9/11, The TV Archive

I've written about the archiving of web sites a couple of times now. Here's an interesting twist on the concept. The Internet Archive allows you to watch the TV coverage on September 11, 2001, as it happened. Television and radio is generally well archived by the stations, but the public does not have access to it. Things like this open our history to more and more people, and I look forward to seeing this kind of archiving expanded upon.

The question here is not should but rather how?

Over the past week there has been discussion in the media and on the internet as to whether we should still commemorate 9-11. With a doubt in my mind, the answer is yes. My only question is how. As a blogger, I don't want to tell the same old stories over and over again, to express the same emotions. That's what my archives are for, and what I've written still stands. There is little sense in me repeating it every single year. At some point, the story of my 9-11 loses its significance. The stories that really matter as time marches on are those of the living and the dead who were there.

As for real time commemorations, do we ritualize them, doing the same thing year after year? If so, does that lose its impact over time? I'm not sure. All I know is that history will remember the date September 11 in much the same way that it remembers December 7, and much like Pearl Harbor Day, from this point on, our commemorations will slowly fade, marking time on anniversaries that end in fives and zeros. Neither day will ever be forgotten, but in the American way of always moving forward, while we will always offer our respects on both dates, we will not allow tragic events to dominate those dates forever. We do not forget, but we do carry on.

The 9-11 C-O-N-Spiracy grows on the left

This, via the Corner, is just nuts.

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.

And some of you on the left wonder why people call you moonbats, unhinged, and detached from reality. You may be a perfectly rational and reasonible, but a lot of those you associate with are not or they're barely hanging on. Call it guilt by association.