The two worst weddings ever.

For the longest time I though that the Versailles wedding hall disaster (see video above) was probably about the worst way a wedding could end: 23 dead, 380 injured, one building destroyed.

As it turns out I really did not think hard enough about other awful ways a wedding might end. Sure, there are the obvious terrible outcomes like a no show on the part of the bride or groom, or the denouncement of the marriage by family members, or maybe a heart attack death caused by excitement. Then there is the unexpected: the wedding that re-ignites a decades-old blood feud and leads to an assault on the wedding by men armed with grenades and automatic weapons.

Known as the Mardin wedding party attack, this occurred in Turkey three days ago and led to the deaths of 44. "[A] combination of tribalism, love for guns, and tradition gone awfully wrong," the attack left the faces of the victims unrecognizable and killed six children. According to the AP (via Yahoo! News), "Two girls survived after the bodies of slain friends fell on top of them during the onslaught."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think this was way under-reported, and I have no idea why. I only found it because of Wikipedia's news section.

Anyone know of any weddings that ended in ways worse than this?

Pakistan, anyone?

So, have I been watching too much right-wing TV, or do I have my story straight when I say that the Taliban's efforts to capture Pakistan (read: a country with a nuclear arsenal) have resulted in them so far capturing a city as close as 70 miles to its capital?

(Here's a really boring article)

Racecar-Driving Swedish Anti-Terrorist-Unit Busted!

[Credit for this story goes to my younger brother, Leland.] I have not finished this whole story, but it starts with the above well-known wreck of a Ferarri Enzo on the Pacific Coast Highway (check out the Wrecked Exotics page dedicated to this crash) and (so far) involves:

• Gizmondo, a failure of a videogame company;
• A bus company police force calling itself the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority and worked on counter-terrorism;
• Illegal gun purchases;
• Illegal car importantion;
• A mystery man named Dietrich;
  
• etc.

I have no idea how this story will end, but I think it will be worthwhile to get to the end. The story somewhat reminds me of the identity theft article that was posted a while ago.

I mean what if 'Cloverfield' happened, right?

(as an aside, I really liked the first half or so of that movie, which was about what this post concerns - "what if you were just living your life, at a party or whatever, when all of a sudden real shit starting going down?" - but I wasn't so crazy about the whole alien/monster thing).

Anyway, Carly should really be writing this post, as she knows more than I do about this stuff, but our conversation about it yesterday sparked me. I don't have any real insight, just questions: What kind of "major disaster" should we be worried about? How should we prepare? Whose responsibility is it to help protect us, and they preparing effectively?

Some peoples' answers to these and other questions are in these articles:

A report on "Protecting the Public's Health from Disease, Disasters, and Bioterrorism," courtesy of Carly

An op-ed about how to distribute the Anthrax vaccine, should there be another attack

The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism's report, saying there probably will be, and it will be soon

A discussion of how to protect people in fancy hotels in dangerous places, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks

"At Least He Kept Us Safe"

In this group, it's hard to imagine many missed the Peggy Noonan article last week, lobbing a Hail Mary attempt to hold on to something positive about the Bush Administration, and citing the fact that there were absolutely no terrorist attacks at all period totally zero not a single one during Bush's presidency, unlike lazy-ass Bill Clinton, who let the USS Cole (is that a book? Why am I italicizing it?) get blown up by al-Qaeda.

Anyway, of course I threw up a little in my mouth reading the original article, but I think this summary is a little more interesting than what I would have written.

(Oh, and if I hear Bill O'Reilly or Peggy Noonan make one more comment about how we should have had more regulation before the collapse I'll lose it completely)

Two interesting articles

This article is about Tom Daschle and the long-term problems that could result if Obama's health plan passes. I don't agree with a lot of it and unfortunately it is largely written from the doomsday perspective of a post-election Republican, but one point that stood out to me was that if the government picks up a program that doesn't work, it'll be like social security - we won't be able to get the people to let it go even if better solutions arise.

This article is about what closing Guantanamo would mean for US foreign/counterterrorism policy, as well as the very relevant question of what exactly we'll be doing with the detainees there.

I'd like to have a conversation going at some point about this sort of stuff, as well as torture. I'm not on the hardcore side, but in my experience, my views on torture lie to the right of most of my friends.