Something I've been working on 

Watch this Flash demo. It shows one way to get started with blogs on a big organizational site without blowing up the whole site.

All too recent history 

Some good stuff on the History Channel today about 9/11.

Plus, on the Discovery Channel at 9 Eastern, there's a reconstruction of the story of Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. I'm not sure if I can bear to watch that one because it's so sad, but also because it bugs me a little that it will probably come off looking like a cop show simply by using the technique of dramatization. It seems to cheapen the event somehow? I don't know... but something bothers me about it.

Later: I was completely wrong. The documentary was very well done and tastefully handled.

'The Dalai Lama will take your calls' 

That's what I heard on a CNN promo. His Holiness will be on Larry King tonight. He's doing some kind of remembrance in Sun City. I went to hear him speak once in Bloomington, IN. He has a brother there who owns a Tibetan restaurant! (And used to teach at IU, too. I used to work with his daughter-in-law.)

It was cool to see the Dalai Lama in person, even if it was in Assembly Hall and even though the idea of buying tickets for the event through Ticketmaster sounds almost as incongruous as the idea of him taking live calls on Larry King. He did a week-long workshop, there, too. I'd like to have the time to attend something like that sometime. If you live in Bloomington you can go to one-off evening events at the Tibetan Buddhist monastary there.

The one message I remember from his talk was about how turning the other cheek doesn't accomplish a thing except make you feel noble. Of course he doesn't advocate violence or even hostility, but he says there are always appropriate countermeasures you can take. I really liked the idea of thinking of a response to an attack as a countermeasure.

Shown in the picture with the beloved IU Chancellor Herman Wells.

Can't help it 

It's 9/11 day. You can't help but draw comparisons to the Katrina disaster.

It puts things into perspective when you try to imagine any delay at all in responding to the explosions at the World Trade Center. Of course New York sprang into action four years ago. Blaming any delay on some bureaucratic matter like jurisdiction issues between the Port Authority and the NYC fire and police departments would have been unthinkable.

There's no reason why the national response mechanism shouldn't be as planned and efficient as the response you'd see when there is a multi-car crash on the freeway. Several nearby firetrucks and ambulances would just go, now. All the administrative nicities are worked out ahead of time. Sure it's harder to coordinate a larger scale response, but there's plenty of incentive, because the loss of life scales right along with the coordination difficulty.