X-Message-Number: 17600
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 14:13:29 -0700
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Signing off the global terrorism watch

For the past week, what time I haven't spent listening to or watching
news about the WTC et al has been spent reading or writing email
about them.  I find the news more than interesting, more than engaging;
more like consuming.  And because I read, understand, contemplate, 
type, and edit more slowly than before, due, I think, to physical and
cognitive complications of MS (did you know that signals travel ten
times more slowly along a nerve fiber without its myelin sheath?), I
have been spending four to six hours per day reading, understanding,
contemplating, typing, and editing email regarding the attacks, and
offering my arguments for or against various sentiments voiced on the
mailing lists I frequent (thank goodness I never started reading
newsgroups!).

I need to get back to my life, and have had little luck exercising
restraint in limiting my input (teladdiction?), so I think I'm going 
to have to give up WTC coverage cold turkey.  Please don't take my
silence on any issue as lack of concern or opinion.

My closing comment, apropos to nothing I've seen online (I haven't 
read email yet today and plan to file anything that looks like it 
might discuss WTC, response to WTC, or terrorism in general unread):
Estimates that I've seen of damage done by WTC are probably low by
a factor of 10, 100, or 1000, because they don't include lost
productivity by both the dead and the living, costs to transportation,
commerce, etc. of security measures, lost capitalization and 
investment due to stock market declines and erosion of consumer 
confidence, etc.  I can see myself being swept away on an analysis 
wave, so I'll stop here.

See you when I wash up on a beach of discussions other than of war.
-- 
May you live long and prosper,
Kennita
--
Kennita Watson          | Way Cool Internet Radio: http://www.live365.com
     |      
http://www.kennita.com  |    Great Minds Think Alive! -- Lee Corbin

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