By now, everyone has likely heard the awful story of the brutal attack perpetrated in the London district of Woolwich yesterday. To recap, two “suspects”[1] attempted to run a man down with their car, then, after crashing their vehicle, attacked the man with knives and a machete. They eventually beheaded the man, reportedly a British soldier.
After doing so, one of the men issued a statement of sorts to a nearby camera.
It was something the man said that struck me as the most profound element of this entire sad, grisly saga. Here was his quote, in full:
We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth. We apologize that women had to see this today, but, in our lands, our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don’t care about you.
The fact that a vague threat is made isn’t remarkable.
The fact that he cites an antiquated legal principle isn’t remarkable.
The fact that he invokes religious fervor as a motive, sadly, isn’t remarkable.
No, all of these are to be expected, given the facts of the case.
What intrigues me is this: ” . . . but, in our lands, our women have to see the same.”
“But, in our lands . . . ”
His lands?
Yesterday’s attack appears to have been perpetrated by a British citizen of Nigerian descent who only converted to Islam in his 20s. The attack resembled other plots in certain respects, including one bombing plan from earlier this year formulated by three British-born Muslims.
And that’s important.
The Jim / Dwight interplay wasn’t some groundbreaking revelation—it was merely a smart and natural extension of their original relationship. That evolution of the show would have been a logical choice that could have lead into a nice season-plus send-off for the venerable NBC program.
2K Games released BioShock Infinite to acclaim and mild controversy a little over a month ago. In development for five years, the game was much-anticipated by fans of the series, but the subject matter raised some eyebrows in the gaming community and beyond.
The first was that it immediately reminded me of the London Underground bombings when I was in a study-abroad program in England in 1999. There, a paranoid schizophrenic 
The Axis of Ego 
Has Arrested Development Made a Huge Mistake?
With the return of Arrested Development mere days away, I keep thinking about Joe Gibbs.
I didn’t really have sports heroes in the traditional sense growing up, but Gibbs, the legendary Washington Redskins head coach, is probably the exception.
It wasn’t just that he coached my favorite team, or that they were wildly successful during my childhood. It was also that he projected an image of good character and integrity.
So, when he returned to coaching in 2004, I was ecstatic.
Except things didn’t go so well. He went 6-10 his first year. He quickly followed that up with a very good 10-6 season that included a playoff win, and all seemed well. But 2006 wound up with a disastrous 5-11 campaign after seeming so full of promise at the outset. 2007 turned out to be one of his best coaching jobs ever, though, as his team rallied from the death of Sean Taylor (and a Gibbs blunder in the Buffalo game right after Taylor’s funeral) to post four straight victories at the end of the season and qualify for the playoffs.
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