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| Tuesday, September 11, 2001 |
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Stars. Just stars. 
| | Walking back from a meeting at school this evening, the kid and I looked up at the sky, as always. But it was ... different. What was that behind the high branches of an Oak tree? A star or an — no, it couldn't be an airplane. There were no airplanes in the sky tonight. Only stars: a condition we haven't seen in nearly a century. |
| | "Why aren't the planes flying, Papa?" he asked. I explained. He asked again. I explained again. I stopped the questioning when the count got to four. |
What's down?
| | I get a steady flow of email, up to hundreds per day. But after 5:13 tonight, nothing. Is it just that everybody's watching CNN now? No idea. Seems creepy. |
More perspective
| | Here's Morgan Stanley, which had 3500 people working in the World Trade Center: |
| | Because of the enormous emotional and physical toll that these events have taken and will take among many of our employees and their families... |
Close to home
| | We just lost power for a few minutes. No idea why. |
One answer
Ironytrack
Blogtracks
| | Here are Blogger sites mentioning "World Trade" or "terrorist." |
How?
| | BBC says the pilots would surely have been killed first, since they would never follow orders to fly into a building. I notice that all four planes involved were 757s and 767s, which have roughly identical cockpits. |
| | Odd how we mull details like these to get a small grip on an immense tragedy. Right now I don't even want food. Just details. |
Now it gets personal
| | Our West Coast family members check in fine. One is in Ohio, and will probably drive home to L.A. So far we're lucky. East Coast, not so sure. I have a cousin who works in the Pentagon. My sister is a retired Navy officer, recently moved from Arlington to North Carolina. "I lost friends today," she tells me. But who? So far we also don't know very much about who lived, who died, who's lost, trapped or worse. |
| | Dave points to a press release reporting the death of Danny Lewin. He was on the American flight from New York to Los Angeles that crashed into the World Trade Center. I didn't know Danny, but I've met him. He was a good guy. According to his bio, he was also a member of the Israeli Defense Forces. I imagine he would have done his best, as a passenger, to stop this thing. |
| | And there were so many others lost today. So many families waiting, right now, for loved ones to call, to show up at the door. |
The deepest human substance
Declaration of Peace
| | One of the surprising things to me about blogging is how much I don't say. I tend to be a very disclosing guy, but if anything I tend to disclose less personal stuff than I ever thought I would have when I started this thing in 1999. |
| | But today I'll tell you where I come from on the matter of war. |
| | I am a pacifist. I applied for contientious objector status during the Vietnam War, and I would have served in that capacity if I hadn't received a medical deferment. |
| | I went to a Quaker college, and have always felt most at home, philosophically and morally, with the Society of Friends. Although I currently attend a Catholic Church, my beliefs are the same. |
| | We have a choice about the ones we use. For the sake of those still with us, and the souls of those we've lost, choose your conceptual frameworks carefully. |
Perspective
| | We hear that 50,000 people worked in the World Trade Center alone. Consider these numbers: |
| | - 4,435 U.S. soldiers died in the Revolutionary War, and another 2,260 in the War of 1812.
- Including civilians, 373,458 died in the Civil War.
- 53,513 combat deaths in World War I, plus 63,195 "other."
- 292,131 combat deaths in Word War II, plus 115,185 "other."
- 33,651 combat deaths in the Korean War (no "other" listed)
- 47,369 combat deaths in the Vietnam War, and 10,799 "other."
- And for the Gulf war, the respective numbers were 148 and 145.
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Loverolling
| | I need to pick up the kid from school soon. This morning he wanted to know why his parents were crying. We couldn't begin to explain. |
Open choices
| | What happened today may have been an act of war, but it was also an act of insanity. |
| | Many people we know are dead. Many more are dying. This is a time to open our hearts, our homes, our wallets and our minds. |
| | There is only one sane choice open to us all: What can we do to help? |
| | If there is anything you think I can do, let me know. I just added AIM instant messaging to my suite of contacts. My handle, no longer a joke, is "Celeprosy." |
A time for love and mourning
| | Pray, find your loved ones. Give help. |
Maybe because I have it
| | Wanted to test out the latest AOL Instant Messenger today, so I downloaded it. But first I had to come up with a name. Searls, Dsearls, Dsearls1 and Zdilmidgi were all taken, by me, in the past. But AOL wouldn't make them available to me because they had to clear it with the now-dead email address I used when I registered those identities. So I gave up on those and tried all kinds of names, finally going with "Celeprosy." It took. Haven't installed it yet, though. |
What's the commercial model for your toilet? Your light socket? Your floors?
| | I was asked today what the 'commercial model' was for a blog hosted on a home computer. It amazes me that the Net is still being asked to justify itself commercially. |
| | But as long as it is, we need Larry Lessig to rant about it. (Thanks to Tom for that link.) |
| | And while we're on the blog subject, check out the Lockergnome interview with Evan Williams. I ran into Chris Pirillo at TechTV when I was up there recently. Great guy. And he really does look like that Lockergnome dude in the illo. |
Well, obviously
| | Curious: what real competition does Google have these days? Looking here, it's as if nobody has even bothered reviewing the matter in almost a year. At this point Google rivals the browser itself as a Web interface. It's a portal that doesn't act the part. |
| | Is it making money yet? I have no idea. |
Because smart people don't always do that
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