A guy named Sam runs a site called exploding dog. He draws pictures from titles people send him. Yesterday he posted this one, titled I didn’t understand until I got out of the woods. Someday I want to buy him lunch.

The ISP handling our email is getting hammered by the Nimda worm. I haven’t been able to send or receive mail today, supposedly they are working on it. More reason to host on Apache.

For anyone bothered by the Nostradamus hoax that’s been floating around the internet since the World Trade Center attack, I suggest reading this article.

The much-forwarded quatrain is completely bogus. It originated as a fictional example in a Canadian college student’s essay A Critical Analysis of Nostradomus, [sic] the author created the quatrain to illustrate how easy it is to fake prophesy through vague terms. I’d love to hear what he thinks about his theories and fake prophesy being proved completely effective.

Whoever started emailing this didn’t even get the dates right. The quatrain has been credited to Nostradamus in the year 1654. Nostradamus died in 1566. I suppose that could have been a typo, but I prefer to consider it stupidity.

“This prophecy is truly the Mr. Potato Head of predictions.”

The Webdings/Wingdings “NYC” correlation is troubling, but just an unfortunate coincidence.

Among the other troubling but basically absurd things people are freaking out about, two images of smoke which look like a bad cartoon version of the devil. I don’t think people spend enough time looking at clouds anymore. (I’m not linking to any images because I think this is ridiculous.)

Who ya gonna call?

After dinner Horacio took this photo:

click to enlarge

Of all the horror I saw this past week, this is the image which finally got to me. These people, my friends, this family. Breaking bread and sharing wine. Life is beautiful, life goes on.

Amazon’s Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund has slowed down at $5.6 million. Only 149,000 people have contributed so far. This could be much higher.

I went to the Javits Center today to see about volunteering. The first image I had of the Javits Center was of a sea of hard hats. Construction workers from everywhere have arrived to help. There were also rescue workers from all over, one group had uniforms labeled in French, my guess is they came down from Montreal. Even though there were at least a half dozen camera crews there, I haven’t seen anything reported about this turnout. There were mountains of food and water with a dozens of people offering snacks to those waiting in line. I overheard one worker say he’d been waiting four hours.

While I’m thankful and encouraged by this astounding show of unity and support, I regret that I have some feelings of resentment. These guys are stronger than I am, and able to do physical work longer and better than I could. But I live here. I want to help. And I can’t. I need to get over that quick.

A state marshal said they had all the volunteers they needed before 11:00, the news is reporting that no additional volunteers are needed at all. So I guess I won’t be helping for a little while but I will try again sometime next week. The cleanup will be going on for a long time, so maybe there will be an opportunity for me to help in the future. I saw many streets near the WTC site have been cleared already. In 1992, I regretted not helping sweep up after the LA riots. Now I’m trying to figure out other ways to help.

Tonight a large group of friends are gathering for dinner. It’s turning into something of an early thanksgiving, which seems altogether appropriate.

I just posted this comment in this MetaFilter thread and for the first time in days I felt an emotion besides numbness and exhaustion. I’m pissed. This city doesn’t need a useless memorial. We need a living, working memorial. New York City is about work 100% of the time. Leisure is crammed into the other 10%.

To rebuild them as they were seems perverse. Maybe if one building had survived we could justify fixing the pair, but that didn’t happen. They knocked them down, we need to build them back better than they were. The best possible memorial to the lives lost is the biggest pair of buildings on the planet. These should dwarf the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

The sky over downtown seems like a disfigurement. Everytime anyone looks across the skyline it will remind them that we lost something. To not rebuild those buildings, to not fill that void would be to wallow in defeat.

Fear of another attack can not dissuade us. Everything that can be done to prevent terrorism should be done, but we can not live in fear.

Civilians shouldn’t be in allowed into the dangerous areas (exception being those with specific, needed skills). Let people trained and experienced at following orders work there, they won’t endanger themselves or others through lack of experience. Still, those clouds of building didn’t stay close by. The satellite photos show most of downtown covered in dust.

This is my city. I want to sweep up, I want to clean. Let me help clear Nassau St, Battery Place, Broad Street. Let me clear papers and ash from the steps where George Washington was inaugurated. The buildings on those streets are not in danger of collapsing. I need to help. I need to sweat. I need to do whatever small bit I can to put my city back together.