O Danny Boy

I moderate a handful of blogs and sit on a number of mailing lists. Occasionally, people will post to a list and get no response or leave a blog comment that gets ignored or deleted. Here’s why.

The roundup of what I’ve done and where I’ve been this year.

This is the last year I will write my annual post about 9/11. It is time for me to set that day aside in my mind, as one might lock away a dangerous and volatile chemical–one that should be monitored but not handled too often. It does me little good to reflect on that day; my thoughts turn dark and it is though a shade becomes drawn across the world and everything becomes dim. If you gaze for long into an abyss, Nietzsche reminds us, the abyss gazes also into you.

This month marks four years I’ve been blogging. Here’s what I’ve learned about doing it.

Of course it does.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake here in San Francisco. Our public transportation system, MUNI, decided to celebrate by not collecting fares today. So, this being San Francisco, every mentally-ill, crack-addled, drunken, shoeless inebriate took advantage of this and was on MUNI today. I got into a fistfight with one of them.

I can’t resist a good internet meme. Here are my Fours.

While doing some end-of-the-year archiving of old emails, I was startled when I came across some from Jef Raskin, one of the designers of the original Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface. I was surprised because Jef died this February and, although I was sad at the time, I had sort of forgotten about it.

If you’ve forgotten what that day was like, read the thread that was happening on Fark at the time. Chilling, even after the horror that was Hurricane Katrina. Osama bin Laden is still at large and three thousand people remain dead and unavenged. Remember.

My 9/11 Years One, Two, and Three Remembrances.

When ABC anchorman Peter Jennings died this past weekend, a ridiculous amount of obituaries and tributes (New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, AP, CBS News, and a host of others) all used one word to describe him: urbane. Despite the obvious plagiarizing, it’s a good word, and one that aptly described my favorite news anchor. What cool word would you like to see in your obituary? Mine’s erudite.