Tipping Point

Since its inception, this blog has been a crazy mishmash of articles. One day I'll write about a gaming reenactment of Brad Pitt's fight against some hapless German infantry, the next I'll bemoan the silliness that is the debate on the San Jose Shark's cheerleader's attire. I routinely get complaints, or at least advice, lecturing me on my lack of focus. To those complainers, all I can say is, "Too bad."  This is what I do, this is what I write. If the jumping around results in five folks unsubscribing, so be it. It's a small price to pay.

Not so small a price was paid yesterday by 16 people at the Charlie Hebdo (12 killed, 4 wounded). I'm no longer a journalist, but apparently neither are the folks at Yahoo, who--a

full day after the shootings-- still eschew hard facts for sensationalistic photos, but I guess it's all about the page views to them.

Rambling aside, it is heart rending, if not heart breaking. There are plenty of vitriolic diatribes to be read on the Interweb today, and to be honest, many of them are justified. I won't lay down another here. I will say this. I fear there are only two ways for Islamic radicalism  to end. Way one. Islam moderates itself. We can help. There are policies western democracies execute that rightly infuriate Islamists. We need to reexamine those policies.

The second way? If Islam continues on its current path, there will be a tipping point. I cannot say when, no one can say when. Yet there will be a point where western democracies' outrage exceeds their patience, and that's a point that I don't think any of us want to witness.

That said, this certainly isn't the best post I've written. I just want to say my heart is with my friends in France. Maybe I'll write something better, later.