tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18356115.post114980582936328117..comments2023-09-19T06:23:30.662-07:00Comments on Dark Adapted: Canada 17, Iraq 1Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18356115.post-1150147165120667272006-06-12T14:19:00.000-07:002006-06-12T14:19:00.000-07:00Troy,Thanks. :)Lucas,Perhaps another reason I shou...Troy,<BR/><BR/>Thanks. :)<BR/><BR/>Lucas,<BR/><BR/>Perhaps another reason I shouldn't be a freelance journalist is that I burned a lot of bandwidth without making myself as clear as I had hoped.<BR/><BR/>I don't think NYC folks are unAmerican or choosing to be targets or whatever. I would happily bust a cap into someone threatening the farthest-left Code Pink activist from the deepest, darkest part of The Village. If we're getting tribal, they're part of my tribe.<BR/><BR/>I think my point was more that terrorists targeting, say, people who row crew boats for a hobby don't generate the same sense of personal threat as terrorists who intentionally target schools, at least not in my opinion. To use a TCP/IP analogy, crew rowers are port 45423, hardly anyone uses that port, so terrorists can't "get to" the rest of us that way. Schoolkids are port 80, an archetype that we all recognize and a source of visceral dread for those of us who were in a school or have kids or grandkids in school.<BR/><BR/>I wouldn't dismiss terrorism against crew boats, it's terrorism and again, they're picking on my tribe. But knowing that terrorists were attacking crew boats wouldn't cause me personal concern other than a "what boaters are they going to go after next?", which also wouldn't concern me personally as I don't own a boat.<BR/><BR/>In short, terror is at least partially in the eye of the beholder IMO and I'm glad that terrorism (here, at least) hasn't figured out some of the Least Common Denominators to really jack with our society.Darren Duvallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14206549297099752092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18356115.post-1149869248431043072006-06-09T09:07:00.000-07:002006-06-09T09:07:00.000-07:00Here's the thing, though: the lives of everyday pe...Here's the thing, though: the lives of everyday people in New York City *aren't* "so separate and different" than those in the rest of the country. It only *seems* that way. <BR/><BR/>It seemed that way to me, as well, until I spent a couple of weeks working in Manhattan a few years ago, smack dab in the middle of the East Village, doing a software transition in the Citysearch.com office there. Yeah, I rode a subway down from my hotel everyday instead of riding in a car, and lunch was a tad more expensive, but working alongside people who were wage-slaves exactly like me was no different there than it is in Nashville or Longview or Abilene or St. Louis or Denver or Oklahoma City or wherever else in the U.S.<BR/><BR/>The danger becomes when you imbue the city (or any large center of population) with some sort of media-induced "pocket universe" status. Maybe I feel a little different about it because Nashville operates in much the same way in that very few people who live here are actually *from* here, but I met people in NYC who were from all over this country, not to mention the world, and they're all just trying to get by, exactly like the rest of "flyover country".<BR/><BR/>It's when you allow yourself to buy in to media categorizations that you shut yourself off from the reality of the situation.<BR/><BR/>And, no, Darren, you should not hire yourself out as a freelance journalist...not out of a lack of writing skill, mind you. It's just that I've been doing this awhile, and I wouldn't wish this life on anybody, especially someone with an M.D.Lucas Hendricksonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10621299593049179896noreply@blogger.com