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In the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there were all sorts of stories in the air. It was healthy to be skeptical.

One story I doubted was that hijacked United Airlines flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field because the passengers had fought back and thwarted the terrorists’ plans. It might be true, but it seemed too convenient — it was just what we wanted to hear in those dark days. Where was the evidence?

The facts were pieced together over months. The evidence: phone calls from crew members and many passengers, made on cell phones and Airfones during the flight; the flight data recorder, and the cockpit voice recorder. The incredible story was true.

I just returned from a matinee showing of United 93, a new movie that tells this story as we’ve never seen it. The film was destined to be controversial. A few weeks ago, some theaters pulled previews for the film because audiences found the subject matter upsetting. To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into the theater.

There were only four people in the audience. Which is a great shame. You need to see this movie.

It’s classified as a docudrama, but there is none of the soppy back-story that has been such a hallmark of that genre. You get to know the passengers and crew on the plane much as you would if you were flying with them. You can watch what they do, sometimes overhear what they say, and you never sense the heavy expository hand of the big Hollywood writer.

On the ground, you see civilian and military flight controllers and managers doing their everyday jobs, and gradually coming to understand that September 11, 2001 was not an ordinary day.

The story is told in something very close to real time. The fumbling and stumbling we’ve come to expect from the federal government in recent years is not in evidence here. Controllers make split-second decisions of life and death. Mistakes are made. As well as possible, the mistakes are fixed. When problems seem overwhelming, they adapt and carry on. No excuses, no finger-pointing.

It’s astonishing to see how quickly the passengers on flight 93 — ordinary people, strangers — make their decision, form a plan, and get together what they need to carry it out. Their courage, strength and ingenuity saved uncounted lives. It could not save their own.

This is a movie for grown-ups. It’s not exciting — at least not in the way other Hollywood movies are exciting. It’s not fun. There is violence, but the movie doesn’t revel in it. There’s no dramatic three-act structure. In the end, the plot is not tied up with a neat bow. In the Washington Post, reviewer Ann Hornaday wrote:

“United 93” is a great movie, and I hated every minute of it.

No kidding. You have to see this movie.

Every thinking person disbelieves Iran’s claims that their nuclear program doesn’t seek to develop nuclear weapons. Today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Jews should leave Israel.

“We say that this fake regime [Israel] cannot … logically continue to live,” he said, according to a translator for The Associated Press.

Ahmadinejad, in a wide-ranging news conference that included international journalists for only the second time in his short term, said anti-Semitism drove Jews out of Europe into Israel.

“We believe that Jews like any other human beings have the right to live in happiness and prosperity and to benefit from security,” he said, according to a CNN translator. “Allow them to go back to their own fatherlands and countries.”

He reminds me of somebody, but who? That aggressive posturing, that religious fervor, that sense of certainty… Who? The squint, the dopey grin…

Uh oh. It’s George W. Bush. With a beard.

George W. Bush told Bob Woodward that he didn’t seek advice from his father. Nevertheless, cartoonist Ward Sutton suggests that Bush has been getting advice from a Republican elder statesman.

That would explain some things.

From email, and too good to pass up: I’m the Decider.

It takes a moment for the audio to start. Patience.

Open Letter to Alberto Gonzales

Dear Alberto,

I hope you’ll excuse my informality. I know you’re the Attorney General of the United States, and George W. Bush’s favorite legal theorist. But I feel like I know you. I was just reading some old comic book stories, and I suddenly found startling evidence that, like me, you read the Fantastic Four when you were young.

Listen, I’ve seen you on TV and read about you in the newspaper, and I don’t always agree with some of the stuff you say on Bush’s behalf, but any friend of Lee and Kirby is a friend of mine. They influenced a lot of people.

Did you see Close Encounters? When they show the Mother Ship at the end, I thought, “Wow, that’s a Kirby spaceship!” And Darth Vader, you know, is clearly a rip-off of Doctor Doom. Obviously.

Hey, remember when the Fantastic Four lost their powers, and Doctor Doom took over their skyscraper headquarters, and they had to confront not only Doom’s weapons and defenses, but their own as well? Man, that was cool!

Well, it’s been good talking with you. Don’t work too hard. When people say mean things about you, try not to take it personally, okay?

Listen, one last thing. Just gotta mention it. I don’t think the Molecule Man was ever meant to be a role model.

Take care … that the laws be faithfully executed. Ha, ha.

See ya.

Not that long ago, House Republicans briefly changed their ethics rules to protect the job of their corrupt majority leader, Tom DeLay. They were full of power, and full of themselves, and they could, by God, force anything they wanted down the throats of the American people, who could like it or lump it. They had rigged the game so that they could never be beaten, and DeLay had done more than anyone to rig it.

Times are changing:

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), a primary architect of the Republican majority who became one of the most powerful and feared leaders in Washington, told House allies last night that he will give up his seat rather than face a reelection fight that appears increasingly unwinnable.

Not an April Fool’s gag: today is the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of Apple Computer, Inc. Joy of Tech has a birthday cake in the shape of the Apple I computer. The Apple I was one of the very first personal computers, a kit intended for customers who were comfortable around a soldering iron. The company’s fortunes really took off with the introduction, in April 1977, of the Apple II, a machine designed for ordinary mortals.

Thirty years is a very long time in this business, and Apple’s fortunes have been up and down. The Apple II’s success brought IBM into the world of personal computing in 1982, with a hastily-designed machine that was deliberately crippled, to avoid competing with IBM’s expensive “big iron” computers.

Apple answered in 1984 with the Macintosh. The Mac sported a mouse-driven graphical user interface with multiple windows, on-screen buttons, pull-down menus, icons representing files and programs, and many other innovations that are universally accepted today as the natural way to interact with computers. Apple built simple networking into every Macintosh in 1985, when some wondered why you would ever want to let two computers talk to each other. Competitors derided the Mac interface while desperately struggling to duplicate it. It took Microsoft more than ten years to come within hailing distance of the Mac interface, with Windows 95.

Ten years ago, many pundits declared that Apple Computer was doomed. Macworld, a magazine for Macintosh users, ran a series of articles to help readers switch to Microsoft Windows. Now Macworld Online has an article about Apple’s impact. Wired Magazine, cNet — even American Heritage — have put together articles and photo galleries in honor of thirty years of Apple.

It’s been no small achievement that Apple has defied the doomsayers to reach this thirtieth anniversary. Time after time, Apple has been daring and innovative when other companies have been timid and conservative. Even if you’ve never touched an Apple computer in your life, if you’re reading this, you’re a beneficiary of Apple’s history of innovation.

Happy birthday, Apple.