Virginia Tech Shooting

It deeply saddens me to hear about the Virginia Tech shooting. The Virginia Tech campus is located in Blacksburgh, Virginia. 32 people were killed. Sadly, our ears are so saturated with news that we can so easily hear news like that, and think to ourselves "What else is new?" Even if we make a big deal of it now, we are likely to forget about it soon, once other distractions come along. It is easy to not catch the full import of what is happening because we live in a media-saturated world and also have been desensitized to violence. However, this is no run-of-the-mill shooting, it is said to be the worst one in U.S. history. One wonders whether the fact that this happened on a day remembering the holocaust has any significance.

Cho Seung-Hui, a 23 English major, committed suicide after killing over 30 people, some students and some professors. From what I can gather, he left behind a note, his previous behavior was clearly violent and problematic, and he seems to have been planning this shooting spree for a while. He is also said to have been heavily armed, and apparently was well-trained in this sort of thing, firing over 100 rounds. Also, apparently "Ismail Ax" was written in red ink on one of his arms when he died. The term "Ismail Ax" remains rather mysterious, but the phrase "Ishmael's ax" is found in a published work titled "Ishmael: In the Depths" by Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth. The book is available in its full text on Project Gutenberg.

Amid this carnage and chaos, there is an amazing story of a 76 year old holocaust survivor named Liviu Librescu. He was also a professor at Virginia Tech. He heroically acted and saved students lives, taking bullets to save his students.

Here are three sources which give some details about Cho:

• time.com
• theage.com.au
• San Jose Mercury News

Spam Drug King Busted

A drugstore operator in Minnesota, who derived much of his profits from e-mail spam, has recently been indicted.

Apparently, Christopher William Smith conspired to threaten and intimidate a witness in his trial. An indictment alleges that Smith also said he intended to have the witness or the witness's family killed.

Smith built a fortune, consisting of a $1,000,000 house and luxary cars upon a business of illegally dispensing prescription drugs. While Smith himself likely did not send spam himself, it is said that much of his business' profits were derived from spamming.

There are a number of different articles covering this story, and they can be easily found by going to news.google.com and typing "Christopher William Smith".