Category: Miscellaneous

Police identified the classroom shooter as  Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior from South Korea who was in the English department and lived in another dorm on campus. They said Cho committed suicide after the attacks, and there was no indication Tuesday of a possible motive.  [AP] Police also report, however, that Cho left behind a “disturbing” note that may give us some idea what kind of ideas took root inside this young man’s fevered mind.  I’ll post more when I...

[Update:  The politcs of self-destruction meets the politics of personal destruction.  I’d be interested in knowing how many of those who  denounced Ann Coulter’s homophobic  epithet are  now  reveling  in this story out of partisan schadenfreude.    Unless Corporal Sanchez has crusaded against homosexuality and pornography while concealing his own past, I can’t think of anything other than the fact of his past homosexual behavior to make this a legitimate story.  I’ll admit, however, that there’s certainly irony in the...

Manuel Noriega is scheduled to be released from his Miami prison cell in September.

Here. In a statement, Goodluck Jonathan, the Bayelsa governor who is also Nigeria’s ruling party vice-presidential candidate in April elections, said the “state vigilante outfit Bayelsa Volunteers” — an unarmed youth group that helps police — helped in the release. Sounds like a pretty scary rescue.  I think I’ve officially spent enough time working in Africa.

I liked Richardson’s map post, despite my envy that he has five percent on me (that should only be taken as a reference to countries visited).  So here’s mine.  create your own visited country map I think we should make this a tagging exercise.  And feel free to post the html of your own map in the comments.  We can even make this competitive.  A few rules:  any overland border crossing, however slight, counts.  Airport stops don’t count unless you...

I guess it’s been raining a bit in Korea. Oddly enough, my first year in Korea, 1998, was another of those wet years. The flooding in Samgakji knocked down several buildings, killed a few people, and did major damage to the No. 6 Subway line construction. The flooding that year was about the same as what you see here. Afterward, I strolled down to the riverside walkway — since landscaped at great cost — and found a dead dog rotting...