katster | Things I've learned in the last few days.

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...)