Tuesday September 25, 2001
They Worry About U.S. Using Bio Weapons
At a time when some Americans worry about somebody spraying us with bio-weapons, I found this interesting article in a Pakistani newspaper (the Frontier Times) They worry that Americans will use bio-weapons in Afghanistan
— Note that Judith Miller’s book about biological warfare is #1 on Amazon’s best-seller list this week.
Bible Sales Up
Bill Herbst at WZZM Grand Rapids says his station found that Bible sales are up in the last two weeks. An operator at Dove Christian Supply told me that sales were up so much last week that their custom engraver worked nonstop on Friday. This is something they rarely see outside of Christmas, Easter or graduation time.
Police and Fire Chaplains
A fire department chaplain was killed in the WTC attack. This could be an interesting time to know what police-fire chaplains do. Here is the website of the National Police Chaplains Association.
The site says Police Chaplains do some or all of the following:
– Counsel law enforcement officers.
– Counsel other members of a department.
– Counsel the families of law enforcement officers and other department personnel.
– Visit sick or injured officers and departmental personnel in homes and hospitals.
– Make death notifications.
– Provide assistance to victims.
-Teach officers in areas such as Stress Management, Ethics, Family Life, and Pre-retirement classes and courses.
– Serve as part of a department’s Crisis Response Team. Assist at suicide incidents.
– Serve as liaison with other clergy in the community.
– Provide for the spiritual needs of prisoners.
The site (under “News and Views) includes links to news stories about chaplains.
Patriotic Tattoos Are Everywhere
At the mall this weekend, my wife and I saw a man who had gotten the “Twin Towers” tattooed on his arm. Then, I see this newspaper story about people getting all sorts of patriotic tattoos on their foreheads, necks and such. Let’s go to the tattoo parlor and hear from the skin art people.
–The history of tattoos.
Satellite Phones Save the Day, Now Popular
Once advertised as an always available phone for globetrotters, the Iridium satellite system was famously unable to get its signal to leap tall buildings and too expensive for most travelers to try.
Soon after the World Trade Center attack, as many cellular phones and landlines failed to connect, emergency workers standing in the rubble in Manhattan got through using Iridium handsets.
The Chicago Tribune reports, “Such situations, when other forms of communication are muted, is exactly the kind of uncommon circumstance the “new Iridium” targets for its services.
Instead of pitching satellite phones to jet-setting executives, Iridium now focuses on people in distant military operations, aboard ocean liners or otherwise cut off from regular communication channels, such as the rescuers at the World Trade Center, Pentagon and site of the plane crash in rural Pennsylvania.”
– For everybody from media to rescue workers, this has been a life saver.
