SYMBOL

[John Young]

High rises taller than about about 70 stories for office 
buildings and 50 stories for housing are extremely
dangerous.

Buildings taller than that are constructed for
vainglory, which is to say that architects, engineers,
builders, banks and governments are delighted to 
participate in such insane follies to advance the
notion that dense, wretched cities are supreme 
cultural achievements. The prime beneficiaires of 
this lucrative conceit do not spend a lot of time in the 
towering fire traps overlooking compacted cattle pens, 
but do assign staff there. As the weeping Gecko cries 
on TV, "I lost 600 of my cattle" at the top of WTC.

Reasonable humans should not work or live in them. 
Cutting edge idiots should, but few do, especially their 
builders who know exactly what the hazard is, though 
they may put staff there for marketing the illusions of 
safety. 

Eiffel spent time in his tower to assure the skeptical
public that it was safe. Making backers of dangerous
high-rises live and work there 24x7 would be an
excellent provision in the building and penal codes.

However, no building, high or low, if not a bunker under 
a mountain, can be constructed to be bomb-proof. DoD 
said this yesterday in a damage assessment of the 
Pentagon. As with renovation there, blast-resistant
features can diminish but not prevent damage.

DoD mentioned in passing that a mylar-like material
is installed on Pentagon windows, now with 2-inch thick
glass, to combat electronic and acoustical eavesdropping. 
The press thought the sheets were part of the blast-resistance 
system and noted that it had not been installed on windows 
of the press room.

DoD would surely not eavesdrop the press.