CNN is broadcasting 9/11 footage in real time on CNN Pipeline today

I don’t anticipate that I’ll be able to update later on today, so here goes something short.

I am so excited for this Tuesday! Not only is it the date in which I can say that I’ve made it through a full week of school, but it is also the day when The Office: Severance Package comes out at Best Buy. I’m gonna go there in the morning and pick it up. I also have a $5 off gift card or something too, so it should be very exciting!
The Office: Severance Package comes with a Dunder-Mifflin notepad, pen, magnet, sticky notes, and a calendar (oh yeah, the season 1 and 2 DVDs come with it too). Man, this is gonna be so good!

Simon’s interior design studies pay off. Here is the blueprint plan for the new apartment before any revisions have been made. A revised blueprint will probably be available soon from Simon and Co.

Pandas are cool. This is the funniest animal reaction I’ve ever seen. :)

The New York Times has a pretty good timeline of events surrounding the plans for the rebuilding of Ground Zero. I guess depending on how you look at it, you can either say that a lot has happened in 5 years, or you can say that not much has happened at all in 5 years. Read the rest of the article here.
Check out the NYT flash illustration of the problematic “engineering avalanche” that resulted in the Twin Towers’ collapse.

You might also want to see the flash explanation of events on 9/11 from different companies within the towers.
Some of the descriptions of events reminds me of that article in Wired about disobeying authorities during an emergency.

In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do.

Proof can be found in the 298-page draft report issued in April by the National Institute on Standards and Technology called Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications. (In layman’s terms, that’s who got out of the buildings, how they got out, and why.)

…The report confirms a chilling fact that was widely covered in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.

Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day.

I don’t want to cause any unnecessary alarm/bad memories, so if you think you can stomache it, The CameraPlanet Archives has two amateur videos of the 9/11 WTC attakcs up on YouTube (one & two). There is also more amateur footage of the attacks here and here. I didn’t want to directly embed these videos.

Don’t forget about CNN’s re-broadcast of the exact TV reports on 9/11 in real time, starting at 8AM EST on CNN Pipeline. It is free for the day. This should definitely be something to watch. I hope a torrent comes out somehow.

Oh yeah, I forgot about yesterday’s secrets. This week’s are really poignant for some reason.

This python sure was greedy. It ate an entire pregnant sheep. Those jaws are crazy.

Someone ordered 18 items — 9 bath towels and 9 face towels — on Amazon.com, only to have it come in 18 separate boxes…on the same day. Haha, oh boy, I hope that never happens to me! [via]

Man, if the Nintendo Wii really does sell at $150, this might be the first entertainment gaming system I ever buy with my own money. Sadly however, prices for the Wii are only speculated at the moment, even if it is printed in Vibe.

Give everything you own a personality with inanimate character stickers. Whee! :)

Has anybody tried Microsoft Codename Max? It’s a beta development program that’s an RSS reader and a photo album creator. I downloaded it, but I haven’t installed it and tested it out yet.

Have you ever seen a weatherman more gay?

Alright, I have a very busy day tomorrow! Stay cool, folks.