General

Excerpts taken from the paper “Shifting Sands: The Developing Myth of 9/11”.
© 2003, 2006 Klaus Guenther. All rights reserved.

Note: This writing sample is excerpted from a longer academic paper entitled “Shifting
Sands: The Developing Myth of 9/11”. Throughout the paper, the date “September 11, 2001”
and its variants refer to the historical date and events, while “9/11” refers to the developing
myth. Endnotes are original and refer to the bibliography which is not supplied in this
excerpt.

Ground Zero

The historical events of September 11, 2001 will remain a very strong presence in the
minds of those directly affected by the tragedy. However, as time goes by, details fade from
the collective memory of the nation, and hence opinions are bound to change. Internationally,
this can be seen especially clearly. But even within the United States, the fluid memory starts
forgetting.

In a Time article published the day after the attacks, Nancy Gibbs took on the idea that
America was weakened by the attacks on these prominent American landmarks:
If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are
symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so
powerful and we can't be safe. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, planted
at the base of Manhattan island [sic] with the Statue of Liberty as their sentry, and the
Pentagon, a squat, concrete fort on the banks of the Potomac, are the sanctuaries of
money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith
rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America's true God.i
From the very moment of the attacks, the American TV stations interrupted their
programming and brought only news of the attacks and their progress. Over the course of the
next few weeks, rerun after rerun of attack footage and the collapse of the twin towers
dominated the news. No movies were broadcast, no commercial breaks, and no sports events.
A nation grieved. Prayer vigils were held in churches and places of worship around the
country. America wept and prayed and hoped for survivors.

Continue reading "The Myth of 9/11." »

As some of you may know, I run a forum for alumni of the PHC Teencamps. There is a very fun game we play there: Forum mafia. It's got rules and all, and of course, it takes much longer than a regular mafia game.

In the current round, my veracity has been questioned. I'm stating here to all the world that if I am indeed a member of the mafia (and not a police officer), I will give each person who votes to kill my opponent a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate (or alternatively cash). In addition, if the doctor decides to save me, and I turn out to be mafia, the doctor will get an additional $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. If I am indeed mafia, and I don't pay out, I promise not to delete any comments on this post regarding this matter that will malign my character. As indeed I'd not be worth a plug nickle if I didn't pay up.

So there, guys, you have it. A real-life promise of real-life money if I am lying. Welcome to hard-ball forum mafia

... you just hate Microsoft! Really!

This is one of them. After backing up and reinstalling Windows on what used to be my main machine, I discovered that all the emails stored on it were lost. I have always archived all my emails since the beginning of time (or whatever you call the beginning of your internet career) and now I have lost two full years of emails dating from April 2002 to February 2004 (my most active period). Basically, I have to start over from scratch.

Continue reading "Some days..." »

After reading other's blogs for quite some time, I finally broke down and installed Serendipity. I'll try to keep this blog updated semi-regularly, but it depends to a large extent on time. And as everyone knows, there will always be more projects than time. Anyhow, this is a start.