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I didn't hear about this until I was driving home from class late this afternoon. It's a gut-wrenching experience to listen to those shots. NPR had an interview with a professor who locked himself in his office on the floor above. Because I have spent a large portion of my life in classrooms, I can perhaps more easily imagine the scene. And such violence, at a philosophical level, is so profoundly opposed to the ideal of reasoned discourse represented by a university that is seems more horrifying than it might otherwise. It's not that I worry for my own safety--the chance of something like this happening to any individual is very small. It does point up the much larger issue of gun violence in the US, though. I would also second Stephen's observation that this is the level of violence (however different its causes) that the single city of Baghdad has experienced every day for the last three years. Here is a link <http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/apr/16/now_do_you_understand>to a political site I read with a run down of today's death toll in Iraq. There is something profoundly sick in the American soul. It pains me to say this: I love my country's founding principles, but we have lost our way. I suspect that we are in for a long period of wandering in the wilderness. jd -- Joseph Duemer Professor of Humanities Clarkson University [sharpsand.net]