On Tuesday, in article <2008021918354550878-pbrazee@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
pbrazee@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Howard Brazee" wrote:
> On 2008-02-19 10:46:25 -0700, William Hyde <wthyde1953@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:
>
> >> I often wonder when I see things like this incident; you have one man
> >> with a gun, and several hundred people without one. How come none of
> >> them tried throwing things at him? Ru****ng the stage? Turning the
fire
> >> hose on him?
> >
> > Just to add an SF reference, Keith Laumer (in "Worlds of the
> > Imperium", I think) has a scene in parallel world in which people do
> > just that, suffering serious casualties but bringing the armed men
> > (beings?) down. The narrator speculates that people could still do
> > that because in the given time line, WWI never happened.
>
> It didn't take long for people in 9/11 to figure out what needed to be
> done. The heros brought down the 4th (and maybe the 3rd).
It took a while for them to screw their courage to the sticking place.
Which didn't make the courage any less, but the timescale is different,
and I think it matters. (I was watching a programme about the kamikaze
on Monday night. Some of the people on the programme were only alive
because the war had ended before they were assigned a mission. There was
a lot of build-up and collective social pressure.)
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
On the horizon, a carrier task force of the Salvation Navy was
turning into the wind, preparing to launch Zeppelins.
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