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The World Trade Center's design moved the supporting columns to the exterior walls, providing more rentable space and also making the towers sway less in the wind.

It was not the exterior walls that made the towers sway less in the wind. It was the huge computer-controlled mechanism at the very top of both towers which kept the towers from swaying so much, without which they'd make people sick.

A few months before the atrocity took place, the History channel ran an episode of Modern Marvels which detailed how they built the towers and exactly what it took to keep them from swaying. When they replayed it after 9-11, they cut out that entire part about the anti-sway mechanism. I've not heard anything from anyone concerning this important piece of info.

You don't need an engineering degree to understand that it's easier to evacuate a building with 40 stories than one with 100. Thinking small seems like a good idea.

When I grew up, it was fashionable to look forward to the grand things we would do in "the future".

It now looks like civilization is going in reverse. No one want's to go back to the Moon, or to Mars. They want smaller buildings, not larger. Airliners actually cruise slower than when I was a kid.

How long will it take to go back to caves and flint tools? And how many people will die in order to get a small enough population that can support themselves in such a manner?

You don't need an engineering degree to understand that it's easier to evacuate a building with 40 stories than one with 100. Thinking small seems like a good idea.

Yeah, let's keep our heads down. You don't want to antagonize the terrorists. It's best to play it safe. We don't need great structures or to be the best in the world. In the end all we really need to live is a hole in the ground we can cover up with a tarp. Then we'll be safe.

That is not the American way. The American way builds the biggest buildings, the greatest railways, the longest canals. The American way settled the West, built an economy that is the strongest in the world, harnessed the power of the atom, and landed a man on the moon. The American way does not take "no" for an answer and does not know the meaning of the words "good enough".

If those skyscrapers are not re-built to be the biggest, tallest, most beautiful buildings in the world, then the American way is at an end, and we will have begone our long painful slide into the second tier of human endeavor. That is the choice that will be made when the decisions are reached about what to do in Lower Manhattan. Do we want to lead the world, or do we want to duck our heads and hide.

The New York Times says we should duck and hide. What say you?