't contract any rights, just addresses particular kinds of crimes."
That is a tautology: take away the things that are bad, and you are left with something good. Ignore the sections that reduce, restrict, or eliminate our rights, and every knee-jerk reaction just addresses particular kinds of crimes (whether or not they do so in an effective way is another story).
"The only thing that arguably contracts rights are the habeas portion, and that's more appropriately seen as improving habeas procedures rather than contracting rights."
More appropriate according to you perhaps, and perhaps the right wing politicians who passed and signed the bill, but it is hard to say that we are "improving" civil rights by restricting them. Restricting habeas corpus is not an "improvement," it is a restriction on civil rights -- or alternatively, a contraction of our rights.
The entire argument for restricting habeas corpus in this manner was this: people facing the death penalty might try to avoid being executed by exhaustively testing every technical detail of their case in court. That does not sound like a bad thing to me, it sounds like people are making use of their rights in a life or death situation. Far too many innocent people have been executed to claim that there are too many ways for death row inmates to stave off their executions.
AEDPA was drafted by the kind of people who think The Ox-Bow Incident is a how-to manual on law enforcement. It is the mindset that sees a man like McVeigh challenging his execution and says, "How dare he! We are supposed to kill him, because he is GUILTY!" That is not how America is supposed to work. The criminal justice system in this country is meant to ensure that innocent people are not imprisoned or killed even if it means allowing guilty people to walk free and even if it means using tax dollars to pay for guilty people to challenge their conviction.
> I don't remember the knee-jerk response to the Oklahoma City bombing.
nor the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which may almost mirror this in terms of venue, injuries, & deaths. But, I think the fear is that we're now in a post-9/11 world where knee-jerk reactions are far more common.
> What could we learn from this -- check every trash can for a bomb at every big event? There are an unlimited number of places you could hide a bomb.
France, in response to terrorist attacks in the 1995 mandated that all public locations have transparent bags held by posts [1] [2]. I don't think that's a unreasonable compromise, considering the alternatives.
don't trust that your cell phone will work, the authorities are quite capable of disabling cell access in the area.
That is a very important item that many will overlook. To the person bemoaning what rights they will lose, well its not like your going to lose more, just be reminded of ones you lost and did not even realize, like that of a working cell phone.
how does that help? You could still stick a bomb in amongst the trash. Ok, it's no longer enclosed in a container that will make the blast worse but you could stick plenty of malice into a bomb the size of a football which would easily go into that bag.
You're right - it's not going to solve an inherently unsolvable engineering problem.
What it does do is solve a political problem: "What the hell did you do in response to terror attacks" in a way that does't compromise liberty much.
It does make it just that bit harder to stow a bomb, because now the bomber needs to have it packaged properly, and hope that the package doesn't a) ruin the bomb or detonating device and b) that the bomb doesn't slip out and become visible.
It also helps the police identify - they can just machete all trash bags and grab/dump the contents and sort - compared with opening up the can - which might in some areas be locked or difficult to open.
Compared with moves like the creation of the TSA, I prefer this kind of security theatre - at least there's some plot here. It's like locking out the pilot doors from the cabin.
This is missing the whole point of the parent post though.
The OP's point is that even if you can ensure 100% of the trashcans dont contain bombs for a reasonable cost, the terrorists will now just put them somewhere else.
> check every trash can for a bomb at every big event?
Actually, I think they already do that, with bomb-sniffing dogs. But they have dubious reliability, and don't catch someone who's willing to place the bomb shortly before it detonates, as may have been the case here.
When 9/11 hit my first thought was, "Travel is really going to suck now." When the Bali bombing hit, I thought, "I've been to that bar, holy sh*t!" This time around I'm thinking, "I know some people who were running."
Reaction to issues is tied to how much you can personally relate to the victims. It's also why 2 people dying in a stream in your neighborhood seems so much more relevant than 100,000 people dying in an earthquake halfway around the world.
If you are feeling bad, why are you saying it? This feels like you are standing on a soapbox and it's hard to think you are actually sorry for it when you are doing it intentionally.
I'm just a dude facing a big stab of mental dissonance right now. I'm not trying to push a political agenda. My brother ran in and finished the marathon last year. I didn't make it out to see him and I wish I had. So the first thing I feel is dread, it takes a moment to resolve that he wasn't there, and then I think will I ever be able to get close enough to reach out my hand to him as he comes down the final stretch again or did I miss that chance forever?
Will it be all police cars, dogs and jersey walls from here on out? This sucks.
> Will it be all police cars, dogs and jersey walls from here on out?
The video from the camera man on the ground at the finish line shows countless cops at the finish line. All that police presence did not prevent the detonation.
I felt the same way. My first thought was that I was glad there weren't any assault weapons involved, for which I was immediately ashamed. Immediately after that I was disgusted that Bloomberg.com wanted me to watch an ad for a new Mercedes before I could check on the well-being of my fellow humans.
I'm not proud of my thoughts, and I'm not proud of the hundred or so sarcastic remarks that I've thought of since I first heard the news either.
I am genuinely saddened that this happened, and my most sincere hope is that whomever did so is apprehended quickly and that nobody else is injured or killed while that happens. At the same time, the explosion looks (at least to me) like Tannerite, and I'm also thinking that perhaps Tannerite is going to get banned, or regulated, despite being, basically, iron oxide; which would make such a ban pretty futile.
" Immediately after that I was disgusted that Bloomberg.com wanted me to watch an ad"
Are you suggesting that they should have some automatic kill switch implemented in advance which they can hit to show sensitivity? [1] Networks also run commercials to make money it's part of how they can afford to do what they do. Of course I've seen cases where networks don't run commercials on rare occasions.
[1] And why do they need to do this? Are you willing to pay for access instead so they don't have to run any advertising?
I work for a large media organization and we have the ability to suspend advertising in response to crisis events. I'd assume other major outlets would have equivalent capabilities.
At the end of the day advertisers don't want to be associated with certain stories, and there's a public good imperative that drives rapid, open access in these tragic situations that overrides commercial interest even if that were of concern.
They're not running commercials on TV right now, but I agree that it's unrealistic to expect websites to just switch into non-commercial mode on the fly.
What's interesting though is that events like this are in fact an advertisement for TV itself and a show of value which keep people needing to have TV access. So even if they don't run advertising they also might need to do (to keep their license at least the broadcast networks) a certain amount of public good.
So they build good will as the place to go when some major event has happened and you are looking for every morsel of information or discussion about it.
Tannerite ignition is dependent on the impact of a high speed projectile. How would a terrorist with a rifle get a clean shot of the explosive through the crowd? I think it is unlikely that Tannerite was used.
Feeling bad about having a legitimate stance in the face of a tragedy isn't cause for self censorship. It might be social pariahism, but it's not cause enough for one to bite their tongue.
My second thought is how weird it is that for the next couple of days the attention and focus of a 100s of millions of people's will be directed at the circumstances surrounding the deaths of perhaps 20 people of no particular notability. It's as if these are the only 20 people that died lately. The attention and focus of the public in this modern era of global communications is a strange thing.
Sounds legit to me. Do you feel bad about the hundred of people murdered every day? I don't. Its just that they aren't on the news.
I'd feel bad for the people i remotely know, or for the families if I were to meet them, but otherwise.. it's not any different. It's bad, but doesn't make one feel bad - and that's perfectly fine.
what he says actually makes perfect sense. thousands of syrians are dying everyday, and I don't see much mentions about them on HN for example. yes you will feel bad, but you will quickly move on and forget about it as long as it doesn't relate directly to you.
Who knows. But after every crisis there should be a post mortem and we should learn from what went wrong. And why does every change in policy and approach have to be seen as a threat to anybody's freedoms? Not that many of the short-sighted response aren't just that, but this sort of knee jerk reaction seems just as unhealthy.
Try saying that when you are directly affected by actions like this.
It is easy to stand back at 100ft and say this type of crap, but the fact is, crazy people are all around us, and we should try to be proactive instead of reactive.
We as a society owe it ourselves to reflect on events such as this, and see if there was anything that could have been done to prevent it. If the answer is yes, then we SHOULD act. Does that mean freedoms need to be restricted, laws to be enacted? No, it could mean better technology, maybe better security, maybe MORE security.
I hope no new laws come of something like this, but if it means reducing the chance that this happens again, I am all for it.
Our rights are absolute, but we also need to compromise. We can't let ourselves become 1984, but we can become safer, smarter, more efficient with regards to security.
"No, it could mean better technology, maybe better security, maybe MORE security."
Is it cold to point out that we are already living in an age of more security? There were paramilitary police teams at the marathon, ready to take on a small army -- but the attackers found a way to plant their bombs anyway.
When the TSA was established and billions of dollars were spent on securing our airlines, a tiny minority of people were saying that if another attack occurred it would not be on an airplane. Now we have seen another attack, it was not on an airplane nor anywhere near an airport. We do no need another massive security bureaucracy designed to prevent marathons or city streets from being attacked, because that will just push terrorists to attack something else. There are far too many ways to attack a country as large and developed as the United States to have a sprawling bureaucracy for all of them.
"I hope no new laws come of something like this, but if it means reducing the chance that this happens again, I am all for it."
The problem is that there's always "something" more that could be done to prevent these types of incidents, but eventually the costs of additional preventative measures will outweigh the reduction in risk they provide, if they haven't already.
No, people will always kill other people, that is the unfortunate truth of human nature. That doesn't mean there aren't multiple problems here, and each one with multiple solutions.
Our lawmakers know just as well as we do, that more laws won't fix events like these, but better messaging ("See something say something"), better trained police officers, etc.. these are things that are controllable, changeable, and have a hugely positive impact on preventing horrible things like this from happening.
"See something say something" is still far too late in the process. As a society we need to do a better job of preventing people from being abused, neglected, and marginalized.
No doubt some "reforms" will be implemented that will funnel even more money into the pockets of lobbyist-using companies and big-time campaign donors.
Watershed events always create these emotional knee jerk reactions. As opposed to "well we can save lives by driving 50 mph instead of 70 mph but since that's legacy we aren't likely to not consider the impact on society as a whole by lowering the speed limit."
No worries, you're simply thinking pragmatically, when everyone else is emotional. The killings are nothing but a mode of transport for destruction of freedom.
I think you're being too hard on yourself. I live in Boston and have friends who were in very real danger, and I still had that same thought go through my head. On the merits of the the thought, we should not accord much weight to the "it's too soon!" line of thinking. Nor is the tragedy of a death proportional to its media coverage. So you aren't being monstrous.
But more importantly, having a thought you aren't proud of is no mortal sin, nor is publishing it honestly on the internet. You're supposed to feel conflicted and confused; something bad happened and we're all going to have a wide range emotionally-charged responses.
I didn't read it as attention whoring. I'd be inclined to think that the relatively few (but nevertheless very visible) harsh responses you've received are at least in part expected, valid, and understandable reactions to the possibility that you might just be right. After all, we don't want to believe that a tragic event like this might be used to tighten the noose of security around our collective necks. But what if it does?
Given recent history, there's little reason to feel that it won't and plenty to worry that it will.
Well stop agonizing about it and delete it then. I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm pointing out that it's something useful you can do right now to get it off the top of the page.
That doesn't accomplish anything useful. A day or two from now, someone who hasn't yet seen the thread will wonder what the "deleted" part of the conversation was for.
The best thing to do if you disagree with the position of the OP's comment is to upvote other siblings. Personally, I think this discussion is interesting because it addresses in real time the implications of what this attack might be (if any).
Why is this the top thread? I'm being serious here... I honestly don't understand how this got all the way up to the top where as others of much greater worth (IMHO) sit below...
I agree totally. I'd delete it if it would take it from the top instead of leaving the discussion there behind a curious "deleted".
I've scrolled down and up-voted as many of those more valuable comments as I could. I encourage everyone who reads this far to go and do the same.
As I said, I thought this would be a "one voice among many" kind of post, not become the lightning-rod of this thread. Parent is right. Go read the better stuff.
You seem to be implying that because North Korea is less free than us, we are completely free with nothing to lose. That's pretty faulty logic. Better to be aware of the freedoms we are losing (even though we still have many) than to risk ending up like North Korea.
> You seem to be implying that because North Korea is less free than us, we are completely free with nothing to lose. That's pretty faulty logic. Better to be aware of the freedoms we are losing (even though we still have many) than to risk ending up like North Korea.
Clearly my point completely flew over your head. I was only commenting on how ridiculous it was that tomjen3 claimed that we had already lost all our freedoms in the very same sentence that he mentioned a country that is far more oppressive than our own.
It'll probably kick-start an invasive drone surveillance bill and some unrelated oil-rich country being turned into dust. I wish this was hyperbole but based on previous US reactions this makes the most sense.
For what it's worth, I upvoted this question despite so many comments bemoaning its existence.
The facts will be fleshed out over time on the regular news, so I see less value in comments just parroting that. Rather, (if this is to be discussed on Hacker News at all), I'd prefer it to be about the ramifications of the event, and especially how it relates to technology, or laws/regulations that foster the development of technologies.
I'm a Bostonian (at work about a mile from the explosions), and I wish everyone would just cool their jets a bit until more is known about what's going on.
If anything a successful terrorist attack should be a condemnation of the freedom-sacrificing mechanisms that have been put in place like the PATRIOT Act. They just failed.
The most likely change to your freedoms is 'none whatsoever' -- tragedies on this scale don't threaten society as a whole and therefore are dealt with by existing laws.
I think it largely depends on who will be found as the culprit.
If it would be found that this is an Islamist terror attack the aftermath will be much more pronounced then a scenario where the blame will be on say some extreme right wing group.
Much of the lose of freedom we all suffer from is due to entrenched xenophobia becoming political agenda, it seems much harder to enact changes when the criminals are white Americans ala Timothy McVeigh or some horrific mass shooting
Another thing to focus on is the infrastructure. Telephone lines and data networks must be clogged, it just goes to show how much we need reliable networks and data infrastructures for such vital occurrences!
Fuck off. How much blood has the western world lost to achieve freedom, privacy, and a government by the people for the people? We cannot continue to allow the enemy to terrorize us into giving up our liberties.
Harsh as it may be, the people dying and losing their limbs will have no direct impact on my life, or on most other people's lives. It's a tragedy for their friends and loved ones, but I'm not in that group, so it's a very abstract thing - I feel bad, but it won't affect me personally.
Losing freedom has the potential to affect me personally, so I'm more concerned about it.
And I don't necessarily agree it's too early to discus the consequences of this. The authorities on the scene are handling the immediate situation, and there's very little to be done from 2K miles away.
> And I don't necessarily agree it's too early to discus the consequences of this. The authorities on the scene are handling the immediate situation, and there's very little to be done from 2K miles away.
I agree. Chance are, the friends and family who are directly affected by this aren't going to be trawling through comments on HN--there are more pressing concerns.
The rest of us, and maybe this will sound equally harsh, need to divorce ourselves from the emotional impact if there's nothing we can do (or donate to the appropriate organizations if so inclined). Right now, there's little that can be done, and even less information still. That leaves the most objective option as what we're doing right now: That is to say the discussion of potential policy changes.
I'm not sure this event is significant enough to affect anything on a large scale (e.g. TSA on every street corner), but you do have to wonder what changes might be made to future marathons as a consequence. I don't necessarily think that's harsh as much as it is objective.
100's of people die and lose their limbs in an tragic, yet oddly sensational event, and your first move is to decry a person angry about how the government uses similarly sensational events to systematically impose restrictions of freedom on (more or less) the entire world.
People losing lives, in this case, will likely not be the end of the tragedy. I think it is legitimate to be concerned about how much worse it may get with political involvement and the resulting unreasoned "do something" responses.
Even moreso of a reason to not waste energy and thought on phantom evils. Spending nonstop conscious effort confiscating useless attack vectors leaves you less prepared for actual danger.
In the sturm und drang that has resulted from this tragedy, and the weeks to come of hand wringing about terrorists/crazyfolk/etc across the major news networks, I hope against hope that we can stow our reptilian brains for a brief while… In the 3 hours that have passed since the top comment was made, 205 people in the US have died from heart disease(1), an almost entirely preventable disease. This observation may be construed as heartless, insensitive to the victims, and "if it were your X then it would be different"… but I contend that each time we act like chimps and allow our attention to be drawn to the latest epidemiologically insignificant tragedy we lose as a species. A van distributing a year's supply of aspirin to the fleeing masses would have been more helpful than any ambulance..
I've never quite understood that argument. It's not about it being insensitive, just irrelevant. It seems to have an implicit but completely unsupported premise that every death is equal.
First, there's age: deaths from heart disease tend to happen at old age. In most cultures, death at old age is considered less tragic than the death of an infant or young adult. Also, there's the perceived "naturality" of death: death by natural causes is considered less tragic and less repugnant than murder. And finally there's the fear aspect: a specific murder of A by B for reason X is repugnant but it doesn't necessarily makes other people fear for their lives, while a bombing in a public setting makes people worry that they and their loved ones might be targets too.
I think they're very different arguments. uber is saying that this incident is relatively insignificant, since more people died of heart attack today. Schneier is saying that (i) we overstate the impact/probability of terrorist attacks. Note that this is not the same as merely comparing number of bombing deaths with deaths from natural causes; if this was happening every week, surely it would be considered a worrying development, even if the number of daily bombing deaths was still less than deaths by heart disease or car accidents. And (ii) that we should refuse to be terrorized as that gives power to terrorists.
I think (i) isn't a very solid argument since we can't estimate the probability of future terrorist attacks the same way we can calculate the probability of winning the lottery, or as we can estimate the probability of x deaths by heart attack in the next 5 years. For example, suppose we count the number of bombings against civilians in pre-2nd-intifada Israel. In 1999 there were 2 bombings. In 2000, when the intifada started, 5. In the following 2 years, 40 then 47. I haven't checked, but I suppose the same pattern would hold for pre- and post-invasion Iraq (note that this isn't an argument pro or anti the invasion).
I'm not saying that the same thing is likely to happen in the US, I'm just pointing out a weakness in the argument. Overall, though, I think Schneier has a point.
But still, considering the significance of this bombing, some people are reacting so emotionally, it's almost pathetic. Compared to 9/11, this is nothing, only 3 people died. Even if we ignore predictable deaths that you mentioned, there similarly tragic and unpredictable deaths happening all the time that get much smaller attention.
And when humans first landed on the Moon, think of all the other people (not to mention animals) that landed elsewhere that same day! But the sensationalist media only covered the Moon landing.
I think there is a small bit of difference between you choosing to live your life in such a way that heart disease will be your end, vs someone else deciding to blow your limbs off.
"[R]andom acts of benevolence are a good reaction to random acts of violence."
I find some kind of beauty in that. It might just be the phrase "random acts of benevolence", which I've never seen before, but I intensely respect this position.
My first reaction was that pg's original tweet was really tasteless, but after mulling it over, I went and donated anyway. Perhaps at least a tiny bit of good can come from this.
Watsi's a nonprofit, so I'm pretty sure neither YC or PG are getting rich off of it.
I think it's a good reminder that serious shit isn't going down just in Boston right now, and that you can help people suffering right now, wherever they are.
Just a little too soon after, only a couple hours, combined with confusion over for-profit status makes it look tone deaf but it is really not. People are suffering - help suffering people.
I don't see how this is a bad thing - related to YC or not.
It's a practical way to have people go from feeling helpless to actually helping people who need it (whether they'll be covered by the lastest media cycle or not).
As pg tries to explain, it's not a YC company but a charity he supports (and therefore knows about) and it's also one that he thinks can help people get (afford) medical treatment.
I think this is one of those things where utilitarianism can appear tasteless. If something like this dissuades someone from spending ten minutes creating another "pray for boston" twitter graphic in favor of learning about a service where someone can directly contribute to saving a life, then which ten minutes has a higher probability of leading to assistance in saving a life? But on the other hand, it looks like changing the subject when we all should be demonstratively supportive of Boston because something horrible happened and that's what we're supposed to do when something horrible happens.
I completely disagree, and I'd be interested in hearing a defense of your beliefs.
People are suffering the world over. Some suffering is less shocking and unique than other suffering (and therefore less newsworthy), but suffering is suffering just the same. Widely-covered events such as this one should serve as a reminder to us all of the constant suffering going on the world over that is not covered. For any moral person, the thought of living in a world in which less than 1% of human suffering garners more than 99% of the attention should be unbearable.
I have no idea how you can say that helping people in one area "has nothing to do with" helping people in another.
> I have no idea how you can say that helping people in one area "has nothing to do with" helping people in another.
That one's easy: what tangible benefit will people suffering from the events of the Boston Marathon get from a donation to Watsi? None? Then it has nothing to do with it.
People are indeed suffering the world over. Objectively it would be better if people who want to do something donated to Watsi instead of wringing their hands, praying/sending thoughts, and reloading cnn.com. But people are not objective and trying to steal this kind of attention for your own cause is highly insensitive.
Also, it comes off as crass and tasteless and generally won't work. Except on people who can keep their objectivity in this situation, which categorically aren't the ones pg is trying to reach. So this is crass, tasteless, highly insensitive, and ineffective.
> That one's easy: what tangible benefit will people suffering from the events of the Boston Marathon get from a donation to Watsi? None? Then it has nothing to do with it.
This is becoming pure wordplay now. Sure, if you take the vague phrase "something to do with" and redefine it more specifically as "provides tangible benefits to", then you'd be right. But who gives you the authority to redefine it so? PG made the relation clear in his tweet: "When terrible things happen to people I can't help, I ... help people I can." In other words, he uses tragedies as a reminder to donate to the less fortunate.
Seems pretty simple to me.
As for the rest of your post, it seems that your argument rests on the belief that PG's tweet didn't cause anyone to donate. If so, your argument fails, because some people did donate as a result of PG's tweet (or at least claimed to).
But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that, instead, your argument rests on the belief that getting a few people to donate is not worth causing offense to others. In that case, I would denounce your argument is immature, selfish, and immoral. I would gladly give offense to 10 or 20 people (and tell them to get over themselves) if it caused 1 person to donate to Watsi.
Lastly, you haven't provided any evidence why people should be offended. I completely disagree that anything PG did was crass, insensitive, or tasteless. Au contraire, I think you are the one mistaken for interpreting it that way. You've misappropriated an arbitrary societal rule for reasons you likely cannot defend.
My argument rests on the belief that attempting to exploit a tragedy to grab attention for your unrelated interests is socially offensive. I cannot conceive of how you gleaned the interpretation you did, but that you did suggests that actual meaningful conversation here is fundamentally impossible.
This has been pure wordplay for quite a while. My mistake was engaging the hive in defense mode.
> attempting to exploit a tragedy to grab attention for your unrelated interests
"exploit": False. PG does not benefit from people donating to Watsi. What he's doing is quite literally the opposite of exploitation: persuading people to give money to others.
"unrelated interests": I've already debunked this, as did PG in his tweet. A terrible event occurred. This has caused people to become abnormally empathetic toward their fellow man. PG is encouraging people to channel that empathy into a good cause however they can.
The belief your argument rests on consists entirely of falsehoods.
See, even more wordplay. You're picking the definitions of my words that make it easiest to argue with them, then knocking down the straw man you've constructed. That in any given response only a fraction of my statements are cited supports this.
Hurray, you've successfully countered an argument I wasn't making! I suppose congratulations are in order, though I'm at a loss as to why.
And you're intentionally keeping your arguments vague, which makes it impossible for me attack them, then refusing to clarify in your response. "Exploit" and "unrelated" are very common words, and the definitions I took were the most common ones. If you're going to use obscure definitions to prove your point, the onus is on you to clarify. Until you do, the fact the remains that PG was not "exploiting" the event, nor was his recommendation "unrelated", and you have no justifiable reason for taking offense.
Because people forget about the horrors occurring every day all around the world. People don't realize what is happening else where until it's in their own backyard, and even then, they will go back to sipping their lattes and living their lives in no time.
I find the fact that there is is an argument over this far more tasteless and rude.
I like the practicalness of the advice. It might actually lead to some good in this world.
It's times like this when people stop to think about other human beings and might actually act on something. Unfortunately during normal times we are really bad at that.
I also like the practicalness of the advice, but it feels rather crass coming from someone deeply involved in Watsi. Good intentions or not, using a horrible event to promote something else altogether while the event is still happening is in terribly bad taste.
...the obvious conclusion being that it would be appropriate for me to tell people to stop talking about the boston marathon so we could discuss the Mariners game that happened on Sunday.
Its 'tasteless and rude' because those people aren't on CNN?
Orders of magnitude more people will die or be injured today from gun violence, car accidents or disease but 99.9% of them will not make the news, a reminder of this is anything but tasteless and rude.
He only called attention to those who were not directly involved with the event. Nobody injured or within range to have a traumatic experience from the event was reading pg's twitter feed and getting offended. Only you were.
Do not forget that live media organisations, which promise yet another update of the "event" in a few minutes, are effectively promoting themselves, and profiting from it.
I would like a way to filter out everything that includes the word "pray" in it unless it is from a respected news source. 90% of what any person ever says in response to everything that happens in america is "pray for it". It's sort of muddy to look at.
Actually it's just completely obnoxious. I like the site though.
You're absolutely right. "Pray for boston" is trending on Twitter and Instagram right now, so it really muddies up the feed. We'll get a way to put negative search terms in there.
as a general rule, avoid the word favorites altogether in any software, unless you are certain it will only be used in the US. We spell it favourites, and "favvOrrittez" as you seem to spell it, really grates. Esp in IE, whereas Net/moz always called them bookmarks. Fayvritz.
This is incredible.. but at the same time you've exposed me to the multitudes of people that are just so hungry to make a "viral" image. I can't believe it.
Yeah, this is a problem, especially with Instagram. As a random aside, watching this has been a really interesting look into how viral marketing is done.
This looks to be shaping up well. Might I suggest a new word for "Favorites" though. Maybe it is silly but it seems odd to me to Favorite gore pictures et. al. "Important" or "Impactful" or something else might be a better word when the content could be that of loss and suffering.
It's pretty good at holding traffic. Not so much when it comes to curious "stop by, see what's up, open a websocket, leave." But we're working on making it better, and it is back and running smooth now. Thanks for checking it out :)
Basically it searches and refreshes all of the social media networks in real time (twitter, youtube, instagram, flickr, wordpress, blogger) and shows them in three streams, allowing you to "favorite" the best stuff you see and separate it out.
But the really cool stuff is what we can do with data of what users have favorited.
This is a really good question, and should be referring to all apis and their limits. This was my approach: Create a parser that lives off of apis, just under posted limits. Although we had a few thousand visitors today, there was only one direct line to each data source. There's a viewer server that reaches for data every so often depending on your desired speed (I think it's set to somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds) and broadcasts it. So if the parser goes down, or tags change, or services get mad, you can fix and restart without requiring clients to refresh. I'm still not in love with the solution, but it worked nicely today. Thanks!
Thanks for the explanation. I worked for a one of the eleven companies that still had rights to access the Firehose after the debacle and I saw a lot of great projects stymied by the new rules.
150 visitors on the site right now, so I guess it depends on your definition of "blowing up." We're getting visits from YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. but I haven't dug into where exactly.
And as to "launching" in a thread, I don't really consider this a full "launch." Our product is needed, so even though it isn't ready we pushed it live.
Yeah, like I said the product is brand new. It discards everything with "RT" or "Retweet" as well as a few other things in it (if it weren't finals week it would discard everything with "pray," but we should be taking our exams right now). Soon it will split up different tweets and show them to different people.
Anyone ever see the movie "Four Lions"? Basically it's a dark comedy about a bunch of jihadist trying to bomb the London Marathon, but fail because they're incompetent.
Actually weren't these bombers incompetent? How many people were running in this marathon? As far as I understand, if the bombs would have went off about 10 minutes earlier it would have been really bad.
Depends what their aim is. If the aim is to kill maximum people then yes, they were lousy bombers. If their aim was to cause fear and disruption by demonstrating the ability to detonate two explosive devices within seconds of each other, at a very busy location that's had some security screening, but with the advantage of not killing many people - then they succeeded.
I don't get that. Who ever did this is getting caught, so showing what they could do is pointless. They won't remain free long enough for a repeat performance. What other motivation could they have had then creating terror? Hundreds of dead is a lot more terror than three.
Slightly off topic, but is anyone else confused by the fact that several runners in this video[1] reacted to the explosion but did not turn and proceeded to keep running? These people weren't exactly leading the pack (at a 4+ hours finish time), so my guess is that they are just severely deprived of nutrients and aren't processing what's happening, but it's still a bit baffling to me why some didn't turn to see what was going on.
*EDIT - thanks to those who confirmed. My confusion is now totally irrelevant after seeing the finish-line view of the same people[2]. It just took them a few seconds to register and they were just in a running flow.
I've never run a marathon, but I've attended several supporting runners I knew. I spent my time at the finish line watching the runners come across.
Pretty much everyone who finishes is some level of fucked up. Their body chemistry is way-the-hell out of whack, with problems from dehydration, hyponatremia, glycogen depletion, and boosted or dampened immune system reactions. Usually there are people at the finish looking for trouble cases and shunting them directly to the medical tent. (Because the runner might not even recognize that how bad a state they are in.)
I've had hyponatremia once after an ill-advised hike, and I literally couldn't form sentences out loud.
It doesn't surprise me that people weren't reacting in a normal way, because they weren't in a normal state of being.
Most people simply don't know how to react in a situation like this. Is normal to do silly things when normal people is inmersed in an emergency. Some people take photos standing in the way to the exit, others flee away in the wrong direction creating a risk of stampede, most not trained people (and even some of the trained people) do exactly the type of things that you should not to do... is pretty habitual.
If you've ever run a marathon, you'd know. 4 hours is still a pretty decent time for 26 miles and, for most runners, the last leg up to finish line is usually a pretty exhausting/euphoric time. Aside from your own heartbeat and breathing, you really don't notice much else.
To me, it looks like they respond physically to the shockwave but are not mentally registering anything other than the finish line.
I raced bicycles in college and I can say with confidence that after a 4-6 hour training ride I was wiped out physically and mentally. Had an explosion gone off when I was in that state and only a few blocks from home I would have made sure I was OK and kept pedaling for gatorade and a shower. I don't see their behavior as terribly puzzling given my fairly extensive experience with an exhausted state of mind.
I had done serious mountain biking and my worst injuries are not from doing extremely dangerous things like hard dropping from a 3 meter slippery stone, witch is something you prepare very well, but for really really stupid errors when being physically, and specially mentally exhausted.
I was 2centimeters away from losing an eye, with itching and hurting wounds in my face, some fractured bones.
On retrospect it was like part of my brain disconnected for most of the time when exhausted.
I could understand the man whose legs stop supporting him with the blast, hopefully he recovers.
I'm quite astonished by the disproportionate media attention and hysteria. For comparison 55 people died today in an Iraq bombing and about 80 people die every day on the U.S. roadways.
I tried explaining this to someone earlier... apparently it's not a numbers game because of assumed risk. There is little to no risk to watching a marathon, whereas living in Iraq or speeding on the highway there is implied risk.
I'm not trying to discredit what you're saying, just pointing out why people (my friend and probably a lot of others) go into hyper sensitive reactionary mode.
That and people aren't robots. A bombing in Boston means more to someone in New York than does one in Iraq, and purposeful taking of innocent life means more than accidental death.
Well, the innocent people being blown up in Iraq certainly weren't accidentally being blown up. And we had a much bigger role in creating the situation in Iraq than we did the situation in Boston...
A bombing in Boston hits home to people in New York, because people can relate to their countrymen better than they can to random people on the other side of the planet with a different culture and history. This is human nature.
Right. That's why everyone here on HN cared as much about the black guys who get railroaded by overzealous prosecutors each year as they did about Aaron swartz and weev. Relating to people like yourself is a totally outmoded concept and doesn't serve any useful social purpose at all. That's why everyone is so happy that "world citizen" billionaires have overcome such trivialities like national loyalty and figured out how to export American prosperity all over the world. We totally love that.
What is disproportionate about it? Large bombs don't go off in US cities every day. Are you surprised that there are bombings in Iraq? Is that something you don't expect?
When has the news ever covered stories solely in proportion to the number of people who died? I don't understand how you could be astonished by this...
Well, when I was reading it on HN I thought "There was a bomb in Boston and two people died, what's so intersting about this, why it's on HN and why are people in the comments so emotional?" I'm not from the US but even where I live this is top news. I felt similarly with the boring and overhyped Fukushima crisis.
Why wouldn't you? HN is hosted in the US. It's going to have US news occasionally. The bombing only killed 3 people because of all of the first responders. It could have easily been in the double-digits. There are 150 people injured by the blasts.
... And none about chemical weapon's first use in Siria "yesterday" with a lot of innocent people running with burned flesh in the streets, yes I can understand what you are trying to say. Sad times.
I'm understand also, as you should, that this is an international community of people. There is, probably, a lot of brilliant minds here from many coins of this small floating rock, so it is expected that we could talk freely about universal problems and achieve much more than just a local and restricted point of view (and maybe to talk about possible ways to avoid this tragedies again and again).
Our behavior is interesting, given the post I just read on how news is so rarely worth reading and watching. I see a lot of people at work looking for the latest updates. Someone’s watching TV in the next room – they’re just repeating everything over and over, mixing in the new tiny details they learn.
I’m really sad about this, but where I know no one in Boston and can’t do anything about it, I’m just going to check back tomorrow when we know more rather than working myself up looking for the latest like I usually would.
> I know no one in Boston and can’t do anything about it, I’m just going to check back tomorrow when we know more rather than working myself up looking for the latest like I usually would.
To the best of my ability, I'll do the same.
There's nothing we can currently do. The news for the next 24 hours will be nothing but the newscasters making assumptions, bad connections, and conjecture. The rest of the time will be filled with interviews from people "on the ground." We'll gain nothing from watching it.
I feel like the smallest, tiniest "fuck you" I can muster to the person who did this is to spend this time working on something to make a slice of society marginally better, rather than spending the night passively absorbing all the negativity and sorrow he/she has caused.
Holy shit... my cousin and his wife were supposed to be there, as his wife was running in the marathon this year. Still haven't managed to get in touch with them, but my cousin's sister heard from them... they were a block away when the first explosion happened. %@#%! I'm... shit... don't know what to say, other than being very happy they are still alive. But apparently there's been a bomb threat at the hotel across the street from theirs, so they're still kind of panicking.
If you know someone who was running the marathon and haven’t heard from them, you can see if they logged times here:
http://raceday.baa.org/individual.html
Turns out my cousin's wife got injured in training and didn't run today. They were just there to cheer on some friends who were running. Last I heard they were OK, but, as you can guess, the flow of detailed information in and out of Boston is pretty patchy right now.
From the comments, "Roupen Bastajian, a 35-year-old state trooper from Smithfield, R.I., had just finished the race when they put the heat blanket wrap on him and he heard the first blast.
"I started running toward the blast. And there were people all over the floor," he said. "We started grabbing tourniquets and started tying legs. A lot of people amputated. ... At least 25 to 30 people have at least one leg missing, or an ankle missing, or two legs missing."
Whoever did this is getting their terror/propaganda effect - 30 people with lost limbs will have a much higher media impact than 300 dead in, say, an airliner bombing.
c'mon, people have smartphones. companies like facebook, twitter, foursquare, etc know your location and should be able to push notifications alerting people to stay away/at home.
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes guys, here I was trying to show a real need. I've been calling friends in NY/Boston the past 30min asking to see if they are OK + stay at home.
Alerts can be sent out to particular geographic areas by restricting the cell towers they are distributed through, and "many providers have chosen to transmit WEAs using a technology that is separate and different from voice calls and SMS text messages. This technology ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services."
The bar an alert has to clear to go out over it is very high, however, to avoid people being desensitized by false alarms.
Capitalization. Nonsensical reference to corporations that has nothing to do with this event. Lack of domain knowledge regarding already existing FCC notification systems. Random mention of New York, which is neither geographically proximal to Boston nor affected by this event.
EDIT: I know there's a statement regarding NY being "on alert" but there is no indication they have any reason to do so, or are doing so in reaction to anything.
I was in Hawaii 2 weeks ago, and they were broadcasting these types of alerts to my girlfriend's phone (Android 4), to warn about a risk of flash floods. Android was even using text-to-speech to read the alert out loud, and automatically, which woke us up during the night!
Think how exactly the alerts happen is up to the OEM, beyond 'loud noise'. The iPhone uses something similar to the EBS tone in 1s bursts (it was 1AM when mine fired, so I can't say with certainty if it was the same tone or not). I've heard similar from other Android users, but I've shut off the alerts on all my phones since.
I received an Amber Alert for a girl from Philadelphia a few months ago on this system (or a similar one). It was surreal being in a restaurant and hearing over a dozen phones go off almost simultaneously.
I did not get an amber alert, and I am in Boston. Maybe due to the cell signal jamming to stop any additional detonations. I had to call family from Google Voice on my laptop to get in touch. Pretty crazy
I started getting them sometime within the last year. Weather warnings and amber alerts. I always assumed that I started getting these as a result of some change in the Android software, but maybe it was a change in policy somewhere?
I wonder about the legal implications of providing a service like that. Lets say Facebook started an emergency alert system based on geographical data. What happens if they report a false emergency? What happens if they fail to report a real emergency? Would they be liable if they did not respond with their alerts in a timely manner?
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know, but if people came to rely on an emergency alert system that was not reliable... I would get nervous to say the least. Look at the bad press Google and Apple get whenever their maps lead someone into danger.
Emergency alert systems have been mandated by the federal government in one for or another (radio, TV, etc) for decades. With an increasing number of people no longer watching live TV or radio (due to DVRs and the Internet) it makes sense to mandate a new channel for emergency alerts in case of severe weather, etc., which is exactly what Congress does.
I don't think the objective is "perfect" targeting and delivery. The intent is to message as many people as possible within an affected area as quickly, as possible. IANAL, but I suspect it would be very difficult to hold companies liable if the service doesn't work properly - for one thing, it's not a service you're expressly paying them for, it's something they're doing as a public service.
Thanks for the downvotes guys, here I was trying to show a real need. I've been calling friends in NY/Boston the past 30min asking to see if they are OK + stay at home.
Even paid for Facebook's promote service to get the word out that other devices are being "detected" and that the issue can extent to NY.
NY on alert via Reuters: https://twitter.com/reuters
> Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner, tells Reuters that in response to #BostonMarathon, NY police stepping up security #breaking
That's one of the reasons I use Republic Wireless (I'm just a customer and not affilated in any way) - my cell phone can route calls over any open WiFi hotspot it can find.
This is mere seconds after the explosion took place, with the smoke still drifting through the air. Already they've made it to the side of the most obvious casualty; I can't really see the basis for your comment.
Yes. At least four of them are running away from the bomb site, the other two are staring at a fallen athlete. Maybe they though he was shot or something, I just can't make sense of it, hence the question.
After 9/11 (and umpteen IED in Iraq and Afghanistan), it was drilled into most emergency services personnel NOT to rush on the site of an explosion, for fear of secondary devices.
These guys are doing that: moving people away from the blast area, both for their safety and to make it easier for paramedics and bomb squad to reach it, while helping whoever cannot move.
I usually don't like police forces the world over (and Boston has some nasty precedents), but this picture makes them look well-trained, reactive and downright heroic -- which is probably not the case, they're just professionals trying to do their job.
Generally speaking, the one place a criminal is not is the scene of the crime. Explosion over there? If the criminal is still around, they are not going to be at that site (and if they are, they're not in a state to worry about further criminal action coming from them).
Explosion happened somewhere around (edit) noon PST, 3pm EDT. A little before. Elite women marathon times are in the 2:15 and slower range. Elite men are 2:05 and slower. Not sure about likely times for the earlier groups.
The finish clock on the video is correct, but it's very likely for third wave runners who started forty minutes after the first wave. So they finished in 4:09, but 4:49 from the start of the elite race. Made no sense to me at first because I was in the first wave, was walking back to my hotel 4:09 after my start, but heard nothing. Tacking on forty minutes makes the timeline add up, as I was napping by then (and wondering why sirens were interrupting my nap).
I'm glad people are posting photos like this - I hate how traditional media almost always post 'clean' pictures and video taken afterwards that make it hard to discern what actually happened.
FWIW, watch out for the Бостоне ("Boston" in Russian/Cyrillic) trending topic on Twitter. There's at least one extremely graphic photo of a gentleman who has lost the majority of his left leg. After seeing that, I'm opting to avoid further photos.
No, it's strawberry jam, can't you tell? (I'm sorry for the sarcasm, you've sort of asked for it. I'm officially curious: what else did you think it was?)
Ridiculous and sad are the two emotions that come to mind. I've run the Boston Marathon and plan on running again next year (want to re-qualify, but will likely run with a charity anyway). I grew up close to the route and have spent pretty much every April watching family or friends run. It's ridiculous because I don't know how else to describe it and sad because a great tradition is going to change, likely in unfortunate ways, for the foreseeable future. It's just an empty feeling, like memories from the years before will never be possible again.
If you've never run a marathon, and especially a big one, it's a unique experience. Rarely are elite athletes on the same course/playing field with "regular" people and all being cheered on (with no barriers) by residents. Watch any footage and you'll see onlookers almost bump into the fastest men/women in the world (hell, they even give out cups of beer at BC). Talk about feeling close to a community and feeding off their energy, I can't think of anything else like that.
It's sad that something like that has likely changed forever. I hope more than anything in the coming months and years this disruption/incontinuity can be turned into a positive that makes the event even better, that the community will overcome everything that's happened. I'm confident it will, but right now it's just sad.
I was about to argue that making something up about this was beyond the level of inaccuracy that NyPost might stoop to, but then I realized I do not know. I guess we will find out soon enough.
If this continues I wonder if we're going to start seeing drones with "Persistent Stare" (24 hour recording of a massive area that creates an enormous video of the entire city) employed over American Cities.
Had one been used already, they would have been able to take the video, slowly reverse it to see who dropped off the package in the dumpster, and then follow that person back to their home or business. Thus finding out who did it.
Yes, I forgot it was called ARGUS. Argus would be perfect, as horrifying as the privacy concerns are, I'm not sure there is any expectable of privacy in being outdoors in public. The ability to fight nearly every kind of crime would be astronomical.
From finding who dropped off a dead body and the home they went back to, to busting meth labs, illegal arms dealers, kidnapped children, missing persons. My only worry is, this will be used against people simply smoking pot or other things that aren't morally wrong but legally punishable.
It's horrific to see this happen. I hope that people make it out of this ok, and they get to bottom of who did this. Seeing these kinds of senseless attacks on the innocent is just disgusting.
Agreed. I try to be very understanding of the fact that it is usually the winner that decides who is the "good guy" and the "bad guy" in history, but doing something like this is "bad guy" regardless of the reason. Nothing but a senseless tragedy. My thoughts are with anyone who has friends and family affected.
Drones are flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan right now, atatcking innocent families. A Zionist invasion of Palestine in the 1940s is pushing into Gaza, the West Bank, southwest Syria, and innocent Palestinians are being killed daily - with US backing. The US is doing this all over the world, or enabling it. It's a laugh to see the people who invaded Iraq and tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib getting on their high horse. The chickens are just beginning to come home to roost in this case.
First of all I am a Canadian, living in Canada and have no association with the actions of the US Government. Secondly I do not condone killing of innocent people in any situation, and just because there are other instances of this happening in the world doesn't minimize the fact that this attack is wrong.
I am expressing my support to the victims of this tragedy and my disgust over an attack which was clearly ment to hurt and kill innocent people. If this discussion was about a similar attack anywhere else in the world by anyone I would have the same opinion of the attack. But it's not.
Or, for the people who are in Boston or know anyone who is in Boston, this news is a very important notification. I don't think the news media was responsible for this incident.
To some extent they are. Assholes like the people that set this up love the press and the press loves them in a way. Every time some jerk kills off a bunch of innocents there is money to be made and without a platform I wonder how many of these idiots would do their deeds. Media and crime like this feed off each other.
I was watching the marathon about a mile from the finish line. I saw how a great celebration turned into sadness and fear. But as sad as this made me feel, it made me feel even worst that this is what my loved family is living in Mexico every day. Just across the border from this beautiful country. As important as this is, shouldn't every child be as valuable no matter where they are born? Today, I saw a lot of anger on my friend's faces, but it seems that as long as it is not happening here it doesn't matter that much, it seems that only Americans are entitled to feel safe.
A second tragedy need not make the first less tragic. Americans mourn tragedies in America more than those outside of their borders because they hit closer to home.
The bell tolls for thee and all that, but unless you're directly involved somehow or are in a position to do something about it, there is very little point to focusing your attention on it. This goes double if you have tendencies to obsess or get depressed about bad news like this.
I think I won't take your advice and instead will text my friends at MIT to make sure they weren't running the Boston Marathon this year.
Everyone should do what they think is best. As for me, being informed is one way I stay intellectually engaged and interact with my peers. So I'll continue to do so.
While I offer my condolences to the victims and their families, this isn't the most fatal or most gruesome incident even this month - simply this one happens to involve white western people, so it will be considered by news agencies as more important than the civilian suffering in Syria, Afganistan, North Korea, Somalia or Mexican drug wars.
If you and your relatives are safely far away from Boston, then your happiness would benefit from ignoring the news. Just as what people do when they and their relatives are safely far away from Syria etc.
Perspective is always something that one should maintain, but I can't help but roll my eyes at any response to bad news that invokes the phrase "white western people". It makes your viewpoint seem politically motivated.
Apologies, that was biased, and I have no idea about the ethnicity of the victims. Perhaps "people from wealthy english-speaking countries" would be more accurate?
I struggle to find any other significant differences between this incident and, for example, the terror-murder of 7 people in Mexico (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandt...) or the 6000 last month victims in Syria that will get much, much less outrage and impact than this bombing.
The only difference in value of people lives to global media seems to be their country of residence. Now THAT is politically motivated.
>The only difference in value of people lives to global media seems to be their country of residence. Now THAT is politically motivated.
Comments like this sound like an attempt to co-opt or subjegate the empathy that arises in humans when they read about the suffering of their own people. It's sort of sad, really, that you can't let us reflect on a tragedy.
Reflecting on tragedies is useful and necessary. We, the whole world, will reflect on this tragedy a lot.
But the political issue (problem?) is that with the current media globalization right now all the non-US media and non-US audiences are overtaken with this incident and they will not be reflecting on the many larger tragedies regionally, globally, anywhere else. As always. While the world mourns for Bostonians, there are today 10 times more victims in a bigger terror bombing elsewhere (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22149863) - will there be global empathy for that? Tomorrow, world leaders will call for action due to the Boston bombing - will they call for action on middle east bombings?
Currently random media outlets in, say, Russia or South America tend to report a shooting in USA while ignoring a genocide in Africa. Empathy in media is already distorted, and I've no idea on how to get it back.
My take on that article was to find some middle ground.
It makes sense to at least be informed of the latest news but there's no need to keep compulsively checking news websites while they are in full "Death Toll" mode. It's probably best to wait 24 hours until a clearer story is available.
Its things like this that really make me wonder how we can progress as a society with nutjobs like this. Without sounding like a hippy, the world is filled with so much violence and hate. If these people (and they're all over) put more effort into building society instead of destroying we could really progress.
I don't see the point in imagining a world without psychopaths. It'd be lovely, but no amount of societal structure will ever remove them, we can only try to reach them whenever possible and lessen their influence on others.
It should be noted that multiple studies indicated that terrorists don't have a bigger share of psychopaths than the general population. Average people can convince themselves and/or be convinced to maim and kill if they believe their cause is just.
This does not in any way mean we should excuse them, any more than I would let a rabid dog attack me just because I recognize it can't be expected to follow ethical behavior.
I remember reading somewhere that a surprisingly large number of terrorists / bombers / what have you, are guys in their 20s or 30s with an engineering background, otherwise pretty normal and unremarkable.
Certainly among the 9/11 hijackers, but there appears to be a great deal of asymmetry with foreign terrorists. Domestic terrorists don't ~appear~ to find the same level of stability, though I haven't read any specific papers that investigated their family lives, careers, etc.
That's a pretty cynical world view. I think a lot of bad stuff happens for reasons that could be taken away given better social structures, e.g., people who are abusive because they were abused themselves, desperation because of poverty, etc. There are probably psychopaths which simply have the genetic disposition for that, but violence perpetrated for ideological reasons is definitely something that society could address one way or another.
Likely we can reduce the incidence of destructive acts somewhat, but it seems improbable to eliminate them entirely... with billions upon billions of humans roaming the planet, a few minds are bound to go off the rails.
It'd be lovely, but no amount of societal structure will ever remove them
Anti-murder laws don't remove murder, but they do massively lessen it. I'm always perplexed by the idea that unless something is 100% effective, it somehow 'hasn't worked'.
It wasn't a particularly long post, but I directly stated that we need to do we can to help them at the same time that I stated that they're not going away.
My point is more that it's a continuum rather than a boolean. More societal structures to help mentally ill people means less mentally ill people. A lot of mental illness can 'go away' if the right methods are in place, and yes, it won't ever be 100% effective.
I don't have a problem with what you're saying, just that the particular phrase you used is a viewpoint that always puzzles me due to its implied binary status.
Yesterday I watched an old TV show with Sagan, Hawking and A. C. Clarke. At some point, discussing about violence and politics and the future, Clarke said: "we are a very unevolved species."
While there will likely always be assholes who do shit like this, every time it happens an order of magnitude more people help those in need. Fuck the assholes society will keep moving forward.
The Boston Globe has uploaded a footage at the moment of explosion at the Boston Marathon. This one shows how the moments panned out. The best I have seen so far.
I wouldn't call it "confirmation" at this point, but emergency services have been reporting the discovery of "secondary devices", so it does appear to be something intentional and not something along the lines of an accidental gas line explosion.
Honestly, I would wait for the evidence that those were actually bombs. It sounds like it could have been terrorists, but it also sounds like it might have been a utility failure of some sort, like this:
Now, there are reports that the police have found additional bombs and are dismantling them; if true, then that would mean that this is an attack of some kind and not just an accident. Still, I would wait for a reliable, official statement before jumping to conclusions.
[Edit: Looks like there is now some kind of official statement from the fire department about finding additional bombs, so I guess that settles that.]
Listening to BFD radio, you hear a lot of chatter about additional "secondary devices" and "suspicious packages" even now. Apparently they have a large group of bomb-sniffing dogs they are moving around to check these things out.
I don't know what happened to the /r/worldnews post, but that subreddit's rules do say that it's for non-US sources and news. Also, that post linked to a Gawker site, which for many is reason enough to kill it.
I think its because the threads are getting too much traffic. It seems like reddit first will make a thread read only then will remove it from the front page, this all seems temporary. This is all from observation though Im not sure the actual algorithms involved here.
That's because the mods keep removing it -- reddit will have some contract with telegraph.uk or other such websites (they pay reddit for the higher traffic)
Another explosion just happened at the JFK library according the police scanner. Or a fire. Could be unrelated.
There was another bomb they found downtown and set off in a bomb squad van in a controlled way (heard it on the scanner and another friend living down there confirmed hearing that).
I'm impressed at the police response- very organized.
CBS News reports - police confirm (somewhat) that these were bombs and mostly likely planted in Trash cans. Also, it appears at least 1 other unexploded bomb found and disabled by the Boston Police Bomb Squad. (may be more then 1 found)
Thoughts and prayers with the victims and their families. I just watched the movie "Four Lions" this past weekend and anyone who has seen it may have the same eery feeling I currently do.
if the raw video streams from all of the surrounding areas were provided to the internet as a collective, I would bet they could trace the source 10x faster than the police.
Can someone just run a plain marathon without having to worry about this in modern civilized life? Come on. This isn't even crime, this is just insanity.
I'm willing to bet that running in a marathon is still statistically safer than taking the same trip in a car.
No more how much modern life keeps improving, tragedies will happen, whether by natural disasters or nutjobs. Actively fearing that which is outside of your control is pointless.
Well walking is way more dangerous per mile than driving, this was touched on by Steve Levitt in Super Freakonomics, it looks like in Britain the mortality rate is about 10 times higher per vehicle mile http://road.cc/content/news/68212-dft-casualty-statistics-ra....
Of course, that is general foot transportation. Marathons have different risk factors, you aren't going to get hit by a car (if it's a well organized marathon with a set path and stuff) but I bet there are a lot of medical issues that arise from marathons and overexertion. If I were a betting man, I'd think the marathon was probably more dangerous.
That's interesting, I don't generally think to myself, "Hm, I could go drive around for an hour or I could go for an hour long walk", I usually think "Hm, I could drive to this place or bike over there (I don't usually walk)". Although I also don't really think about the risks of everyday activities anyway, so who knows.
It's really difficult to compare the risks of walking vs driving since usually they aren't really interchangeable and they have such different use cases. But the original comment was about running a marathon vs driving the same distance.
I've made no claims of my fear of marathons or that I will not attend them, I'm afraid of the total risk of conducting such affairs in life, I'm not the person who avoided planes because of 9/11 forever afterward. It was merely a simple remark of disgust.
No, it's not pointless. It lets us plan, alerts us to potential consequences, and motivates us to take action that might have a long term impact, among many other things.
I know it is too early to speculate, but my money is on the muslims -- homegrown terrorists/IRA use car bombs and you couldn't get a car there, crazy people seem overwellmingly to prefer guns.
I'm sure "the Muslims" all get together, all 1.5 billion of them, to discuss their next bombing target. Please distinguish between a small group of violent extremists and a major world religion.
There are iranians and arabs arguing against islamic fundamentalists getting into Swedish politics. You know, those homophobes who "like" al-qaida on Facebook
Vanishingly unlikely. Boston is full of Irish people, so for an Irish terrorist group to set off an explosion where they're more likely to injure Irish people than elsewhere makes no sense. If they were to set off a bomb in the US, which has never happened, the obvious target would be a courthouse or US attorney's office.
I'm Irish and intimately familiar with the politics of terrorism, FWIW.
Well, then you know Irish terrorist groups placed quite a few bombs in places like Manchester, i.e. a city with closer links to Irish people than almost everywhere else in England.
To be fair, these attempts backfired spectacularly, losing them a lot of support in these areas very quickly.
This idea is completely inane. The Volunteers declared war against the England that was on their soil in 1916, that they would shift suddenly to a war against the U.S. is ridiculous. Also, purposefully killing civilians gathered en masse without warning is more along the lines of British Army terrorism (Bloody Sunday, Amritsar), not the Irish volunteers who give warnings and tend to attack military targets, back when they did so.
Also, the ruling came somewhat unexpectedly, a few hours before this happened. That's a short space of time to set up a bombing of a marathon. This bombing was obviously planned for days, if not weeks in advance.
In my lifetime (I'm 30, from Manchester), I lived through two bomb attacks a few miles away from my home, one in the centre of the City, and another in a nearby town in the main shopping street that killed two children. They didn't 'tend to attack military targets'; they were terrorists.
Terrorism is either bad, or it isn't. Don't dress the IRA up as something they aren't so that you can sit on the fence.
I think the IRA harmed a lot of innocent people, harmed their own cause, and that bombing civilians, warning or not, should be condemned. However the poster did mention that warnings were given if bombs were placed near civilians and your own link for the Warrington bombs does confirm that.
I also think if you played the loudest instrument on earth while marching in circles outside David Cameron's church you'd be arrested.
Terrorism is not one thing, or even very well defined. The ANC were terrorists, the American revolutionaries were terrorists, and the Haganah were terrorists. Is it so black and white?
And what was Drogheda, when the English massacred an entire town? Or shooting up the crowd in Croke Park? Or Bloody Sunday? The English have carried out terrorism against the Irish for centuries. It's an English war of choice. The English stole my family's land, gave it to settlers, and now English troops still march up and down Belfast. If you choose to go to war with a country and try to subjugate their people, expect the consequences. Don't cry that some of the war of your choice blew back to your homeland.
All terrorism is bad. Including both sides of the NI debate, the ANC and Apartheid government of South Africa, Hamas and the IDF all of which have deliberately targeted civilians.
But although the IRA did kill civilians, this generally wasn't their goal and they took steps to actively prevent that. Re: Eniskillen, read your link. Neither you nor I know the truth. Re: Harrods, acknowledged.
Kidnappings and murders in Ireland and NI were done on both sides, the IRA disarmed when the RUC, a British state run organization that also collaborated with terrorist paramilitaries was disbanded.
As I said, nothing was done without warning. PIRA gave more then a half hour warning before bombing Harrod's despite three civilians killed. Enniskillen was aimed at a patrol of troops.
As I said, the Volunteers did not set bombs to kill civilians, warnings were given ahead of time. A very benevolent attitude I think against an enemy which invaded their country, flooded the north part with settlers, and whose army was shooting civilians in the street when Enniskillen and Harrod's happened. If England doesn't want to be in a war, the solution is simple - remove English troops from Ireland.
Odd that you mention Enniskillen, where they murdered 10 civilians, one police and no military personnel and injured 63 more and issued no warning. "Aimed at a patrol of troops" is a lie.
CBS LOCAL reports that security footage shows man with multiple backpacks near the scene before explosion, reporters suggest devices were placed in trashcans, and police have recovered at least one unexploded device:
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/04/15/several-hurt-in-explos...
WBZ NEWS 1030 is reporting that a Saudi national was tackled and turned into police, they are questioning him, but he's cooperating and denies any involvement.
live feed: http://tunein.com/radio/WBZ-NewsRadio-1030-s27704/
I'd say mostly BS, unless the bomber is a technical idiot. If any random cellphone freq can set it off, it could be set off before the bomber drops it.
Being detonated by cell phone, maybe setting all numbers but one to a ringer of silent and then using the speaker would seem more plausible, but figuring that out probably takes more time than they can spare right now.
This is the craziest thing. Last Friday, my fiance (works near Boston) said she had to leave early because someone called in a bomb threat. We laughed it off "ha someone wanted to go home early on a Friday..." no idea if related, but crazy...
For some reason this reminds me more of the Atlanta Summer Olympics or Moscow than the attacks on the World Trade Center. [edit to add links for clarity]
The aim of the WTC attack was to make a very symbolic action: the goal was to destroy three symbols of American power, its military, economic, and political might, though the last ended up physically unscathed. Obviously a huge number of deaths associated with it, but the symbolism was key. You knew exactly where the attackers stood--American power is evil--once you heard a description of the attacks.
This, in contrast, is incomprehensible violence. I can think of a dozen different viewpoints that could have driven it, but we'll have to wait for some idiotic statement from the criminals who did it before we have a clue "why" they did it.
The book _the hacker crackdown_ asserts the phone company blamed a phone system crash that happened on MLK day on hackers and phreaks. Later it was determined a firmware upgrade crashed the network and the date was a co-incidence.
>You knew exactly where the attackers stood--American power is evil
Who gives a fuck where they stand they will all be hunted down and killed. For all you know this bombing was because they don't believe women should run in marathons.
> For all you know this bombing was because they don't believe women should run in marathons.
Or maybe their entire family was killed as collateral damage in an american drone strike in Yemen. Or they though the IRS is taxing them too much and wanted to get back at the country. Or they are just fucking crazy and didn't even have a reason.
Stop making assumptions with no information whatsoever.
It certainly does matter. Not in terms of whether they're evil or not--they most assuredly are--but how we interpret their actions is very much going to be determined by who they are and what their goals are. If 9/11 had been committed by anti-abortionists or ecoterrorists, we would have had a very different situation on our hands than we did in our reality.
Without knowing the reasons it is hard to find out who did it and harder to prevent it happening in the future. This is regardless if you are in the "we should pay attention to their grievances in hopes they won't do it again" or "let's fucking blow their families up in retaliation" camp.
The first article (about Ryazan in Russia) says that it is FSB's job. And there was an apology. (FSB is new KGB, Ryazan is a city more than 100 miles from Moscow).
I don't see the connection to the current story unless you're implying that some 3-letter american agency have something to do with the explosions as a propaganda tool to justify lost freedoms, war spendings, etc.
The thing I don't get, is if you know there are multiple devices, any opfor with half a brain is going to put them in the mass transit for follow up. So why evac people when sheltering in place is almost certainly safer? The TLDR is don't create a juicy concentrated target when you know for certain that someone is currently aiming at juicy concentrated targets.
Also if its an ongoing event, shelter in place means people pay pretty close attention to their environment, but scrambling in terror every random direction means a great opportunity for the opfor to drop something bad in the chaos and possibly escape.
I'm not saying lock down everyone for hours (days?) or don't evac a known bad location, but...
It's easier to destroy than it is to create, for example create safety for the people there.
People outside a certain radius of the initial attack are almost certainly safer. The only thing you can do is get everyone out of the area. Keeping everyone there it seems... I'm confused about what the goal would be. You've got to move everyone out of there eventually so do it. I'm just trying to picture the huge amount of resources it would take to try and quarantine.
Transit is much harder and has a much stronger security presence - people in general are also far more alert for suspicious packages. It would be much tougher I'd think to get something like this onto a subway rather than a huge crowd.
Whoops I looked it up and apparently a "mall" in boston is what the rest of the world would call a boulevard or parkway. So they're actually evac a street lined with trees. My worry was it they're shoving people in immense lines thru the doors of what the rest of the world would call a "mall" making a tempting target for the opfor.
I am surprised its verified to be packages and not dudes wearing vests or whatever. There's no way to avoid the issue that getting the crowd to stampede means certain targets of opportunity will be very busy. If I were in Boston there's no way in hell I'd set foot on any mass transit until the evac is over.
The original point still stands, that people mostly sittin down can't get into too much mischief, "everybody get up and run around" results in huge opportunity for chaos, because not just the good guys, but the bad guys too will be up and running around.
It's not that uncommon in other parts of the US either. In Raleigh, they commonly referred to part of Fayetteville Street as "Fayettevill Street Mall".
"people mostly sittin down can't get into too much mischief"
Except the psychological stress of sitting quietly near where a bomb just went off is probably much worse than heading for home. I imagine that the police manpower needed to actually keep people from leaving would be substantial.
The alternative isn't "everybody get up and run around", it's "everybody head for home, where you feel safe." I know if I were police chief, I'd think long and hard about the trade-offs before I tried to stand in the way of people trying to get home. After all, they're going to have to go home eventually.
And we know of one location where the opposition is known to have planted bombs; why would you want to keep large numbers of people around that location? Why not disperse them to their homes, so they're not such a concentrated target?
That's assuming normal traffic flow. As someone famous said "quantity has a quality all it's own" - in large traffic flow conditions (as is the case with an evacuation), are all the same security precautions taken? Can they be sustained without a huge bump in the security staff? If new security staff are used impromptu, will they follow the same stringent standards?
I agree with VLM - these people should have been secured in place and not herded through a chokepoint in a rush.
I think the difference is there isn't only a single route for people to evac the mall. It would be insane to have an area where there's several bombings in a large area, with one gateway out, and to then encourage everyone to bunch up at the gateway.
I grok'd your confusion about "mall" but just so you're aware, almost no one used the subway after the event. Everyone walked in a dispersed fashion. I did as well and kept to the back alleys and off the main race course. It was actually pretty ideal I think, people did well.
Has any named official confirmed the cell service shutdown? I'm hearing the opposite.
The original shutdown report I heard was attributed to an unnamed BPD source. This is obviously a particularly easy rumor to spread when the networks are all jammed up with callers.
You can locally jam cell phone frequencies without involving the operators--seems like that'd be default bomb squad kit. I was along the racetrack at mile 23 and signal and data were extremely poor starting 10-15 minutes after the event--The local cells of the network could also have been simply overloaded.
The AP has walked back that article -- headline now reads "Cellphone use heavy, but still operating in Boston". I don't see any note of a retraction or correction.
Anyone know of any good resources to explain when news organizations find it ethical to transparently change articles like this, and when it isn't?
"Apparently cellphone service is SHUT DOWN! To make sure new devices are not remotely detonated!"
Oh no. This has been done a lot of times recently and all it means is future devices are going to be designed to go off when service is lost. Like every time you get a text message the 10 minute "reset" button is shorted. On the bright side AT&T outages are now a feature not a bug as they make constructing and transporting devices like this very exciting for the bad guys.
That seems like an overly complicated way of doing something that could just be done with a timer. (I don't mean to provide tips of any sort, but that seems kind of obvious to me.)
You are correct. This is a very common scenario. The trigger is the cell phone's vibration motor, which is removed so the IED can be connected to the phone. A timer is set, the signal to the motor is sent and activates the trigger, entirely without the use of radio waves and obviously without needing a cell tower.
1) No signal = the primaries have gone off and the area is swarming with panic evacuees and rescue personnel and full of news cameras = almost the definition of the perfect time for the secondaries to go off.
2) If the purpose of the attack is terror, what better way than shutting off communications then creating an intense demand for communications? And you get to make the authorities feel guilty about it?
3) This also fits in with jammer mentality. So if a jammer protects against IEDs, the obvious counter response is a weapon against jammers. So next year's run, if there is one, will have a motorcycle pace vehicle with a very highly publicized jammer mounted on it for the purpose of security theater, the pace cycle/jammer rides past the trivial to imagine and design jammer detector, and ...
It all boils down to I can't figure out a realistic alternative way for the good guys to help the bad guys more effectively than shutting down the cell network.
Yeah, due to localized jamming in Iraq (for convoys, using Warlock and better), there were "increasingly sophisticated" systems.
The correct way to make the best IED trigger would be something which required an ongoing cryptographic challenge with nonce or time, so you were safe from both having your circuit cut AND from people finding/replaying your signal.
Don't be silly. No one ever does that in a crisis. They just spout platitudes about 'doing everything possible' and never stop to think about what that actually means.
And if you point out the implications someone will quickly follow up by assuring you that 'no one would ever do that'. Sometimes I think the greatest weakness of policymakers is the delusion that other policymakers believe what they believe, and for the same reasons.
Cell service was really bad for an hour after the explosion. My wife has an older clamshell phone that seemed harder to connect I expect due to the absence of newer 3G frequencies. Not getting a signal make one very nervous at a time like that.
"Boston police say there was no specific intelligence warning of any kind of attack, and federal officials tonight say there is no reason to think that this is part of any larger threat. At this point they believe it is confined to Boston, but a meeting tonight will decide whether any kind of national alert will be sent out. There is no suspect in custody, authorities say, but some people are being questioned, including some with injuries who were taken to Boston hospitals.
One of those, a person in whom there is some interest, is
a young person who was here on a student visa,"
Used to be that a terrorist was defined as someone who likes to further their agenda by means of spreading terror. Explosions, destruction, loss of life - that's all completely incidental to the actual terror.
A person running amok, in contrast, may be a terrorist (and people like Breivik certainly fit the bill in some aspects) but their main goal is committing mass murder, usually culminating in suicide. A convincing argument could be made that in some respects suicide bombers are also running amok, but we tend to reserve the term terrorist for a more organized type of crime that is supported by an entire network.
It's interesting to look at Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" -- published in 1907 -- which is based on a true story (of an anarchist attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894). All the elements of modern "terrorism" are there back then: a half-wit dupe bomber, nutjobs with a crazy ideology (anarchism in this case), and national actors manipulating them from behind the scenes.
> All the elements of modern "terrorism" are there back then: a half-wit dupe bomber, nutjobs with a crazy ideology (anarchism in this case), and national actors manipulating them from behind the scenes.
> Nechaev argued that the purpose of revolutionary terror is not to gain a support of masses, but to the contrary, inflict misery and fear on the common population. According to Nechayev, a revolutionary must terrorize civilians to incite rebellions.
Fact is, I also believe that the Tsarist secret police Okhrana was much better at actually fighting the "terrorists" using classic methods like "infiltrating and influencing revolutionary groups, rather than merely identifying and arresting their members", compared to what the US secret agencies are doing right now. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana)
It's crazy that I was just reading a couple of days ago about how the CIA had almost turned into a military unit because of its control over the drone war, instead of doing actual information agency work.
Another view of terrorism, in some ways similar to Nechayev's (in that the goal is revolution), is that it is an amplification attack. By committing acts of terror, a group forces the government to respond with stricter laws and more aggressive enforcement. Eventually, citizens who were not affected or inconvenienced very much under the original regime become significantly affected, and so they begin to oppose the government and support revolutionary causes, even if they are normally in favor of law and order and opposed to violence.
I believe this is the functional element of all terrorism, whether it is explicitly acknowledged or not. However, if that's true, not all terrorists recognize it; their goals might not be aligned with the ultimate consequences of popular revolution.
| "infiltrating and influencing revolutionary
| groups"
This happens in the US now, but usually the undercover official isn't attempting to convince them not to do something bad. They are either encouraged to do something bad, or allowed to, so that they can be caught in the act and everyone can get a good pat on the back for a job well-done in capturing the 'bad guys.'
That seems a little high like out of a video game... I took the USAR week long explosives familiarization course back in 93 at AIT at Redstone Arsenal (now why a minicomputer system operator had to take that course was a mystery, other than general safety and familiarization because it was a minicomputer for a TSA (basically what civilians would call an ammo depot)) and got to prime and set off a pound of old fashioned TNT and as a group we got to prime and set off a demilled 105 round. Based on crater size and general blast effect this is probably somewhere in between.
A pound of .mil TNT vaguely resembles a squarish soup can in size and a 105 round is, you guessed it, 105mm across so its dimensions are vaguely reminiscent of a 24oz/40oz big beer can. So what you're talking about is something pretty small, not the size of a car or truck or two 10 pound bags. But a bit bigger than a grenade. I got to throw two of those when I was in .mil and the damage is probably more severe than one of those can cause. Smoke pillar alone if nothing else.
I will agree that you could F up a 10 pound device such that all you get is the primer and booster and not the main charge. That sounds about right.
Crater really depends on how high off the pavement, too. I assumed "top of a trash can" but that might not be the case. Just clearly a small bag device, not a serious carbomb or anything, and based on the smoke I don't think it was military or commercial explosives. I'm really only familiar with bigger devices and telling artillery vs anfo, though.
Or a bunch of black powder, really. Multiple smallish devices in bags in a public place is totally within the angry or crazy lone wolf threat profile. I really hope it is that vs anything more organized.
Secondary explosions ( and/or fires ) reported (on MSNBC shortly before Chris Jansing took over coverage at 4PM EST) at the JFK Library and another undisclosed location.
Footage of black fumes from (allegedly) the JFK Library has been briefly shown before cutting back to the coverage of the main explosion at the Boston marathon.
The fire at the library has been initially reported to have been controlled. No casualties or injuries have been reported.
A curious mention of "manuscripts" (not being damaged) has been reported (on MSNBC) as well.
CNN is yet to report any such secondary explosions as of the current time (4:10 PM EST).
CNN has also not shown any footage of black fumes from a different location.
The fumes at the Boston marathon explosions were distinctly white in color.
Different library. The one the Globe tweet refers to is the Boston Public Library, right by the finish line. The JFK Library is on the opposite side of the city.
Well, TSA will start checking marathonists anytime soon.
Ban me or whatever you need to do but the reality is that one bomb and Americans cry, while at the same time incentivate thousands of bombs and deads in Mexico for their useless "war on drugs" and also creating pointless wars around the world (eg. Iraq)
Two of my friends flew over from the UK and were running in it, it happened right in front of Chris, luckily he's ok, she's ok. Fucking bombing bastards.
I keep seeing this get posted all over the place. People want to spread this photo for some reason.
It's a fucking silhouette made up of 20 pixels. It's a person on a roof who was likely watching the event. People are so desperate for somebody to blame, this is just ridiculous.
North Korea, Al Qaeda, racists, or something else?
I honestly think anyone could claim responsibility but given the high explosives and the seemingly professional nature of the attack I'm guessing either NK, AQ, or a false-flag to start a war on the Korean peninsula.
It is waaaaay too early to be speculating who's behind it. Nobody knows any details, early reports from the scene of a terrible event like this are frequently confused and contradictory. Speculation at this moment is just firing shots in the dark.
I suppose you're right. Just strange, things have been so quiet for so long. The US is leaving Afghanistan, Iraq - apart from some sectarian violence has been quiet, and now this?
My mind just goes back to NK. With the heightened tensions and such... Seems too convenient.
It's not productive to speculate as to who is responsible. It could be anyone, or it could be a complete accident (gas leak?). Pointing blame before even the most basic facts are known is really, really poor.
There exist other material that go boom beyond gas. Just to take a random pick, maybe a truck with industrial chemicals was parked near. The majority of goes boom but a chunk get thrown away and just later goes boom too. Double explosion, but no detonated explosives.
Not saying its likely, but we really should start listing on what police say first before jumping directly to bombs.
At this point things seem to be pointing towards bombs. Police have reportedly recovered 2 or 3 undetonated devices (and set off a controlled explosion for one of them [1]). No news of who or why though.
But it is so professional. Two explosions, within seconds of each other. And these were decently powerful too considering they had to be small enough to hide in the crowds.
You might be right, but something about this just makes me thing /organised./
Presumably if it was some organized group we'll find out when they take credit for it. At this point we don't even know for sure if there were bombs involved -- we know there were explosions, but an explosion can happen for reasons other than a bomb going off.
Again, all speculating does at this point is ramp up fear and anxiety, which doesn't help anybody.
The precision doesn't rule out a lone perpetrator. Just because someone is "crazy" in the sense that they'd do something like this, it doesn't mean they lack the ability to make intricate plans.
Agreed. Crazy is just a dismissive term. Perfectly sane people can do things like murder other people - we have tons of them walking around today but we call them Veterans. Crazy, in this sense, should probably be replaced by societally dysfunctional.
Quite a few had bigger casualty lists, and many were more specifically aimed at political targets rather than large numbers of public, but fair point that a bunch were very similar or worse-done.
Two points I would make about the comparison though, firstly the IRA campaign was very much one of fear more than one of death - deaths were an added bonus. Of course maybe that's the case in Boston as well, but it's too early to know right now. Secondly, the word used was "professional" - were the IRA professional? I guess in the context of terrorist attacks, that's probably not really a relevant term.
The IRA had structure, with ranks. They had a political wing. They had funding and training and available weapons. They had PR and issued coded warnings and press releases.
Compare that to the London Nail Bomber (who killed three, and maimed many more) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copeland) who operated alone and got no funding from others.
Actually, the IRA typically issued warnings beforehand -- soon enough to evacuate, but too late to find the bomb. I've heard it described as a calculation to minimize civilian deaths that might stiffen British resolve.
Not sure how it seems professional. Compare it to the London bus bombings or Madrid, and it seems much more haphazard. For one thing, had it happened about two hours before, there was a much larger national / international audience when the winners were finishing.
No they tend to use guns or knifes (or in one case, bow and arrow) because they want to be up and close with the victims.
Bombs fit either muslims or crazy homegrown terroists, but those tend to put their bombs in cars, (and you can't park a car there) so my guess is muslims.
There have only been 3 major terror bombings in US history where cars have been used. One was the original WTC bombing. The other two were OK City and Bath School, back in 1927. There were a couple minor car bombs.
Most other domestic US bombers of all stripes used pipe bombs or suitcase bombs.
North Korea hasn't ever done anything like this so it's truly out of line to begin speculating that it's a "false-flag to start a war on the Korean peninsula" - way to blame the victim
North Korea does lot of evil and insane stuff and I'm quite a fan of conspiracy theories, but this just make no sense.
What is a terrorist attack? Cynically speaking a huge PR coup. A terrorist attack without a confession and a statement makes only sense if it is clear who was it and why they did it. Since the last thing is not given I'm expecting something like this anytime soon. Before there a narrative has formed. But what should NK "promote"?
But for NK this makes no sense. It would be suicide of the hole state. A false flag makes little sense since this is just too absurd to believe.
