Matt Denner

On 9/11/01, I woke up concerned about the thousands who died that morning, my friends in Manhattan, and about the thousands of civilians and soldiers who would inevitably die if we "carpet-bombed the Middle East" as some were already demanding.

That evening, a handful of friends and I founded Time for Peace, a student group at ISU, which called to stop a movement towards full-scale war and to instead seek out and bring to justice the terrorists who were actually responsible. We stayed up until 2 a.m. crafting a statement to counter those who loudly declared that the only response to bloodshed was to inflict more bloodshed. It didn't take long for a response to come in emailed threats of attacks upon us.

Obviously, we didn't stop the war, and we didn't stop the Iraq war which was "justified" on similar grounds just a year and a half later. None of us were older than 21 in the earliest days of Time for Peace, and we learned what we could on the fly. But over the following years, we brought together hundreds of people to reflect on a better world in weekly vigils and meetings and challenged the notion that our dissent was unpatriotic in a time of war.

There are many things to remember and reflect on ten years after the attacks on 9/11/01. It's important to remember the lives that were lost that morning, the heroes who worked to save them, and the lives lost since amongst American soldiers and civilians across the world.

But it's also important to remember that we're still vulnerable, and taking off our shoes on the way to a plane won't change that. We must show people around the world why we love our country and why they can love it too, by seeking to make our world more just and democratic, and by challenging your own notions of what that means based on the experiences of others. Whether you seek to do so as a politician, an activist, a volunteer, a policeman, a teacher, or as a soldier, today I remember and thank you.

And of course, thanks to those who helped build one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life in the lobby of Maple-Willow-Larch ten years ago today.

I don't much care for chain stores. Sure, I love buying things for absurdly low prices and having access to the products I want, when I want them. But I still don't like them, for the same reasons you've probably heard from every other bleeding heart.

Nearly every day, I can discover some new powerful application available for free. And there are thousands more than will remain new to me.

At one point, I would download beta versions and freeware without a moment's thought, filled with anticipation for what new heights I would reach in my productivity. But eventually, I began to suspect that the developers weren't so much giving me the tools to create a better future, but convincing me that there was something I was failing to do right now without their software.

While some applications, like Launchy, have saved me loads of time and effortlessly changed my workflow for the better, this is very rarely the case. It is far too easy to spend fifteen minutes each day downloading and installing software described as "revolutionary," with the overwhelming sense that the status quo represents personal failure. And those are fifteen minutes that could be spent actually producing.