Things I've learned in the last few days.

[katster]

• The true meaning of "out of the blue".
• How short and fragile life is.
• How well humanity unites in a tragedy.
• How difficult it is to express how one feels about a tragedy
• The physics of large skyscrapers.
• A new understanding of hate.
• A new understanding of love.
• How affirming it can be to hang your country's flag.
• Why missing a plane may be a good thing.
• The realization that I'll never have that bird's eye view of New York.
• How powerful the Star Spangeled Banner is as a song.
• Fear and sorrow.
• Hope and joy.
• That I am not an island, I am part of an interconnected web of people.
• What it truly means to be a citizen of the United States, and a citizen of the world.
• How dumb some of my countrymen are.
• There is truly evil in the world.
• How important my friends are to me.
• How fast a piece of paper burns.
• Luck.
• The true understanding of the term "discontinuity"
• The difference a minute makes.
• How to get a bunny out from behind a refrigerator
• That maybe my dumbass president isn't completely a dumbass.
• Sympathy for Ted Olson, and everybody else who lost family and friends in the mess.
• That the best word for this attack is "planeing"
• The world and time stop for no man.
• This is an unsafe world.
• Parachutes should be mandatory in all large buildings.
• Taking a nonstop flight across the country is a risky proposition.
• I'm glad I haven't learned how to think of people as statistics.
• My puppydog loves me a lot.
• How tempting it is to draw planes crashing into buildings on a math test covering planes and vectors.
• How difficult it is to take a math test under those conditions.
• Hope that my government can do the right thing.
• Jerry Falwell is an idiot, and Pat Robertson isn't far behind.
• Even Republicans are capable of doing the right thing.
• How difficult it is to keep faith in a higher power in such a horrific act.
• Gallows humour can be a good thing.
• Sometimes superfluous u's are okay.
• There is such a thing as too much news.
• Writing something like the front page of jihad.net can be a wrenching and yet important experience.

And that's just a small sampling of what I've learned.

God bless America!
E pluribus unum.
Thank you, world!
(and thank you Zibby and Aio and ari and everybody else...)