Jeffrey Tobasky isn't into conspiracy theories. He doesn't care about the grassy knoll. Thinks people who claim they were abducted by UFOs are full of it and doesn't ever scan the horizon looking for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
But waiting in line at Dunkin' Donuts in Dorchester this week, he raised an eyebrow when handed a US$20 bill folded to show a bizarrely accurate image of the burning World Trade Center towers. Tobasky pursed his lips: "Damn, that's weird. I mean, that really is weird."
PHOTO: NY TIMES
The US$20 bill trick -- if that's the right word for it -- is also being done, to a lesser extent, with US$10 and US$50 bills, and has been spreading by word of mouth and over the Internet for at least a month. Whether coincidence or conspiracy, it's become something of a comment on the American psyche since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The trick goes back at least as far as a party in Melbourne, Florida, last month. Warren Dodd, who designs commercial Web sites, got together with about 20 friends on a Saturday to watch a NASCAR race on television. After a few laps, the race was rained out and Dodd walked out to the porch with a few friends. One of them pulled out a twenty, folded it lengthwise to hide the face of Andrew Jackson. Then, she folded the bill diagonally from the center point on the crease so it looked like an arrow -- or an airplane -- and there, clear as day, were the smoking Trade Center towers. Dodd turned the folded bill over and there was an image resembling the blown up Pentagon.
"I was really amazed," said Dodd, 47. "I mean, what are the odds?"
He showed a few friends and they were equally intrigued, so he decided to put it on a commercial Web site (www.allbrevard.net) to show friends out of state. After he posted it, he mentioned it on a computer user group. The next day, his site had 35,000 hits. The day after that it doubled to 70,000 and then doubled again and again, until it was getting about 250,000 hits a day. Since the posting about a month ago, the site has received more than 2 million hits, some from as far away as China and Israel. "It's gotten about the same exposure as a Super Bowl ad," Dodd said.
The responses on the site break down into three basic categories of roughly equal proportions: The people who, like Dodd and Tobasky, think the image is just a weird coincidence; those who think it's a sign that the government -- or God -- knew the attacks were coming; and those who think posting the image is sacreligious, wrong or at the very least, in bad taste. Tens of thousands also ask the question: "Who figured this out?" And thousands more have answered: "Someone with too much time on their hands."
Apocolypse now
Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates in Somerville, Massachusetts and an expert on conspiracy theories, isn't at all surprised the image has spread so far so fast.
The roots of apocalyptic thinking in America, he said, go back to the 17th century. Whenever fear mixes with uncertainty, huge numbers of Americans fall back on simple stories of good versus evil. Unrelated objects and dates -- like Y2K or the fall of the Soviet Union -- are transposed into powerful end-of-the-world symbols.
The World Trade Center image is just the latest incarnation of this phenomena, Berlet says. Secret messages have been "discovered" in US currency for decades. When the Treasury Department redesigned paper money six years ago, "The 700 Club," a cable show led by televangelist Pat Robertson, reported that the government secretly implanted bills with the numbers 666, the so-called mark of the beast, Berlet said.
The US$20 can also be folded (like an accordion) to show the word "OSAMA" or (twice over Andrew Jackson's eyes) an erupting volcano. And the words "Novus Ordo Seclorum" under the pyramid on a US$1 bill are believed by some to translate into the words "New World Order."
Jim Hagdorn at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving has heard them all and fields questions with a voice hovering between fatigue and exasperation.
"People at the Bureau take great pride in their work and are very proud of the way the White House looks on the US$20 bill," Hagedorn said last week. "We feel really bad that this is being used to highlight the tragedy."
For Berlet its mostly amusing.
"Give me enough beer and I'll show you Donald Duck being sworn in as president on the dollar," he said.
"The point is you can do this all day and you can take any denomination and come up with pretty much whatever you want."
But for every self-styled realist who perceives the image as silly, there is someone else who isn't quite sure. Just ask Darrell Andersen, who bought lunch at D'Angelo's this week, about the same time Tobasky was patronizing the Dunkin Donuts next door.
"I think the government knew the attacks were coming, no doubt," Andersen said after he was shown the bill. "I think they know a lot things they don't tell us."
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to