On Sunday, October 14, 2001, at 07:28 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Sat, Oct 13, 2001 at 10:12:38PM -0700, Morlock Elloi wrote:
Maybe the high density living that we are so used to is incompatible with new weapons. Maybe societal structures based on projectile-throwing weaponry are passe. New weapons always changed rules, and it was called progress.
I think that's an interesting argument, but you'll note that the Florida Anthrax case targeted a firm that was hardly in a "high density living" situation. Apparently it was a nondescript suburb.
I drove through that area (Delray Beach. Lantana, Boca Raton) when I was visiting my sister in South Florida in 1994. One continuous urban area, from Homestead to Miami to Hollywood to Fort Lauderdale to Delray Beach to West Palm Beach. There's a corridor on both sides of I-95 that is dense-packed with condos, apartments, tilt-ups, trailer parks, slums, estates, and a few farms. (When I was there, the "new frontier" was a former farming community called Plantation...being replaced by new developments.) As for Morlock's thesis, I don't know that any strong conclusions can be drawn about "high density living...incompatible with new weapons." Certainly _some_ of us have decided to live in less crowded areas. Or, more accurately, in areas that are: -- not Schelling points for attack (that is, not high value targets for terrorists or for rioters) -- areas that are moderately defensible (My area is not as defensible as that of some folks I know, who live in Idaho or northern Arizona. But, as Declan knows, it's isolated enough that major problems in the Bay Area would take a long time to reach me. Especially if I "button down.") Some cities seem to be high value targets, something we've talked about for a _long_ time. (Do a search on "soft targets" in this group.) But I'm not persuaded that the risks are greater now than they were during, say, the Cuban missile crisis--I was living as a kid in the Arlington suburb of D.C. then and I had an inkling of what the dangers were. --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.