Three Fairfax County police officers were shot—one killed and one seriously injured—in a sniper-style attack and gunfight at the Sully District [Police] Station in Chantilly. One assailant was injured by return fire and died at the scene. Despite earlier reports to the contrary, it is believed that the attacker worked alone.
Minor Site Updates (Content & Style) [updated x3]
I’ve been making some minor site updates over the past few days (not enough to bump the version number—still at 17.2). The changes will slightly improve readability and also affect some legacy content. Here are the changes:
Poll Shows Many Can’t Find Louisiana on Map
Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations: six in 10 couldn’t find Iraq, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.
In a Time of War . . .
Do you remember where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001? I certainly do—vividly. I remember pretty much every second. I remember every feeling—horror, anger, and fear are the first that pop into my head. That morning, life in the United States changed in a million little ways. We went from a firm feeling of security to a stunning realization that, yes, even the United States of America can fall victim to the evils we’d gotten so used to seeing ‘somewhere else.’
SoVA Trip Last Weekend; Other Updates
We had a great time last weekend visiting people in Southern Virginia. Between Friday morning and Sunday night we had driven from Fairfax to Bedford to Roanoke to Lynchburg to Bedford to Altavista to Lynchburg and back to Fairfax. Lots of driving, yes, but it was worth it to see a bunch of people we’ve been neglecting.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.