- 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...)