Sad news came out of the town this week, three students at a local college got shot by someone they knew, and two of them died. It caught my attention because they mentioned that one of the people played quiz bowl for the school.

On one level I feel grief for this because, even without a personal or professional connection between us, he was getting some enjoyment out of the game, and that is what I always want to see. I tend to believe in the possibilities of people, and now there's no possibilities there. And of course there's the dark thought that had there not been someone playing quiz bowl involved, I'd have blithely passed the article without a second glance. On another level, it sobers me to what hate, madness, and rage will turn a person to, irrationally lashing out, destroying their own life by destroying others.

We also have the tragedy of the passing of Al Whited. Our paths crossed only occasionally, but without the lineage of the Georgia Tech program of Al's era, the cross-pollination north to Cornell would never have occurred in my era.