July 5th -- When I heard about the shooting at LAX (sorry, I just can't call it "Bradley International"), my first reaction was in the form of a question, as in: what do you want to bet the triggerman's name is Mohamed?" Sure enough, it was.

And I suppose that is the real effect of 9/11. I was actually talking to my boss on the phone when the first plane hit. He was stuck in traffic on the Greorge Washington Bridge when I told him about a commercial jet colliding with the WTC. He said he could see the smoke. I went into historicaldave mode, explaining that this wasn't the first time a plane had hit a tall building in New York City; the first time it happened, a B-24 hit the Empire State on the 72nd floor in 1947. My boss, an Israeli, was impressed with my knowledge, but didn't think it was an accident. He said to me: "what to do want to bet the pilot was named Mohammed?"

Then, the second plane hit.

July 4th Isn't it Ironic -- Well, no, most of the time it's not. There are so few writers in the world that can do irony, or more correctly, do it well. Most of what passes for irony these days is of the annoyingly snarky "..as if" or "duh?" varieties. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review Online does a genius job of skewering the nitwit educators of the University of California system in this charmingly ironic take on the dumbing down of the SAT (http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg070102.asp).

I wish I had that man's couch.