In a spectacular display of the sort of current-events knowledge and attention to detail that made her an ideal fit as White House Press Secretary under George W. Bush, Dana Perino went on some Fox News pundit show and affirmed that no terrorist attacks took place in the US while Bush was President. Which must mean that I and millions of others just imagined seeing the WTC buildings collapse into a heap of rubble.
I can barely contain myself!
Today is World Toilet Day, a day of awareness so people can reflect on their less fortunate counterparts who do not have access to proper sanitation facilities. I think it was invented by people who like to make bad puns. The organizers hope that this will lead many developing countries to make sanitation infrastructure their top priority, but I and many others would settle for it being number two [/rimshot]. People who visit the web site are encouraged to twitter their thoughts on the event, but frankly I don’t think that’s such a good idea. So if you’re having a party tonight and there’s an awkward pause just connect your laptop to your TV and celebrate with a mass viewing of 2G1C.
Play head games with yourself
If you like the idea of sending yourself a message in the future, broken.com’s email capsule is something you might want to check out. I’ll only know how well it works tomorrow, though. I’m surprised I didn’t know about this before, it’s a simple enough idea…
How time flies
It’s been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell today, and I haven’t been able to put that out of my mind all day. Not being German it’s not something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, but 20 years ago I was in front of the TV watching CNN and witnessing what turned out to be the end of the Cold War — the only geopolitical frame of reference I had ever known in my life. Basically, the Communist world, in a very short amount of time, realizing that it was done, that its page of history had turned already.
I find it quite striking personally because this really is the first history-changing event I experienced as an adult; so really all but 7 months of my adult life has taken place since then. Sometimes it’s hard to keep from thinking about how much of that was wasted, but there’s little purpose dwelling on that. You have to wonder, though — besides events like 9/11, what is it that the generation after mine will remember fondly in its middle age? It’s not to say that such a big terrorist attack was insignificant, but it just doesn’t strike me as the same sort of event.
Things I found out recently — the wall came down as a result of a mistake. An East German official, Günter Schabowski, screwed up when reading about a plan to lift restrictions on travel by East Germans, and said that the new “open border” policy applied right away, which it clearly wasn’t intended to. This was picked up by West German television stations that ran with the story an hour or two later, and the East Berliners, who watched mostly West German television, heard about it and rushed the border points. The guards didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on, but there were far too many people for them to control.
How did it look when that Schabowski interviewed for his next job… “well, in my last job I misread something on television and started the demise of the country I was working for.” I’ve not always been a perfect worker, but I can honestly say that in no previous job have I ever caused a country to cease to exist.
Things I found out today — the Berlin wall was only built in August 1961. Prior to that Berliners (and Germans generally) could go from East to West Germany and back. So when Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech the wall was practically still new.