Boston Bombing Roundup

 Like everyone else, my prayers go out to the victims of yesterday's bombs.  It was a tragic and pointless event which targeted the greatest civic festival of one of our great cities.  One which commemorates the beginning of the American Revolution.

We still don't have any explanation of who was behind the Boston Marathon bombing.  If I was a betting man (which I am), I would lay money on a loner, but I'd probably split my bet between anti-government nut and just plain lunatic.  The Patriots' Day and Tax Day connection gives anti-government nut a slight edge, but it goes without saying that the person was mentally unstable.  Lone Muslim or other non-Christian extremist is a possibility, but I just don't think it was the work of any group, be it Al-Qaeda or some crazy militia group. 

Here is Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen describing the mood in Boston (well worth listening to.  I wish they had a transcript posted).

Charles Pierce on the mixture of the horrible and the mundane, and the impact of the bombing on the Marathon, "the old, drunk uncle of Boston sports, the last of the true festival events":

I do not know what happens now. I know the event will never be the same. It is marked now, and it will be marked in the future, by what happened on the afternoon of April 15, 2013. Some of it will be locked down. Some of it will be tightened up. I walked back down to the Public Garden again, because Copley Square was growing dark and exhausted as the night began to fall. Back by the stone fountain, a woman in a silver blanket told a Providence TV station that she'd been unable to find a ladies' room after the race because all the restaurants and hotels had been locked down and she had to come all the way down to Park Square to find facilities that would deign to accommodate her. She was not happy at all, and she was telling greater Providence about it. "And I needed TO PEE!," she told some undoubtedly astounded Rhode Islanders.
There was something comfortingly mundane in how truly angry she was. The best example of this came from my friend, Steve Brown, a reporter for WBUR, one of the local Boston NPR stations. Brown swore he heard one person say, "Damn it, this is the first time I ever got DNF'd." Goddamn runners. I swear, one day, I promise, I'll laugh about them again. The Marathon will be worth mocking again. But that will not be today. It will not be anytime soon.

The bombing did terrible damage to the victims and their families.  Luckily, the physical damage wasn't any worse than it was.  But for the rest of us, it was some lunatic's attempt to take one more bit of civil society away from us.  We can't allow the vile acts of some demented coward (or cowards) to undermine our ability to enjoy our time on this earth without fear and rigid security measures bearing down on us.  These types of attacks are way less dangerous than what Mother Nature throws at us monthly.  Lets' not forget that.

Tom Levinson photo of MIT building 54 on the evening of April 15.